Bek Nelson (born Doris Dee Stiner; May 8, 1927[1] – March 28, 2015) was an American model and showgirl who turned to acting at age 29, making seven films and two dozen television shows in her first three years.

She credited the nightclub's manager for her recovery: I went completely to pieces when I saw the audience, but Mr. Entratter, an understanding man, told me to sit at a table and watch the show.

While at the Copacabana, comic strip artist Milton Caniff picked her out to be his model for the character Miss Mizzou in Steve Canyon.

[5] Years later, the Knoxville Journal ran an old photo of her posing for Caniff, with a large sketch of the character and the artist's hands and distinctive signature visible in the foreground.

However, her first work with Columbia, filming Pal Joey, did not start until April 1957,[16] while newspaper photos from one year earlier show her doing a modeling assignment in Los Angeles as "Bek Nelson".

[19] Bek Nelson appeared on camera for an episode of a ZIV-produced television program, Science Fiction Theatre, which was first broadcast in August 1956.

[20] While filming Pal Joey during April and May 1957, Bek was used for an uncredited bit as a nurse in Operation Mad Ball, which was also in production on the Columbia lot.

[21] She then co-starred in a Columbia comedy short Tricky Chicks with Muriel Landers, playing nightclub hostesses suspected of being foreign agents.

She had a small, uncredited part as a dance-hall girl in Cowboy, then a feature role as a stewardess in the disaster film Crash Landing.

Finally, she went back to an uncredited dance-hall girl bit in Gunman's Walk[24] Bek's next film for Columbia, Bell, Book and Candle, was made and released in 1958.

As 1957 was top-heavy with film work, she did only two TV programs that year, but 1958 had her doing 15 episodes, a large number for anyone not playing a series regular.

A letter writer asked who played the mean guy, "tall, with strange eyes, and an unusual face" on "The Deputy" episode of Lawman.

Her career did pick up some in 1964 and 1965; she had a small part in her husband's award-winning indie film The Lollipop Cover and a brief recurring role on Peyton Place, for most episodes of which she was shown just talking on the phone, without directly interacting with the other actors.

[6] Reporting the aftermath of a fire in Laurel Canyon during July 1959, the Los Angeles Times cited a Mrs. Bek Nelson Gordon as saying several houses near hers on Willow Glen Road had been lost.