Burnu Acquanetta, who died Monday at age 83, was initially billed as “The Venezuelan Volcano,” a dark, sultry, ripe presence in films like “Captive Wild Woman” (1943) and “Tarzan and the Leopard Woman” (1946).

Although it turns out she was hardly the South American bombshell she was publicized to be, Acquanetta went on to live in the shadow of her years of demistardom, a kitschy celebrity in her new hometown of Scottsdale, Ariz., where she appeared for years on local television ads for a car dealer and raised money for local charities. She said her name meant “burning fire and deep water.”

Acquanetta made a splashy entrance into Hollywood’s consciousness with her appearance in “Arabian Nights” (1942), in one scene appearing as a scantily clad bather emerging from what the Los Angeles Times labeled “maybe the largest filmed bathtub.”

Almost immediately, the story of her South American origins was punctured. But Hollywood gossips were delighted to learn that the truth, or what passed for it, was nearly as exotic. Acquanetta claimed – probably correctly – to have been born on an Arapaho reservation in Ozone, Wyo. Given up by her parents, she grew up as Mildred Davenport in Norristown, Pa., a mining town.

“We’ve had plenty of Americans, male and female, who crashed the gates of Hollywood by passing themselves off as foreigners,” wrote Hedda Hopper in 1942.”This time we’ve been done in the eye by a gal whose ancestors were Americans when ours were hanging by their tails in the jungle.” From then on she was known professionally simply as Acquanetta, a single-named force of nature. Or so it was hoped.

In 1943, Acquanetta was featured in “Rhythm of the Islands” (tagline: “Laughs and Sweet Leilanis…Heartteasing Songs…Eye-pleasing Sarongs!”) and “Captive Wild Woman,” in which a mad scientist turns a gorilla into Acquanetta, with horrific results.

In the sequel “Jungle Woman” (1944), Acquanetta is confined to a sanitarium, where she occasionally reverts to her gorilla form long enough to commit murder.

Perhaps the apex of her stardom was her role opposite Johnny Weissmuller as the high priestess of a murderous, feline-worshipping cul in “Tarzan and the Leopard Woman” (1946). It was the apex of her stardom, and for many years she would appear in public wearing tiger-striped clothing.

Having barely had designs on stardom – she portrayed her rise in Hollywood as entirely accidental – Acquanetta seemed not to have pushed hard for better roles. Instead, she moved to Mexico, fell in love with a mysterious Russian millionaire, and had a son, Sergio.

The romance quickly went sour, and when Acquanetta filed for divorce, in 1949, she was shocked to learn that no record had ever been filed with civil authorities at Cuernavaca, where she claimed the wedding took place in 1946.

She had small roles in three films of 1951, including “Lost Continent,” (“180,000,000 Years Beyond Belief!”) but her complicated social life left her little time for acting. Her 1951 marriage to the illustrator Henry Clive ended fast, and she filed for divorce within a year. Clive took to quoting scripture and told Hopper, “Now, Acquanetta is my sixth wife but after all, Hedda, who am I to disagree with Solomon?”

She next married Jack Ross and moved to Scottsdale. A bit of tinsel-town glamour clung to her, and she hosted local radio and television shows, including reading her own poetry during breaks in the late-night movie. Her advertisements for her husband’s Lincoln-Mercury dealership became semi-legendary.

Acquanetta was a favorite of feature reporters, and was good for some sort of tale – that the makers of Aqua Net hairspray had stolen her name, or that she had a statue that wept real tears.

As years went by, she became a community activist, and led the fight to eliminate pay toilets at the Phoenix airport. She modeled wigs for charity and became a major contributor to the Mesa Lutheran Hospital.

Still, a whiff of the outrageous continued to follow her: When she was cited for speeding, she claimed the infraction took place because she had somehow managed to sit on a pair of scissors.

“I still photograph great,” she told the Phoenix New Times in 1990.”It’s unreal.”