All three of the orphans Ina adopted appeared in the TV film The Children of An Lac (1980) (TV).
Aunt to producer/director/writer Melissa Balin and film editor Brandon Balin.
Has two stepbrothers, David Balin and Richard Rosenthal, and one stepsister Arline Kronengold. Richard was a top Wall Street executive until his death after crashing his private Beechcraft airplane. Flying from Syracuse, New York to Washington D.C., Richard was able to guide the malfunctioning plane into a sparsely-populated area that probably saved many people's lives. He was the only casualty. The Richard G. Rosenthal Jewish Community Center of Northern Westchester was created in his honor by the family.
Helped evacuate hundreds of Vietnamese orphans at the end of the Vietnam War.
Her father, Sam Rosenberg, was once a song-and-dance performer who worked the Borscht Belt with Danny Kaye. Sam's parents were prominent furriers and threatened to cut him off if he didn't leave show business. He left and was became very successful in the fur business in his own right.
In the TV-movie The Children of An Lac (1980) (TV), Shirley Jones starred as real-life Red Cross volunteer Betty Tisdale, who along with Ms. Balin, rescued 219 orphans right before the fall of Saigon. While Balin adopted three children, Betty and husband Patrick adopted 5 Vietnamese girls from An Lac and continued to raise funds for An Lac from their home base in Ft. Benning and Columbus, Georgia.
Ina lost two big roles to Natalie Wood in her early career. She lost the title role in Marjorie Morningstar (1958) and was tested for and seriously considered for the part of Maria in West Side Story (1961).
Ina was about 15 years old when she was hired to play the Virgin Mary in Perry Como's nativity scene on his Christmas TV show, which she did for a couple of years.
Once while traveling in Madred, she witnessed a car accident in which a car had overturned. With a sheer rush of adrenalin, the petite actress managed to get to the motorist first and turn the car right side by herself, freeing the man, by the time a crowd formed and applauded her efforts.
She adopted 3 Vietnamese girls in 1976: Nguyet Baty, Ba-Nhi Mai and Kim Thuy.
Sister of actor Richard Balin.
Sister-in-law of Rochelle Balin.
Stepfather was Harold Balin, a shoe magnate. He adopted Ina and her brother, Richard Balin.
The cause of Ina's primary pulmonary hypertension, which resulted in her death, is unknown but suspected to be something she may have either breathed or ingested while in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese women who developed pulmonary hypertension may have gotten it from the herb fen-fen. The only help for Ina would have been a full heart/lung transplant; at age 52, she was too old to be placed on the list. Some reports list her as having had chronic lung disease but this is not so.
The oldest of Ina's children, Ngyuet, who is part Black and Vietnamese, has three children -- one of them is named Ina.
Was a student of Lonny Chapman and Curt Conway in an off-shoot of the Actors Studio. It was later taken over by Milton Katselas, Allan Miller and John Lehne.
Was also a published photographer and was the co-owner of the Balin-Traube Art Gallery in New York, which operated on East 74th Street for three years in the early 1960's.