Dianna Irgens, a petite and charming blonde, was born in Minneapolis to Norwegian and Austro-Hungarian parents, Norman Clifford Irgens and Anna Agnes Irgens, as the youngest of three siblings. Her earliest performing experiences began in high school, and by the age of eight, she was already auditioning for films. Following a series of minor movie roles, Dianna's career took off in the early 1950s as a member of songwriter Jimmy McHugh and His Singing Starlets, a highly successful musical revue that toured the country.
Her breakthrough in films came in 1954 with a role as the younger sister of Olympic decathlon champion Bob Mathias in a biopic produced by Allied Artists. This was followed by numerous guest appearances in early television dramas and comedies, often without credit. Although Dianna showed promise and possessed a fresh-faced "girl-next-door" quality, few of her films pushed her to demonstrate her acting abilities. The majority of her films were pleasant but unremarkable B-pictures designed for juvenile audiences.
Some of her notable films during this period include High School Confidential! (1958),an exposé of drug peddling to teenagers, and Island of Lost Women (1959),a classic Hollywood melodrama. Dianna's television career flourished between 1955 and 1961, with regular appearances on The Bob Cummings Show, where she played the wholesome girlfriend of the titular character, and several episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
On the big screen, Dianna had a small but memorable role in the classic comedy Desk Set (1957),starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and played James Stewart's daughter in The FBI Story (1959). By the mid-1960s, Dianna had retired from acting, married actor-singer Randy Sparks, the founder of The New Christy Minstrels, and given birth to three children. The family later moved to the historic gold rush town of Mokelumne Hill in northern California, where they operated a popular saloon filled with Western memorabilia known as the Hole in the Wall.
