Herk Harvey was born Harold Arnold Harvey in Fort Collins, Colorado, on June 3, 1924.

At the time of shooting Carnival of Souls, Harvey was a busy producer of industrial promotions and educational films for the Kansas-based Centron Corporation.

As a fledgling writer, Carnival of Souls scripter John Clifford sold jokes to radio comedian Ken Murray.

Prior to writing Carnival, Clifford penned the western novel The Shooting of Storey James, published by Ace Books in 1962.

Candace Hilligoss was born in 1935 in Huron, South Dakota.

A student of Lee Strasberg at The Actor's Studio in New York, Hilligoss was also a dancer at the famed Copacabana nightclub.

Hilligoss chose the lead in Carnival of Souls over a role in Del Tenney's Psychomania (1963).

When he accepted the role of Mary Henry's loutish neighbor, Sidney Berger was a graduate student at the University of Kansas at Lawrence.

Tehran-born assistant director Reza Badiyi worked with Robert Altman before Altman's move to Hollywood and later followed the filmmaker there. Badiyi later directed the eerie telefilm The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972) and episodes of such popular series as The Incredible Hulk, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Although Herk Harvey claimed in interviews that Frances Feist, Mary's landlady in the film, had played the lead in the original Broadway production of Harvey, Feist was in reality a Broadway costume designer.

Herk Harvey's first post-Carnival of Souls project was the promotional film Pork: The Meal with a Squeal (1963).

Harvey contributed an unbilled bit as a farmer in the made-for-television movie The Day After (1983), which was shot in Lawrence, Kansas.

Herk Harvey died from the effects of pancreatic cancer in 1996.

The Saltair Pavilion as seen in Carnival of Souls was destroyed by fire in 1970. Rebuilt in 1981, the park was used as a film location once more for the science fiction film Neon City (1992).

Compiled by Richard Harland Smith

SOURCES:
Herk Harvey interview, Return of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes by Tom Weaver
John Clifford interview, It Came from Weaver Five by Tom Weaver
Candace Hilligoss interview, Attack of the Monster Movie Makers: Interviews with 20 Genre Giants by Tom Weaver
Internet Broadway Database
Internet Movie Database
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia