American actor who was one half of a glamorous 1950s couple with the British racing driver Peter Collins
Louise King met Peter Collins in a Miami bar on a Monday night in 1957. Two days later, as they sunbathed by a local hotel pool, he proposed – and the following Monday they were married. She was a 24-year-old American actor on tour with the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch, taking the Marilyn Monroe role. He was a 25-year-old racing driver from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, starting his second season as a member of the Ferrari grand prix team.
Enzo Ferrari, who believed that marriage slowed his drivers down, was the only one who did not entirely approve of the sudden arrival of King, who has died aged 88, in Collins’s life. The initial meeting had been arranged by Stirling Moss, who had encountered King during the annual Nassau Speed Week in the Bahamas in 1956. On discovering that the two would be in Miami at the same time, he told Collins to look her up. The newlyweds, well matched in cheerful temperament and golden looks, were often accompanied at the circuits by Mike Hawthorn, Collins’s British team mate, good friend and accomplice in off-track high jinks.