Dolores Mantez: The quiet star of UFO

There are very few facts available on the internet regarding Dolores Mantez and her personal life and I have no intention of trawling through obscure, and probably erroneous sites, to find any scraps of information simply to pad out this article. That would be a mark of disrespect to an actor who clearly wished her private life to remain just that; private. Suffice it to say that I thought her portrayal of Nina Barry in 23 episodes of UFO will remain as an example of her outstanding ability to act. (And yes, I made a mistake in my article about The Women of SHADO. Nina Barry did not appear in The Long Sleep either.)

Dolores brought depth to Nina Barry, making her into far more than just one of the ‘eye-candy’ girls filling the screens of UFO. Sub-smash stands as the highpoint of her role in UFO. We see her first as the confident and assured sonar operator, then the more ‘human’ Nina, scared and apprehensive as she realises that she has to endure the horrors of the ‘tube’.

It was not just good scriptwriting or directing that made the scenes where she is trapped so effective. Dolores Mantez made me feel that terror, made me as terrified as Nina Barry, trapped in that sealed tube, alone. There was a sense of real pain there, and dread. And the scenes with Straker were not mawkish, or stilted. We shared the last moments on the stricken sub as she and Straker faced death, and then the final scene where Nina, with regret, realises that there is no possibility of any relationship and she gives Ed Straker an escape clause, and yet all the time we know how much they both want to say more. Beautiful acting.

We know very little about the character of Nina Barry; most ‘biographies’ are as sparse as the ones of Dolores Mantez and also, for the most part, flawed. All we know, as canon from the episodes, is that she is among one of the first groups of successful SHADO recruits, she is (possibly) the best sonar operator and she harbours secret feelings for Straker but is too professional to ever let these interfere with her duties. That is all. We can speculate about her father, but there are no other details.

Any fanfic writer is free to make up their own biography of a fictional character such as Nina, but we cannot do that for her creator, and yet when writing a tribute to Dolores I find myself struggling to write the usual style of obituary, blandly listing her appearances, her film credits etc. I want to write more, to tell people how much I admired her, how she will always be remembered for her most famous role. I expect that there will be longer articles later in other publications, but now, as I write this, I just feel a sense of sadness and loss for yet another much-loved cast member of UFO.

Perhaps this is why UFO seems to have fewer followers than Captain Scarlet, for example. We ‘time-served’ fans watch our heroes age with us, knowing that one day there will no longer be the opportunity to meet them, to listen to their anecdotes and memories, to stand there, wide-eyed and feeling somewhat star-struck as we put down a piece of paper and, with diffidence, ask for an autograph. It takes courage to watch your heroes fade and to realise that they are fragile and human. Real people, not lifeless puppets. And all the more treasured for that simple reason.

Dolores Mantez was, and will remain, one of the leading stars of UFO.

01.17 Nina Barry opening sequence

 

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