A pleasant, attractive leading lady, Cathy Downs was an "outdoors type" who worked as a model before she became a Fox contract player in 1944. In the late 1940s she was being groomed for major success -- e.g., she played the title role in John Ford 's My Darling Clementine (1946) -- but most of her subsequent movie roles were in low-budget westerns, action and horror pictures. She was married to Joe Kirkwood Jr. , an actor and producer who played Joe Palooka in a series of low-budget 1940-'50s films. They acted together in a short-lived TV series "The Joe Palooka Story" (1954). She is well-regarded in science-fiction fan circles as a memorable heroine of 1950s sci-fi flicks.

Her ex-husband, Joe Kirkwood Jr. , had been out of touch with Cathy for years when he found out she was in dire financial circumstances. He was drawing up a trust fund for her in 1976 when he learned that she had died.Ex-daughter-in-law of Joe Kirkwood Sr. .