Denise Nickerson

Denise Marie Nickerson (April 1, 1957 – July 10, 2019) was an American actress. Starting her career as a child actress, at the age of 13, she starred as Violet Beauregarde in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. She later played Allison on The Electric Company, and had recurring roles as Amy Jennings, Nora Collins, and Amy Collins in the soap opera Dark Shadows. She left the acting profession in 1978 and later worked as a receptionist and office manager.

Denise Nickerson was born on April 1, 1957, in New York City, to Florence Bickford, a clerical worker, and Fred Nickerson, a mail carrier. The family, along with older sister Carol, moved to Miami. Nickerson, at the age of two, appeared in a television commercial for a Florida heating company. At the age of four, she was discovered at a fashion show by Broadway theatre producer Zev Buffman of drama school the Neighborhood Playhouse.

In 1962, when she was five, Nickerson was in a play of Peter Pan as Wendy Darling's daughter Jane starring Betsy Palmer at Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse. Buffman selected Nickerson to go on the road with the play, first to Washington, D.C. When Nickerson was nine, the play ended. Her parents moved Carol and Nickerson back to New York City at 56th and Lexington in a studio apartment, while they stayed with her grandmother in Massachusetts.

In 1971, Nickerson, at 13, was cast as the nymphet Lolita Haze, replacing the original actress Annette Ferra in the ill-fated musical, Lolita, My Love during its run in Boston, which closed on the road before reaching Broadway.

Nickerson made appearances in the 1960s on such shows as The Doctors as Kate Harris, opposite Bill Bixby in an unsold television pilot called Rome Sweet Rome, and on The New Phil Silvers Show. Nickerson's big break came in 1968, when she joined the cast of ABC Daytime's Dark Shadows, appearing as recurring characters Amy Jennings, Nora Collins, and Amy Collins from 1968 to 1970. Upon leaving Dark Shadows, she appeared in the 1971 television movie The Neon Ceiling. That year, she appeared in her signature role as gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, based on Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

From 1972 to 1973, Nickerson joined the cast of The Electric Company as Allison, a member of the Short Circus music group. Producers saw the potential in her fresh face and had her sing lead on several songs, including "The Sweet Sweet Sway". She guest-starred as Pamela Phillips, one of two dates Peter Brady (Christopher Knight) had on one night, in a final-season episode of The Brady Bunch titled "Two Petes in a Pod". She auditioned for the role of Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist, losing to Linda Blair. Also in 1974, Nickerson was Sophie Pennington, alongside Teddy Eccles, in the unsold television pilot If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?, based on M. E. Kerr's novel of the same name.

Nickerson created the role of Liza Walton on the CBS Daytime soap opera, Search for Tomorrow. She remained with the series until producers decided to age the character and make her one of the show's romantic heroines.

In 1973, Nickerson starred in the TV movie The Man Who Could Talk to Kids, opposite Peter Boyle and Scott Jacoby. In 1975 she appeared in the satiric, beauty pageant inspired motion picture Smile, as Miss San Diego Shirley Tolstoy, also starring a young Melanie Griffith and Annette O'Toole.