Margaret Gillespie Wyllie (February 15, 1917 – January 1, 2002), best known as Meg Wyllie, sometimes misspelled as Meg Wylie, was an American actress who appeared primarily on television. She portrayed Mrs. Kissel in The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963–1964).
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Early years
Born in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, Wyllie grew up in the Philippines, where her father worked as an engineer in sugar plantations on Negros Island near Bacolod. She attended the Brent School in Baguio for grammar school and high school then moved to New York City in the 1940s.
Stage
Wyllie acted with the Pasadena Playhouse, in Visit to a Small Planet (1958), Two on an Island (1940) and All the Comforts of Home (1941). She had previously appeared in Dear Brutus and Morning Glory there.
On Broadway, she performed in Norman Ginsbury's historic play The First Gentleman.
Television
In 1959, she appeared on Wagon Train S3 E5 "The Elizabeth McQueeny Story". In 1960, she appeared in the "Bullets and Ballet" episode of Tightrope!, as Mrs. Blowers in Wagon Train in the episode "The Ricky & Laurie Bell Story" and in The Twilight Zone episode "The Night of the Meek". That same year, she was cast as Mrs. Shafer in the episode "The Captain's Dilemma" of the CBS military sitcom/drama series, Hennesey, starring Jackie Cooper as a United States Navy physician and Abby Dalton as nurse Martha Hale.
Between 1962 and 1966, Wyllie made four guest appearances on Perry Mason. Her most substantial role of these was as Ninevah Stone in the episode, "The Case of the Nebulous Nephew" (1963). She also played Marguerite Keith, the owner of a home in the path of a road, in the 1964 episode "The Case of the Ruinous Road".
In the 1963–64 season, Wyllie had a recurring role as Mrs. Kissel in 18 episodes of The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, starring child actor Kurt Russell in the title role. Mark Allen played Matt Kissel, her husband, in nineteen episodes.
She played the first-ever villain in Star Trek, the Talosian "Keeper" in the pilot episode, "The Cage" (1964). Not broadcast in its original form for many years, this material was used in the two-parter, "The Menagerie" (1966).
Wyllie appeared in the Batman episode "Black Widow Strikes Again" (1967), which starred Tallulah Bankhead as the villain. She appeared on ABC's General Hospital as three different characters-Nurse Doris Roach (1974) who revealed to Lesley Faulkner that her daughter (Laura Vining) was still alive; Antique shop proprietor Hester Frumpkin (1982) who worked for Laura's kidnapper, David Gray; and a brief replacement for Anna Lee as Lila Quartermaine (1994). She also played several different characters on both The Golden Girls and Designing Women.
Death
Wyllie died on January 1, 2002, at the age of 84, in Glendale, California, from heart failure. She never married.