Actress Deanna Lund died on June 22 at her home in Century City of pancreatic cancer. She was 81.Lund played one of the seven castaways trying to survive in a world of large, unfriendly people on the 1960s ABC series Land of the Giants. Her Valerie Scott was a selfish party girl on the Irwin Allen-created series, which aired for two seasons, from September 1968 until March 1970.
Set in the year 1983, 20th Century Fox's Land of the Giants revolved around the crew and passengers of the spaceship Spindrift, which on the way to London crashed on a planet whose humanoid inhabitants were hostile and unbelievably huge. The show was extremely expensive to make, costing a reported $250,000 an episode.
The sexy Lund had appeared as a redheaded lesbian stripper opposite Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome (1967) and as Anna Gram, a moll working for The Riddler (John Astin), on ABC's Batman, leading to her being cast on the show.
The "little people" did many of their own stunts, and Lund hung from ropes over flames and was carried off by an ape, dropped into specimen jars, taped to tables and used as a pawn on a giant chessboard.
In 1970, the actress married the late Don Matheson, who portrayed tycoon Mark Wilson on Land of the Giants, shortly after the series was canceled. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1980, but her daughter her daughter Michele Matheson told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014 that they remained the best of friends.