#AmandaBlake (February 20, 1929 – August 16, 1989) was an #American #actress best known for the role of the red-haired saloon proprietress #MissKitty Russell on the television western #Gunsmoke. In life, controversy seldom touched Blake, but after her death in #Sacramento, Calif., at age 60, five times a wife, she didn't die of oral cancer as originally reported instead she was the first Hollywood actress of note to die of AIDS. Blake's secret was known only to a few intimates. "Once she knew she had it, she decided to keep it to herself," said her closest friend, Pat Derby, "She didn't want to live in a goldfish bowl." Blake found out she had AIDS in 1988. "We knew she was a little frail, but that's all we knew," says Derby. Partly as a promotion for Derby's organization, PAWS (Performing Animal Welfare Society), Blake took a month's trip to Africa "When she returned, she looked awful and was really sick," says Pat. "We thought it was the flu." What Blake didn't tell Derby is that she had seen a doctor in Africa who told her she had #AIDS. Worried about her rapidly declining health, Derby coaxed the unwilling Blake to seek treatment from #Nishimura in Sacramento. With Pat and her husband in the room, Nishimura lectured Blake on the importance of treating AIDS. "We were shocked. It was the first we'd heard," says Pat. "Amanda just looked at the wall. But I thought she looked a little relieved. I guess she figured now she wouldn't have to tell us. We never discussed it after that. Amanda just seemed to accept it" Those who knew Blake insist she never used drugs and was not sexually promiscuous. How, then, did she contract AIDS? A strong possibility is that she received it from her last husband, #MarkSpaeth of Austin, Texas. A developer and city councilman, he died of AIDS four years earlier at age 45, shortly after their marriage of less than a year ended in divorce. Blake's former housekeeper,says Blake told her she had never consummated the marriage to Spaeth. And as Spaeth was dying, he told the press that he might have contracted his viral infection from Blake, suggesting she may have gotten the disease in Africa.
