Asked how she would know when she had hit the big time, the beguiling actor Taina Elg, who has died aged 95, said: “When people no longer trip over my name.”
When she arrived in the US in 1954 at the start of her contract with MGM, a newspaper campaign engineered by the studio and sponsored by Armour Star meat products offered readers the chance to win a six-room house or $25,000 cash by proposing a new name for this latest exotic star-in-the-making. Contestants were asked to send in suggested names along with labels from corned beef hash and devilled ham. This all came to nought, and she was still not-so-plain-old Taina Elg when she began appearing on screen.
