‘Star Trek’ Actress Celeste Yarnall Dies Following Struggle With Ovarian Cancer

Celeste Yarnall, best known for playing Yeoman Martha Landon on Star Trek, died Sunday from ovarian cancer. She was 74.

The famed actress of the 1960s and ’70s endured a four-year battle with the disease before dying at her home in Westlake Village, California.

The official Star Trek website was the first to report the news. Trekkies will remember her as Yeoman Martha Landon on the October 1967 episode, “The Apple,” opposite Chekov (Walter Koenig).

Yarnall’s husband, British artist Nazim Nazim, confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter. “She was magnificent in everything she did,” Nazim said. “She was my beloved queen.”

Yarnall chronicled her battle with cancer through several guest columns on StarTrek.com after her 2014 diagnosis.

“My doctor has some exciting things for me planned, as we banked a bit of my tumor for future use to make a vaccine to give me to help my body defend itself against this cancer,” she wrote in her first column, in February 2015. “This is very expensive and not covered by insurance and I will need to travel most likely by air to Texas to get these shots regularly. He has other things in mind, too, but again this requires your help.”

“Please join me on my journey so that I can get well and get back out in the world and be of help to others, which is what I like doing best, through my books, personal appearances, speaking engagements, film production and on and on,” she continued. “However I can reach and inspire people to help themselves personally and help our planet come together in oneness and peace, I want to do it, and sharing my cancer story is part of that.”

Yarnall appeared opposite Elvis Presley in the 1968 film Live a Little, Love a Little, where he tried to woo her into hooking up by singing “A Little Less Conversation.” She was also known for her role in the jungle-set cult classic Eve, in which she donned a loincloth to play “the original flower child.”

Yarnall was discovered by Rick and Ozzie Nelson while she walked past their studio offices on her way to an audition in Long Beach, California. She appeared on an episode of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet in 1962 and played college kids in Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor and Jack Lemmon’s Under the Yum Yum Tree in 1963.

In addition to her acting career, she also concentrated on commercial real estate for years and earned a Ph.D. in nutrition.

Yarnall is survived by Nazim as well as her daughter Cami, son-in-law Stephen and granddaughter Gaby.