Biography

Asa was born as Virginia Maynor. She made her motion picture debut as the female lead in Man Beast (1956), a low-budget creature feature in which an expedition to the Himalayas is attacked and mostly wiped out by irate Yetis (they may have just wanted some privacy). Later, producers changed her stage moniker to Asa, because her birth name sounded too similar to that of established Hollywood star Virginia Mayo. 'Man Beast' was hardly the ideal launching platform for a budding starlet, thus Asa found herself quickly relegated to the supporting cast. By 1961, she began to concentrate on TV work and became ultimately best known as the stewardess who tries to calm an unhinged passenger (played by William Shatner) in the iconic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'. She guested in several other early 60s shows, including Mike Hammer (1958) (as a floozy named 'Ginger Snap'), Perry Mason (1957), Hawaiian Eye (1959) and McHale's Navy (1962), before making her screen swansong in the small part of Mrs. Riley in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).

Asa Maynor married the actor Edd Byrnes in March 1962. At the time, Byrnes was especially popular with younger audiences for his role as the jive-talking parking lot attendant 'Kookie' in TV's 77 Sunset Strip (1958). They had a son, Logan Byrnes, who went on to graduate from USC and had a successful career in broadcast journalism. As for Asa, she filed for divorce from Edd in 1971, citing as reason 'his reliance on drugs and alcohol'.

After her retirement from acting, Asa reinvented herself as an interior designer. In the 1990's, she worked in the entertainment industry again as an executive with NBC.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis