Cathy Downs was born in Port Jefferson, New York. She was the daughter of James Nelson Downs and Edna Elizabeth Newman. A former Vogue cover model, she was brought to Hollywood in 1944 by a 20th Century-Fox talent scout. Downs began her film career with a small roles in State Fair (1945) and The Dolly Sisters (1945). In 1946 she played the title role in My Darling Clementine and Clifton Webb’s unfaithful wife in The Dark Corner. Following the success of My Darling Clementine, Downs was cast in a prison drama For You I Die (1947), an Abbott & Costello comedy The Noose Hangs High, and several western films. By the beginning of the 1950s she was appearing in lower budget films, including some science fiction films, with one of these films Missile to the Moon marking her last screen appearance, in 1958. She worked sporadically in television during the 1960s, with her final television appearance in 1965 on Perry Mason as murder victim and title character Millicent Barton in “The Case of the Hasty Honeymooner.” She was unemployed the remaining eleven years of her life before she died in Los Angeles, California. Downs has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to Television, at 6646 Hollywood Boulevard. She was married first to Joe Kirkwood, Jr. (1952–1955; divorced) who played the character Joe Palooka in films and on TV. They had long been out of touch, when, in 1976 Kirkwood heard that Downs was in dire financial circumstances. Kirkwood was setting up a trust fund for her when he learned she had died of cancer at the age of 52. She is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery, Santa Monica.