Arlene Howell

Who is Arlene Howell?

in Bourbon Street Beat]]

Arlene Howell, a.k.a. Eurlyne Howell, was an American television actress who held the Miss USA 1958 title.

Howell became the first of three Miss Louisiana USA titleholders to win the Miss USA crown when she won the Miss USA 1958 pageant held in Long Beach, California in July 1958. That same week she competed in the Miss Universe pageant and placed as third runner-up.

Just before she turned twenty, Howell was cast as the secretary, Melody Lee Mercer, in the ABC/Warner Brothers crime drama, Bourbon Street Beat, with Andrew Duggan, Richard Long, and Van Williams, The series is set in New Orleans in her native Louisiana, though she was born far to the north in Delhi in Richland Parish in the northeastern section of her state. The actor Earl Holliman was also born in Delhi but eleven years earlier.

Howell appeared as Cindy Lou Brown in the ABC/WB western series, Maverick: in a cameo appearance in the oft-discussed episode "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" and in the installments "Island in the Swamp" with James Garner and Edgar Buchanan, "Alias Bart Maverick", and "Passage to Fort Doom" opposite Jack Kelly.

Howell was also cast in episodes of the ABC/WB series 77 Sunset Strip and Bronco and in ABC's Alcoa Premiere, and as "Flora" in an unusually memorable 1966 episode of CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., in which Gomer paired her off with a dumbfounded Sergeant Carter.