Merrie Spaeth started out as an actress. She and Elizabeth (Tippy) Walker were the young leads in the 1964 classic The World of Henry Orient. The film is still highly regarded but acting didn't seem to be a long term career for either girl.
So, how's a girl going to pay the bills? In Merrie's case, she turned to writing and somehow ended up working for Gold Key Comics. She wrote a lot of their books, possibly even the adventures of Smokey Bear. She wrote a ton of stuff back then and doesn't quite remember all of it.
What she does remember is writing for the DS comic. It was her favorite to write for because the stories were full ones, not just one of two or three stories in an issue. Writers got paid by the page. She earned $10 per page, so turning out a story that ran 20/22 pages paid a lot better than ones that were only 6 or 8 pages. The full stories enabled her to interject subplots and a certain amount of continuity.
She loved writing the comics but eventually got to the point where she didn't need to do them anymore. Merrie went on to great success elsewhere. She was a speech writer for William Paley. She worked as a producer on 20/20, where she produced segments on Liberace and motorcycle gangs. Separate stories, I presume. And she spent 2 years as The White House Director of Media Relations under Ronald Reagan. She maintains an active website and is available as a motivational speaker.
She would probably make a very interesting guest at a DS event.
