Global Actresses born 1920-1924
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Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on November 9, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby Dandridge (née Ruby Jean Butler), an entertainer, and Cyril H. Dandridge, a cabinet maker and minister. Under the prodding of her mother, Dorothy and her sister Vivian Dandridge began performing publicly, usually in black Baptist churches throughout the country. Her mother would often join her daughters on stage. As the depression worsened, Dorothy and her family picked up and moved to Los Angeles where they had hopes of finding better work, perhaps in film. Her first film was in the Marx Brothers comedy, A Day at the Races (1937). It was only a bit part but Dandridge hoped it would blossom into something better. She only appeared in another film in 1940, in Four Shall Die (1940).
Meanwhile, she dropped out of high school and became part of a musical trio which performed with the orchestra of Jimmie Lunceford. During the late 30s, she dated music composer Phil Moore, who was instrumental in launching her career as a nightclub singer and big band vocalist.
Her next few screen roles in the early 1940s tended to be small stereotypical roles of black girls or princesses - such as Bahama Passage (1941) and Drums of the Congo (1942), She was the singing star of the western themed all-black-cast "soundie" (short musical) Cow-Cow Boogie (1942) and appeared in movies that showcased her talents as actress and singer, like Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) as the vocalist of Count Basie's Band, and twice as the vocalist of Louis Armstrong's Band in Pillow to Post (1945) and Atlantic City (1944).
Those brought her headline acts in the nation's finest hotel nightclubs in New York, Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas. She may have been allowed to sing in these fine hotels but, because of racism, she couldn't have a room in any of them. It was reported that one hotel drained its swimming pool to keep her from enjoying that amenity.
In 1954, she appeared in the all-black production of Carmen Jones (1954) in the title role. She was so superb in that picture that she garnered an Academy Award nomination but lost to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl (1954). She did not get another movie role until Tamango (1958), an Italian film. She did six more films, including, most notably, Island in the Sun (1957) and Porgy and Bess (1959). The last movie in which she would ever appear was The Murder Men (1962) (1961).
Dandridge faded quickly after that, due to an ill-considered marriage to Jack Dennison (her first husband was Harold Nicholas), poor investments, financial woes, and alcoholism.
She was found dead in her apartment at 8495 Fountain Avenue, West Hollywood, on September 8, 1965, aged 42, from barbiturate poisoning. She left $2.14 in her bank account, and a handwritten letter: "In case of my death - whoever discovers it - Don't remove anything I have on - scarf, gown, or underwear. Cremate me right away - if I have any money, furniture, give it to my mother, Ruby Dandridge - She will know what to do.". She was cremated and her ashes were interred in the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
She was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6719 Hollywood Blvd. on January 18, 1983.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Christine Tess (Cachikis), a homemaker, and Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive for the Crouse-Hinds Electric Company. She was of Danish, Greek, English, and Welsh descent.
Although she was best known as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on the classic sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and the ditzy Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls (1985), Betty White had been in television for a long, long time before those two shows, having had her own series, Life with Elizabeth (1952) in 1952.
She was married three times, lastly for eighteen years, until widowed, to TV game-show host Allen Ludden.
She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and she was known for her tireless efforts on behalf of animals.
Betty White died on 31 December 2021, at the age of 99.- Actress
- Stunts
- Soundtrack
Ava Lavina Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to Mary Elizabeth (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner. Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty. With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-1945, were one-line bits or little better. After her first starring role in B-grade Whistle Stop (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film The Killers (1946). Few of her best films were made at MGM which, keeping her under contract for 17 years, used her popularity to sell many mediocre films. Perhaps as a result, she never believed in her own acting ability, but her latent talent shone brightly when brought out by a superior director, as with John Ford in Mogambo (1953) and George Cukor in Bhowani Junction (1956).
After three failed marriages, dissatisfaction with Hollywood life prompted Ava to move to Spain in 1955; most of her subsequent films were made abroad. By this time, stardom had made the country girl a cosmopolitan, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting and life in the spotlight. Her last quality starring film role was in The Night of the Iguana (1964), her later work being (as she said) strictly "for the loot". In 1968, tax trouble in Spain prompted a move to London, where she spent her last 22 years in reasonable comfort. Her film career did not bring her great fulfillment, but her looks may have made it inevitable; many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history. Ava Gardner died at age 67 of bronchial pneumonia on January 25, 1990 in Westminister, London, England.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Cicely Tyson was born in Harlem, New York City, where she was raised by her devoutly religious parents, who had come from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her mother Theodosia was a domestic worker and her her father William was a carpenter and painter. Tyson was discovered by a fashion editor at Ebony Magazine, and with her stunning looks she quickly rose to the top of the modeling industry. In 1957 she began acting in Off-Broadway productions. She had small roles in feature films before she was cast as Portia in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Four years later, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her sensational performance in the critically-acclaimed film Sounder (1972). In 1974, she went on to portray a 110-year-old former slave in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), which earned her two Emmy Awards. She also appeared in the television miniseries Roots (1977), King (1978), and A Woman Called Moses (1978). While Cicely has not appeared steadily onscreen because of her loyalty to solely portraying strong, positive images of Black women, she is definitely one of the most talented, beautiful actresses who ever graced stage or screen.- Actress
- Producer
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One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older.
Her parents divorced while she was still a child, and she lived with her mother. Like most little girls, Doris liked to dance. At fourteen, she formed a dance act with a boy, Jerry Doherty, and they won $500 in a local talent contest. She and Jerry took a brief trip to Hollywood to test the waters. They felt they could succeed, so she and Jerry returned to Cincinnati with the intention of packing and making a permanent move to Hollywood. Tragically, the night before she was to move to Hollywood, she was injured riding in a car hit by a train, ending the possibility of a dancing career.
It was a terrible setback, but after taking singing lessons she found a new vocation, and at age 17, she began touring with the Les Brown Band. She met trombonist Al Jorden, whom she married in 1941. Jorden was prone to violence and they divorced after two years, not long after the birth of their son Terry. In 1946, Doris married George Weidler, but this union lasted less than a year. Day's agent talked her into taking a screen test at Warner Bros. The executives there liked what they saw and signed her to a contract (her early credits are often confused with those of another actress named Doris Day, who appeared mainly in B westerns in the 1930s and 1940s).
Her first starring movie role was in Romance on the High Seas (1948). The next year, she made two more films, My Dream Is Yours (1949) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Audiences took to her beauty, terrific singing voice and bubbly personality, and she turned in fine performances in the movies she made (in addition to several hit records). She made three films for Warner Bros. in 1950 and five more in 1951. In that year, she met and married Martin Melcher, who adopted her young son Terry, who later grew up to become Terry Melcher, a successful record producer.
In 1953, Doris starred in Calamity Jane (1953), which was a major hit, and several more followed: Lucky Me (1954), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and what is probably her best-known film, Pillow Talk (1959). She began to slow down her filmmaking pace in the 1960s, even though she started out the decade with a hit, Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
In 1958, her brother Paul died. Around this time, her husband, who had also taken charge of her career, had made deals for her to star in films she didn't really care about, which led to a bout with exhaustion. The 1960s weren't to be a repeat of the previous busy decade. She didn't make as many films as she had in that decade, but the ones she did make were successful: Do Not Disturb (1965), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (1968). Martin Melcher died in 1968, and Doris never made another film, but she had been signed by Melcher to do her own TV series, The Doris Day Show (1968). That show, like her movies, was successful, lasting until 1973. After her series went off the air, she made only occasional TV appearances.
By the time Martin Melcher died, Doris discovered she was millions of dollars in debt. She learned that Melcher had squandered virtually all of her considerable earnings, but she was eventually awarded $22 million by the courts in a case against a man that Melcher had unwisely let invest her money. She married for the fourth time in 1976 and since her divorce in 1980 has devoted her life to animals.
Doris was a passionate animal rights activist. She ran Doris Day Animal League in Carmel, California, which advocates homes and proper care of household pets.
Doris died on May 13, 2019, in Carmel Valley Village, California. She was 97.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Glynis Johns was the daughter of actor Mervyn Johns. Best known for her light comedy roles and often playful flirtation, Glynis was born in South Africa while her parents were on tour there (her mother was a concert pianist) but was always proud of her Welsh roots and took delight in playing the female lead (opposite Richard Burton) in the classic Under Milk Wood (1971). She was probably best known for her role as the suffragette mother in Mary Poppins (1964) although she is probably best loved for her fishy roles in Miranda (1948) and Mad About Men (1954). She had earlier showed she could take on the serious roles as well as in Frieda (1947). Most recently seen (at the time of writing) in Superstar (1999). Johns died in 2024, aged 100, having never received the damehood she had richly deserved for decades. Predeceased by her only son, she was survived by a grandson,Thomas Forwood, and three great-grandchildren.- Actress
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Actress-comedienne Bea Arthur was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922 in New York City to a Jewish family. She grew up in Maryland, where her parents ran a dress shop. At 12 years old, she was the tallest girl in her school at 5'9".
She earned the title of "Wittiest Girl" in her school, and her dream was to be in show business, but she didn't think her family would support her. She then worked as a laboratory technician, and in the Marine Corps; she drove a truck, and worked as a typist. Her brief first marriage ended in divorce. Afterwards, she told her parents that she wanted to pursue a career in show business, and they supported her decision to join the New York's Dramatic Workshop for the New School for Social Research.
Arthur (her acting name based on a variation of her first husband's surname) played classical and dramatic roles, but it would be years before she found her niche in comedy. Her breakthrough came on stage while appearing in the musical play "The Threepenny Opera," with Lotte Lenya. For one season in the 1950's, she was a regular on Sid Caesar's television show,Caesar's Hour (1954). In 1964, she became truly famous as Yente the Matchmaker, in the original Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof". Despite this being a small supporting role, Arthur stole the show night after night.
In 1966, she went to work on a new Broadway musical, "Mame", directed by her second husband, Gene Saks, winning a Tony Award for the featured role of Vera Charles. The show's star, Angela Lansbury, also won a Tony Award, and she and Bea became lifelong friends. In 1971, Arthur appeared on the hit sitcom All in the Family (1971) as Maude Findlay, Edith Bunker's cousin, who was forever driving Archie Bunker crazy with her liberal politics. The guest appearance led to Arthur's own series, Maude (1972). The show was a hit, running for six years, during which many controversial topics of the time, including abortion, were tackled, and Bea won her first Emmy Award. While doing Maude (1972), Arthur repeated the role of Vera Charles in the film version of Mame (1974), again directed by Gene Saks, but it was a dismal flop. She also appeared on The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978). While appearing in Maude (1972), she raised her two sons, whom she had adopted with husband Gene Saks. After the show ended, so did her marriage to Saks. She never remarried. She became a lifelong animal rights' activist.
In 1983, she started working on a new sitcom, Amanda's (1983), patterned after Britain's Fawlty Towers (1975) but it was short-lived. In 1985, The Golden Girls (1985) made its debut. Co-starring Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, the show was about the lives of three middle-aged women, and one elderly mother, (played by Getty, who was actually younger than White and Arthur), living in Miami. It was an immediate hit, running for seven seasons. All of the cast members, including Arthur, won Emmy Awards during the show's run. She left when she thought each show was at its peak. The producers realized the shows wouldn't be the same without her. In 1992, The Golden Girls (1985) was canceled. Arthur kept a low profile, appearing in only two movies: For Better or Worse (1995) and Enemies of Laughter (2000).
In 1999, Arthur made an appearance at The N.Y. Friars Club Roast of Jerry Stiller (1999). She did a one-woman stage show in 2001, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. In 2003, she reunited with Betty White and Rue McClanahan for The Golden Girls (1985) reunion special on the Lifetime Channel. Noticeably absent was supporting actress Estelle Getty, who was ill. The three lead actresses made appearances together for the rest of the decade to promote DVD releases of The Golden Girls (1985). They appeared together for the last time in 1998, at the TV Land Awards, receiving a standing ovation as they accepted the Pop Culture Award. She attended her induction into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, with Angela Lansbury.
On April 25, 2009, at home with her family, Arthur died of cancer. She was 86. She was survived by her two sons, Matthew and Daniel, and her grandchildren, Kyra and Violet. In her will, she left $300,000 to New York's Ali Forney Center, an organization supporting homeless LGBT youths.- Actress
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Machiko Kyô was born on 25 March 1924 in Osaka, Japan. She was an actress, known for Rashomon (1950), The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) and Gate of Hell (1953). She died on 12 May 2019 in Tokyo, Japan.- Actress
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Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a salesman and her mother as a secretary. They divorced when she was five and she rarely saw her father after that.
As a school girl, she originally wanted to be a dancer, but later switched gears to head into acting. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, after attending She was educated at Highland Manor, a private boarding school in Tarrytown, New York (through the generosity of wealthy uncles), and then at Julia Richman High School, which enabled her to get her feet wet in some off-Broadway productions.
Out of school, she entered modeling and, because of her beauty, appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, one of the most popular magazines in the US. The wife of famed director Howard Hawks spotted the picture in the publication and arranged with her husband to have Lauren take a screen test. As a result, which was entirely positive, she was given the part of Marie Browning in To Have and Have Not (1944), a thriller opposite Humphrey Bogart, when she was just 19 years old. This not only set the tone for a fabulous career but also one of Hollywood's greatest love stories (she married Bogart in 1945). It was also the first of several Bogie-Bacall films.
After 1945's Confidential Agent (1945), Lauren received second billing in The Big Sleep (1946) with Bogart. The mystery, in the role of Vivian Sternwood Rutledge, was a resounding success. Although she was making one film a year, each production would be eagerly awaited by the public. In 1947, again with her husband, Lauren starred in the thriller Dark Passage (1947). The film kept movie patrons on the edge of their seats. The following year, she starred with Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore in Key Largo (1948). The crime drama was even more of a nail biter than her previous film.
In 1950, Lauren starred in Bright Leaf (1950), a drama set in 1894. It was a film of note because she appeared without her husband - her co-star was Gary Cooper. In 1953, Lauren appeared in her first comedy as Schatze Page in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). The film, with co-stars Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, was a smash hit all across the theaters of America.
After filming Designing Woman (1957), which was released in 1957, Humphrey Bogart died on January 14 from throat cancer. Devastated at being a widow, Lauren returned to the silver screen with The Gift of Love (1958) in 1958 opposite Robert Stack. The production turned out to be a big disappointment. Undaunted, Lauren moved back to New York City and appeared in several Broadway plays to huge critical acclaim. She was enjoying acting before live audiences and the audiences in turn enjoyed her fine performances.
Lauren was away from the big screen for five years, but she returned in 1964 to appear in Shock Treatment (1964) and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). The latter film was a comedy starring Henry Fonda and Tony Curtis. In 1966, Lauren starred in Harper (1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Harris, which was one of former's signature films.
Alternating her time between films and the stage, Lauren returned in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express (1974). The film, based on Agatha Christie's best-selling book was a huge hit. It also garnered Ingrid Bergman her third Oscar. Actually, the huge star-studded cast helped to ensure its success. Two years later, in 1976, Lauren co-starred with John Wayne in The Shootist (1976). The film was Wayne's last - he died from cancer in 1979. In late 1979, Lauren appeared with her good friend, James Garner, in a double episode, Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs (1979), of his Rockford Files series.
For Lauren's next film role, she appeared in a large ensemble film, HealtH (1980), which again paired her with James Garner, and in 1981, she played an actress being stalked by a crazed admirer in The Fan (1981). The thriller was absolutely fascinating with Lauren in the lead role, again playing opposite her good friend James Garner, making three straight screen roles with Lauren opposite James Garner. After that production, Lauren was away from films again, this time for seven years. In the interim, she again appeared on the stages of Broadway. When she returned, it was for the filming of 1988's Appointment with Death (1988) and Mr. North (1988). After 1990's Misery (1990) and several made for television films, Lauren appeared in 1996's My Fellow Americans (1996), a comedy romp with Jack Lemmon and James Garner as two ex-presidents and their escapades. In 1997, Lauren appeared in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), in one of the best roles of her later career, opposite Barbra Streisand, where Lauren was nominated as Best Actress in a Supporting Role by both the Academy and the Golden Globes, winning the Golden Globe for the role.
Despite her age and failing health, she made a small-scale comeback in the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004) ("Howl's Moving Castle," based on the young-adult novel by Diana Wynne Jones) as the Witch of the Waste, and several other roles through 2008, but thereafter acting endeavors for the beloved actress became increasingly rare. Lauren Bacall died on 12 August 2014, five weeks short of her 90th birthday.- Actress
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In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made her entrance into this caring haven on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh (a suburb of Dublin), Ireland. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team "The Shamrock Rovers." Maureen was the second of six FitzSimons children - Peggy, Florrie, Charles B. Fitzsimons, Margot Fitzsimons and James O'Hara completed this beautiful family.
Maureen loved playing rough athletic games as a child and excelled in sports. She combined this interest with an equally natural gift for performing. This was demonstrated by her winning pretty much every Feis award for drama and theatrical performing her country offered. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. This course was to be altered, however, when Charles Laughton, after seeing a screen test of Maureen, became mesmerized by her hauntingly beautiful eyes. Before casting her to star in Jamaica Inn (1939), Laughton and his partner, Erich Pommer, changed her name from Maureen FitzSimons to "Maureen O'Hara" - a bit shorter last name for the marquee.
Under contract to Laughton, Maureen's next picture was to be filmed in America (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)) at RKO Pictures. The epic film was an extraordinary success and Maureen's contract was eventually bought from Laughton by RKO. At 19, Maureen had already starred in two major motion pictures with Laughton. Unlike most stars of her era, she started at the top, and remained there - with her skills and talents only getting better and better with the passing years.
Maureen has an enviable string of all-time classics to her credit that include the aforementioned "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Sitting Pretty (1948), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Parent Trap (1961). Add to this the distinction of being voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world and you have a film star who was as gorgeous as she was talented.
Although at times early in her career Hollywood didn't seem to notice, there was much more to Maureen O'Hara than her dynamic beauty. She not only had a wonderful lyric soprano voice, but she could use her inherent athletic ability to perform physical feats that most actresses couldn't begin to attempt, from fencing to fisticuffs. She was a natural athlete.
In her career Maureen starred with some of Hollywood's most dashing leading men, including Tyrone Power, John Payne, Rex Harrison, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Brian Keith, Sir Alec Guinness and, of course, her famed pairings with "The Duke" himself, John Wayne. She starred in five films with Wayne, the most beloved being The Quiet Man (1952).
In addition to famed director John Ford, Maureen was also fortunate to have worked for some other great directors in the business: Alfred Hitchcock, William Dieterle, Henry Hathaway, Henry King, Jean Renoir, John M. Stahl, William A. Wellman, Frank Borzage, Walter Lang, George Seaton, George Sherman, Carol Reed, Delmer Daves, David Swift, Andrew V. McLaglen and Chris Columbus.
In 1968 Maureen found much deserved personal happiness when she married Charles Blair. Gen. Blair was a famous aviator whom she had known as a friend of her family for many years. A new career began for Maureen, that of a full-time wife. Her marriage to Blair, however, was again far from typical. Blair was the real-life version of what John Wayne had been on the screen. He had been a Brigadier General in the Air Force, a Senior Pilot with Pan American, and held many incredible record-breaking aeronautic achievements. Maureen happily retired from films in 1973 after making the TV movie The Red Pony (1973) (which on the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence) with Henry Fonda. With Blair, Maureen managed Antilles Airboats, a commuter sea plane service in the Caribbean. She not only made trips around the world with her pilot husband, but owned and published a magazine, "The Virgin Islander," writing a monthly column called "Maureen O'Hara Says."
Tragically, Charles Blair died in a plane crash in 1978. Though completely devastated, Maureen pulled herself together and, with memories of ten of the happiest years of her life, continued on. She was elected President and CEO of Antilles Airboats, which brought her the distinction of being the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the United States.
Fortunately, she was coaxed out of retirement several times - once in 1991 to star with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991) and again, in 1995, in a made-for-TV movie, The Christmas Box (1995) on CBS. In the spring of 1998, Maureen accepted the second of what would be three projects for Polson Productions and CBS: Cab to Canada (1998) - and, in October, 2000, The Last Dance (2000).
On St. Patrick's Day in 2004, she published her New York Times bestselling memoir, 'Tis Herself, co-authored with her longtime biographer and manager Johnny Nicoletti.
On November 4, 2014 Maureen was honored by a long overdue Oscar for "Lifetime Achievement" at the annual Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governors Awards.
Maureen O'Hara was absolutely stunning, with that trademark red hair, dazzling smile and those huge, expressive eyes. She has fans from all over the world of all ages who are utterly devoted to her legacy of films and her persona as a strong, courageous and intelligent woman.- Actress
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Deborah Jane Trimmer was born on 30 September 1921 in Glasgow, Scotland, the daughter of Captain Arthur Kerr Trimmer. She was educated at Northumberland House, Clifton, Bristol. She first performed at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London. She subsequently performed with the Oxford Repertory Company 1939-40. Her first appearance on the West End stage was as Ellie Dunn in "Heartbreak House" at the Cambridge Theatre in 1943. She performed in France, Belgium and Holland with ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association, or Every Night Something Awful) - The British Army entertainment service. She has appeared in many films from her first appearance in Major Barbara (1941).- Actress
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Actress and producer Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924 on Newark, New Jersey. She is known for starring in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). Her film career also includes roles in Raintree County (1957), Exodus (1960), The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), Grand Prix (1966), Nothing in Common (1986), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Superman Returns (2006) and Winter's Tale (2014).
Saint made her feature film debut in On the Waterfront (1954), starring Marlon Brando and directed by Elia Kazan - a performance for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was a major success and launched her movie career. She starred in the pioneering drug-addiction drama A Hatful of Rain (1957) with Don Murray and Anthony Franciosa. She also starred in lavish the Civil War epic Raintree County (1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Director Alfred Hitchcock surprised many by choosing Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale role in what was to become a suspense classic North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant and James Mason. Written by Ernest Lehman, the film updated and expanded upon the director's early "wrong man" spy adventures of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including The 39 Steps (1935), Young and Innocent (1937), and Saboteur (1942). North by Northwest (1959) became a box-office success and an influence on spy films for decades.- Actress
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Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was three when her father abandoned the family. Her mother turned to waitressing in a restaurant to make ends meet--a rough beginning for an actress who would, one day, be one of Hollywood's elite. Yvonne's mother wanted her to be in the entertainment field and enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. Yvonne was not shy in the least. She was somewhat akin to Colleen Moore who, like herself, entertained the neighborhood with impromptu productions. In 1937, when Yvonne was 15, her mother took her to Hollywood to try for fame and fortune, but nothing came of it and they returned to Canada. They came back to Hollywood in 1940, where Yvonne would dance in chorus lines at night while she checked in at the studios by day in search of film work. After appearing in unbilled parts in three short films, she finally got a part in a feature.
Although the film Harvard, Here I Come! (1941) was quite lame, Yvonne glowed in her brief appearance as a bathing beauty. The rest of 1942 and 1943 saw her in more uncredited roles in films that did not quite set Hollywood on fire. In The Deerslayer (1943), she played Wah-Tah. The role did not amount to much, but it was much better than the ones she had been handed previously. The next year was about the same as the previous two years. She played small parts as either secretaries, someone's girlfriend, native girls or office clerks. Most aspiring young actresses would have given up and gone home in defeat, but not Yvonne. She trudged on. The next year, started out the same, with mostly bit parts, but later that year, she landed the title role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945) for Universal Pictures. While critics were less than thrilled with the film, it was at long last her big break, and the film was a success for Universal. Now she was rolling.
Her next film was the western comedy Frontier Gal (1945) as Lorena Dumont. After a year off the screen in 1946, she returned in 1947 as Cara de Talavera in Song of Scheherazade (1947), and many agreed that the only thing worth watching in the film was Yvonne. Her next film was the highly regarded Burt Lancaster prison film Brute Force (1947). Time after time, Yvonne continued to pick up leading roles, in such pictures as Slave Girl (1947), Black Bart (1948), Casbah (1948) and River Lady (1948). She had a meaty role in Criss Cross (1949), a gangster movie, as the ex-wife of a hoodlum. At the start of the 1950s, Yvonne enjoyed continued success in lead roles. Her talents were again showcased in movies such as The Desert Hawk (1950), Silver City (1951) and Scarlet Angel (1952). Her last film in 1952 was Hurricane Smith (1952), a picture most fans and critics agree is best forgotten.
In 1956, she appeared in the film that would immortalize her best, The Ten Commandments (1956). She played Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston). The film was, unquestionably, a super smash, and is still shown on television today. Her performance served as a springboard to another fine role, this time as Amantha Starr in Band of Angels (1957). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Yvonne appeared on such television series as Bonanza (1959) and The Virginian (1962). With film roles drying up, she took the role of Lily Munster in the smash series The Munsters (1964). However, she still was not completely through with the big screen. Appearances in such films as McLintock! (1963), The Power (1968), The Seven Minutes (1971) and La casa de las sombras (1976) kept her before the eyes of the movie-going public. Yvonne De Carlo died at age 84 of natural causes on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills, California.- Actress
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Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she appeared in her first film, Something to Shout About (1943), billed as Lily Norwood. The same year, she played a Russian dancer in Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz. In 1945, she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies (1945), and that uncredited appearance got her a seven-year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Singin' in the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly that made her a star. That was quickly followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953). As the 1960s dawned, musicals faded from the screen, as did her career. She made appearances on television and performed in a nightclub revue with her second husband, singer Tony Martin. Cyd Charisse died at age 86 of a heart attack on June 17, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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Valentina Cortese was born in Milan on New Year's Day of 1923. She made her movie debut in 1940 and played many "ingenue" parts in Italian films of that period, before making a real sensation in Caccia all'uomo (1948) and Tempesta su Parigi (1948), playing both female leads, Fantine and Cosette (the film was a competent screen adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic "Les misérables"). The international success of the British-made melodrama The Glass Mountain (1949) brought her some Hollywood offers: she was very sensual as a truck-driver's mistress in Jules Dassin's film noir Thieves' Highway (1949), and particularly effective in Robert Wise's thriller The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), in which she portrayed a woman pursued by a killer.
She then returned to Europe and worked with many great directors, like Michelangelo Antonioni, who cast her in The Girlfriends (1955), and Federico Fellini, who gave her a supporting part in his surrealist fantasy Juliet of the Spirits (1965). She had an especially robust part in Francois Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) as a fading alcoholic movie star (she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for this performance). She also had a stage career, working with writers and directors such as Giorgio Strehler and Franco Zeffirelli and starring in the title roles of Schiller's "Mary Stuart" and Wedekind's "Lulu".- Actress
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Her father, Donald Cole, was a consulting engineer, and died in 1926 when Kim was only three years old. Her mother, Grace Lind, once performed as a concert pianist. She had one brother who was eight years older than she, and she was educated at Miami Beach High.
According to an in-depth article on Kim Hunter by Joseph Collura in the October 2009 issue of "Classic Images", Kim was quiet and painfully shy as a child and overcame it through the guidance of a local dramatics teacher, a Mrs. Carmine. Included were diction, voice and posture lessons.
She studied at the Actors Studio and her first professional appearance was as "Penny" in "Penny Wise" in Miami in November 1939. Then, she joined a repertory group called "Theatre of Fifteen", but it disbanded in 1942 when WWII took away most of its male members.
She made her Broadway debut performance as "Stella" in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, in December 1947 that was the 1947-1948 season's success and for which she won the Critics Circle and Donaldson awards.
A one-time student of the Pasadena Playhouse, she was appearing in the 1942 production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" when she was discovered by an RKO talent hunter who signed her to a seven-year contract for David O. Selznick's company. Selznick suggested she change her first name to "Kim" and a RKO secretary suggested the last name of "Hunter". A few years later, Irene Mayer Selznick, David's ex-wife by then, recommended Kim for her reprise role of "Stella" in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which she won an Oscar.- Actress
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Donna Reed was born in the midwestern town of Denison, Iowa, on January 27, 1921, as Donna Belle Mullenger. A small town - a population of less than 3,000 people - Denison was located by the Boyer River, and was the county seat of Crawford County. Donna grew up as a farm girl, much like many young girls in western Iowa, except for one thing - Donna was very beautiful. That wasn't to say that others weren't as pretty, it's just that Donna's beauty stood out from all the other local girls, so much so that she won a beauty contest in Denison. Upon graduation from high school Donna left for college in Los Angeles, in the hopes of eventually entering movies. While at Los Angeles City College, she pursued her dream by participating in several college stage productions. In addition to the plays, she also won the title of Campus Queen. At one of those stage plays Donna was spotted by an MGM talent scout and was signed to a contract. Her first film was a minor role in MGM's The Getaway (1941). That was followed by a small part in Babes on Broadway (1941), with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland as a secretary. She then won her breakthrough role in Shadow of the Thin Man (1941). Afterwards, MGM began giving her better parts, in films such as The Bugle Sounds (1942), The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942) and The Man from Down Under (1943). In 1944 she received second billing playing Carol Halliday in See Here, Private Hargrove (1944), a comedy about a reporter drafted into the army who eventually meets up with Donna's character as a worker in the canteen. The following year Donna starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), her best role to date. It was a love story set in London in 1890. It got mixed critical reviews but did well at the box-office. Donna was now one of the leading ladies of Hollywood. In 1946 she starred in what is probably her best-known role, as the wife of James Stewart in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). This timeless story is a holiday staple to this day. The film also starred Lionel Barrymore and Thomas Mitchell. The next year Donna starred as Ann Daniels in Paramount's Beyond Glory (1948) with Alan Ladd, which did well at the box-office. Her next role was the strongest she had had yet--Chicago Deadline (1949), again with Ladd. It was one of the best mystery dramas to come out of Hollywood in a long time, and did very well at the box office. As the 1940s faded out and the 1950s stormed in, Donna's roles got bigger but were mainly of the wholesome, girl-next-door type. In 1953, however, she starred as the hostess Alma in the widely acclaimed From Here to Eternity (1953). She was so good in that film she was nominated for and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, beating out such veterans as Thelma Ritter and Marjorie Rambeau. The film itself won for Best Picture and remains a classic to this day. Later that year Donna starred in The Caddy (1953), a comedy with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Three years later she landed the role of Sacajawea in The Far Horizons (1955), the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, starring Charlton Heston and Fred MacMurray. After finishing The Whole Truth (1958), Donna began her own TV series (produced by her husband), The Donna Reed Show (1958), a hit that ran for eight years. She was so effective in the show that she was nominated for TV's prestigious Emmy Award as Best Actress every year from 1959-1962. She was far more popular in TV than on the screen. After the run of the program, Donna took some time away from show business before coming back in a couple of made-for-TV movies (in 1974, she had made a feature called Welcome to Arrow Beach (1973), but it was never released). She did get the role of Ellie Ewing Farlow in the hit TV series Dallas (1978) during the 1984-85 season. It was to be her final public performance. On January 14, 1986, less than two weeks before her 65th birthday, she died of pancreatic cancer in Beverly Hills, California. Grover Asmus, her husband, created the Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts in her hometown of Denison. The foundation helps others who desire a career in the arts. Donna never forgot her roots. She was still a farm girl at heart.- Actress
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With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting performances were few in the 1950s as she battled a troubled emotional life that included hospitalization and shock treatment for depression.
Gene Eliza Tierney was born on November 19, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, to well-to-do parents, Belle Lavinia (Taylor) and Howard Sherwood Tierney. Her father was a successful insurance broker and her mother was a former teacher. Her childhood was lavish indeed. She also lived, at times, with her equally successful grandparents in Connecticut and New York. She was educated in the finest schools on the East Coast and at a finishing school in Switzerland.
After two years in Europe, Gene returned to the US where she completed her education. By 1938 she was performing on Broadway in What a Life! and understudied for the Primrose Path (1938) at the same time. Her wealthy father set up a corporation that was only to promote her theatrical pursuits. Her first role consisted of carrying a bucket of water across the stage, prompting one critic to announce that "Miss Tierney is, without a doubt, the most beautiful water carrier I have ever seen!" Her subsequent roles Mrs O'Brian Entertains (1939) and RingTwo (1939) were meatier and received praise from the tough New York critics. Critic Richard Watts wrote "I see no reason why Miss Tierney should not have a long and interesting theatrical career, that is if the cinema does not kidnap her away."
After being spotted by the legendary Darryl F. Zanuck during a stage performance of the hit show The Male Animal (1940), Gene was signed to a contract with 20th Century-Fox. Her first role as Barbara Hall in Hudson's Bay (1940) would be the send-off vehicle for her career. Later that year she appeared in The Return of Frank James (1940). The next year would prove to be a very busy one for Gene, as she appeared in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Sundown (1941), Tobacco Road (1941) and Belle Starr (1941). She tried her hand at screwball comedy in Rings on Her Fingers (1942), which was a great success. Her performances in each of these productions were masterful. In 1945 she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Ellen Brent in Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Though she didn't win, it solidified her position in Hollywood society. She followed up with another great performance as Isabel Bradley in the hit The Razor's Edge (1946).
In 1944, she played what is probably her best-known role (and, most critics agree, her most outstanding performance) in Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), in which she played murder victim named Laura Hunt. In 1947 Gene played Lucy Muir in the acclaimed The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). By this time Gene was the hottest player around, and the 1950s saw no letup as she appeared in a number of good films, among them Night and the City (1950), The Mating Season (1951), Close to My Heart (1951), Plymouth Adventure (1952), Personal Affair (1953) and The Left Hand of God (1955). The latter was to be her last performance for seven years. The pressures of a failed marriage to Oleg Cassini, the birth of a daughter with learning disabilities in 1943, and several unhappy love affairs resulted in Gene being hospitalized for depression. When she returned to the the screen in Advise & Consent (1962), her acting was as good as ever but there was no longer a big demand for her services.
Her last feature film was The Pleasure Seekers (1964), and her final appearance in the film industry was in a TV miniseries, Scruples (1980). Gene died of emphysema in Houston, Texas, on November 6, 1991, just two weeks shy of her 71st birthday.- Actress
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Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and civil rights activist. She is best known for originating the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun (1961).
She also starred in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Cat People (1982), Do the Right Thing (1989), and American Gangster (2007).
Her film debut was That Man of Mine (1946).
For her performance as Mahalee Lucas in American Gangster (2007), she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As of 2019, she stands as the second oldest nominee for Best Supporting Actress, behind Gloria Stuart who was 87 when nominated for her role in Titanic for the 70th Academy Awards, 1998.
Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91.- Actress
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Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, beginning when she was 15 years old. She was offered her first screen test by a 20th Century-Fox talent scout while attending Rice, but turned the opportunity down to gain professional stage experience in Cleveland after graduating from high school.
She moved on to California to continue her acting studies at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was there, while sitting in the audience of a play being put on at the Playhouse, that she was again offered a screen test - this time from a Warner Brothers' scout - and again declined, wanting to finish her first year at the Playhouse. When the year was up, Eleanor contacted Warner Brothers to take them up on their offer of a screen test and was signed as a contract player two days after it was shot.
She was cast in Raoul Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On (1941), but her performance was left on the cutting room floor.
She was then cast in short subjects and given other assignments typical of novice film actors, to enable them to learn their craft, such as voice-acting and appearances in other actors' screen tests. Finally, she was promoted to the B-picture unit, making her feature debut in Busses Roar (1942).
Her beauty meant she was not forgotten, and she was cast in one of Warner Brothers' biggest productions for the 1943 season, the pro-Soviet Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Walter Huston as the U.S. ambassador to the USSR. Eleanor played his daughter in the film, which became notorious in the McCarthy era for its glorification of "Uncle Joe" Stalin. The film proved significant to Eleanor, as she met a future husband on the set, Navy Lieutenant. Fred L. Losse, Navy dentist. The marriage was a brief wartime affair, lasting from March 21, 1943, to December 5, 1944.
She went back to the B's with The Mysterious Doctor (1943), then bounced back to the A-list for Between Two Worlds (1944), a remake of the Leslie Howard vehicle Outward Bound (1930) in which she played Paul Henreid's fiancee (both die from suicide, but in Hollywood logic that didn't mean they couldn't frolic together on the silver screen). Eleanor then made two more B-quickies in 1944, Crime by Night (1944) and The Last Ride (1944), before graduating to the A-list for good with Pride of the Marines (1945) with John Garfield.
In the 1946 Warner Bros. remake of Of Human Bondage (1946), she took the role that Bette Davis had made good in 1934 (ironically, at rival RKO). Though Parker would be gaining kudos and Oscar nominations by the beginning of the next decade, her portrait of Mildred was weak in comparison with Davis's dynamic performance.
Parker received the first of her three Best Actress Oscar nominations for playing a prisoner in Caged (1950), and won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival. She was also nominated the next year for playing the cop's wife who shared a secret with the neighborhood abortionist in William Wyler's Detective Story (1951). Her third and last Oscar nod came for Interrupted Melody (1955), wherein she played an opera singer struck down by polio. She could easily have been nominated that same year for her portrayal of Frank Sinatra's faux crippled wife in Otto Preminger's brooding masterpiece The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), adapted from the novel by Nelson Algren.
Parker proved herself to be a supremely talented and very versatile lead actress. The versatility was likely one of the reasons she never quite became a major star. Audiences attending a movie starring Parker never knew quite what to expect of her; if they even remembered she was the same actress they had seen before in a different type of role in another picture. Her turns in Detective Story (1951) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) could not have been more different. Parker's stardom and subsequent fame (and remembrance) suffered from her focusing on being a serious actress and creating a character who fit the motion picture she was in, rather than playing a character over and over, as most actors do. She probably best remembered for the relatively tame part as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965).
She received an Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy nomination in 1963 for her appearance in The Eleventh Hour (1962) episode Why Am I Grown So Cold? Despite the success of The Sound of Music (1965) being completely attributed to #1 box office sensation Julie Andrews, it's probably Parker's best-remembered role.
Her appearances in such fare as The Oscar (1966) (the cast of which the Playboy Magazine reviewer derided as "has-beens and never-will-bes") and the movie adaptation of Norman Mailer's indescribable existential potboiler An American Dream (1966) with fellow Oscar-nominee Stuart Whitman signaled that Miss Parker was now inscribed on the list of the has-beens.
She had one last hurrah, winning a Golden Globe nomination in 1970 as best lead actress for her role in the TV series Bracken's World (1969), but unfortunately times had changed during the tumultuous 1960s. Her last film role was in a Farrah Fawcett bomb, Sunburn (1979). Subsequently, she appeared very infrequently on TV, most recently in Dead on the Money (1991).
Eleanor Parker retired far too soon for those who were her fans, and those who appreciated a superb actress.- Actress
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Lana Turner had an acting ability that belied the "Sweater Girl" image MGM thrust upon her, and even many of her directors admitted that they knew she was capable of greatness (check out The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)). Unfortunately, her private life sometimes overshadowed her professional accomplishments.
Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Mildred Francis Turner in Wallace, Idaho. There is some discrepancy as to whether her birth date is February 8, 1920 or 1921. Lana herself said in her autobiography that she was one year younger (1921) than the records showed, but then this was a time where women, especially actresses, tended to "fib" a bit about their age. Most sources agree that 1920 is the correct year of birth. Her parents were Mildred Frances (Cowan) and John Virgil Turner, a miner, both still in their teens when she was born. In 1929, her father was murdered and it was shortly thereafter her mother moved her and the family to California where jobs were "plentiful". Once she matured into a beautiful young woman, she went after something that would last forever: stardom. She wasn't found at a drug store counter, like some would have you believe, but that legend persists. She pounded the pavement as other would-be actors and actresses have done, are doing and will continue to do in search of movie roles.
In 1937, Lana entered the movie world, at 17, with small parts in They Won't Forget (1937), The Great Garrick (1937) and A Star Is Born (1937). These films didn't bring her a lot of notoriety, but it was a start. In 1938 she had another small part in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) starring Mickey Rooney. It was this film that made young men's hearts all over America flutter at the sight of this alluring and provocative young woman--known as the "Sweater Girl"--and one look at that film could make you understand why: she was one of the most spectacularly beautiful newcomers to grace the screen in years. By the 1940s Lana was firmly entrenched in the film business. She had good roles in such films as Johnny Eager (1941), Somewhere I'll Find You (1942) and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). If her career was progressing smoothly, however, her private life was turning into a train wreck, keeping her in the news in a way no one would have wanted.
Without a doubt her private life was a threat to her public career. She was married eight times, twice to Stephen Crane. She also married Ronald Dante, Robert Eaton, Fred May, Lex Barker, Henry Topping and bandleader Artie Shaw. She also battled alcoholism. In yet another scandal, her daughter by Crane, Cheryl Crane, fatally stabbed Lana's boyfriend, gangster Johnny Stompanato, in 1958. It was a case that would have rivaled the O.J. Simpson murder case. Cheryl was acquitted of the murder charge, with the jury finding that she had been protecting her mother from Stompanato, who was savagely beating her, and ruled it justifiable homicide. These and other incidents interfered with Lana's career, but she persevered. The release of Imitation of Life (1959), a remake of a 1934 film (Imitation of Life (1934)), was Lana's comeback vehicle. Her performance as Lora Meredith was flawless as an actress struggling to make it in show business with a young daughter, her housekeeper and the housekeeper's rebellious daughter. The film was a box-office success and proved beyond a doubt that Lana had not lost her edge.
By the 1960s, however, fewer roles were coming her way with the rise of new and younger stars. She still managed to turn in memorable performances in such films as Portrait in Black (1960) and Bachelor in Paradise (1961). By the next decade the roles were coming in at a trickle. Her last appearance in a big-screen production was in Witches' Brew (1980). Her final film work came in the acclaimed TV series Falcon Crest (1981) in which she played Jacqueline Perrault from 1982-1983. After all those years as a sex symbol, nothing had changed--Lana was still as beautiful as ever.
She died on June 25, 1995, in Culver City, California, after a long bout with cancer. She was 74 years old.- Actress
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Jean Stapleton was born Jeanne Murray in Manhattan, New York City, to Marie A. (Stapleton), an opera singer, and Joseph Edward Murray, a billboard advertising salesman. Her paternal grandparents were Irish. She was a cousin of actress Betty Jane Watson. Other relatives in show business were her uncle, Joseph E. Deming, a vaudevillian; and her brother Jack Stapleton, a stage actor. She graduated from Wadleigh High School, NYC, in 1939. She worked as a secretary before becoming an actress. Stapleton made her stage debut at the Greenwood Playhouse, Peaks Island, Maine, in the summer of 1941, and her New York stage debut in "The Corn Is Green" (1948). She appeared on Broadway in the musicals "Damn Yankees" (1955) and "Bells Are Ringing" (1956), and later repeated her roles in the movie versions (Damn Yankees (1958) and Bells Are Ringing (1960)). Her other Broadway roles included the original companies of "Rhinoceros" (1961) and "Funny Girl" (1964). Stapleton also played Abby Brewster in the 1986-87 revival of "Arsenic and Old Lace".- Actress
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Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift of very humble beginnings on August 18, 1920 (some sources list 1922) in East St. Louis, Illinois. Her mother, Rose Winter, was born in Missouri, to Austrian Jewish parents, and her father, Jonas Schrift, was an Austrian Jewish immigrant. She had one sibling, a sister, Blanche. Her father moved the family to Brooklyn when she was still young so that he, a tailor's cutter, could find steadier work closer to the city's garment industry. An unfailing interest in acting began quite early for Shelley, and she appeared in high school plays. By her mid- to late teens she had already been employed as a Woolworth's store clerk, model, borscht belt vaudevillian and nightclub chorine, all in order to pay for her acting classes. During a nationwide search in 1939 for GWTW's Scarlett O'Hara, Shelley was advised by auditioning director George Cukor to get acting lessons, which she did. Apprenticing in summer stock, she made her Broadway debut in the short-lived comedy "The Night Before Christmas" in 1941 and followed it with the operetta "Rosalinda" (1942) initially billing herself in both shows as Shelley Winter (without the "s").
Within a short time, Shelley pushed ahead for a career out west. Hollywood proved to be a tough road. Toiling in bit roles for years, many of her scenes were excised altogether during her early days. Obscurely used in such movies as What a Woman! (1943), The Racket Man (1944), Cover Girl (1944) and Tonight and Every Night (1945), her breakthrough did not occur until 1947, and it happened on both the stage and big screen. Not only did she win the replacement role of Ado Annie Carnes in "Oklahoma!" on Broadway but, around the same time, scored excellent notices on film as the party girl waitress who ends up a victim of deranged strangler (and Oscar winner) Ronald Colman in the critically-hailed A Double Life (1947) directed by Cukor. From this moment, she achieved a somewhat earthy film stardom, playing second-lead broads who often met untimely ends (as in Cry of the City (1948) and The Great Gatsby (1949)), or tawdry-black-stockinged and feather-boa-adorned leads, as in South Sea Sinner (1950) in which her eclectic co-stars included Macdonald Carey and Liberace!
As a tarnished glamour girl and symbol of working-class vulgarity in Hollywood, Shelley was about to be written off in pictures altogether when one of her finest movie roles arrived on her front porch. Her best hard luck girl storyboard showed up in the form of depressed, frumpy-looking Alice Tripp, a factory girl seduced and abandoned by wanderlust Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951). Favoring gorgeous society girl Elizabeth Taylor who is totally out of his league, Clift is subsequently blackmailed by Winters' pathetic (and now pregnant) character into marrying her. For her desperate efforts, she is purposely drowned by Clift after he tips their canoe. The role, which garnered Shelley her first Oscar nomination, finally plucked her out of the sordid starlet pool she was treading and into the ranks of serious femme star contenders. But not for long.
Winters just couldn't escape the lurid bottle-blonde quality she instilled in her characters. During what should have been her peak time in films were a host of badly-scripted "B" films. The obvious, two-dimensional chorines, barflies, floozies and gold diggers she played in Behave Yourself! (1951), Frenchie (1950), Phone Call from a Stranger (1952), Playgirl (1954), and also Mambo (1954), in which co-starred second husband Vittorio Gassman, pretty much said it all. She grew extremely disenchanted and decided to return to dramatic study. Earning membership into the famed Actors' Studio, she went to Broadway and earned kudos, thereby reestablishing her reputation as a strong actress with the drug-themed play "A Hatful of Rain" (1955). Co-starring in the show was the up-and-coming Anthony Franciosa, who became her third husband in 1957. Her renewed dedication to pursuing quality work was shown by her appearances in a number of heavyweight theater roles including Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1955). In later years, the Actors' Studio enthusiast became one of its most respected coaches, shaping up a number of today's fine talents with the Strasberg "method" technique.
By the late 1950s, she had started growing in girth and wisely eased into colorful character supports. The switch paid off. After a sterling performance as the ill-fated wife of sadistic killer Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), she scored big in the Oscar department when she won "Best Supporting Actress" for the shrill and hypertensive but doomed Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). From this period sprouted a host of revoltingly bad mamas, blowsy matrons, and trashy madams in such film fare as Lolita (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), The Balcony (1963) Wives and Lovers (1963), and A House Is Not a Home (1964). She topped things off as the abusive prostitute mom in A Patch of Blue (1965) who was not above pimping her own blind daughter (the late Elizabeth Hartman) for household money. The actress managed to place a second Oscar on her mantle for this riveting support work.
With advancing age and increasing size, she found a comfortable niche in the harping Jewish wife/mother category with loud, flashy, unsubtle roles in Enter Laughing (1967), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) and, most notably, The Poseidon Adventure (1972). She earned another Oscar nomination for "Poseidon" while portraying her third drowning victim. At around the same time, she scored quite well as the indomitable Marx Brothers' mama in "Minnie's Boys" on Broadway in 1970.
In the 1970s and 1980s, she developed into an oddly-distracted personality on TV, making countless talk show appearances and becoming quite the raconteur and incessant name dropper with her juicy Hollywood behind-the-scenes tales. Candid would be an understatement when she published two scintillating tell-all autobiographies that reached the bestsellers list. "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley" (1981) and "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century" (1989) detailed dalliances with Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, William Holden, Sean Connery and Clark Gable, to name just a few.
Thrice divorced (her first husband was a WWII captain; her only child, Vittoria, was the daughter of her second husband, Gassman), she remained footloose and fancy free after finally breaking it off with the volatile Franciosa in 1960. Her stormy marriages and notorious affairs, not to mention her ambitious forays into politics and feminist causes, kept her name alive for decades. She worked in films until the beginning of the millennium, her last film being the easily-dismissed Italian feature La bomba (1999). She enjoyed Emmy-winning TV work and had the recurring role of Roseanne Barr's tell-it-like-it-is grandmother on the comedienne's self-named sitcom. Her last years were marred by failing health and, for the most part, she was confined to a wheelchair. Suffering a heart attack in October of 2005, she died in a Beverly Hills nursing home of heart failure on January 14, 2006.
It was reported that only hours earlier on her deathbed she had entered into a "spiritual" union with her longtime companion of 19 years, Gerry McFord; a relationship of which her daughter disapproved. Gregarious, brazen, ambitious and completely unpredictable -- that would be Shelley Winters, the storyteller, whose amazing career lasted over six colorful decades.- Actress
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Born in San Giorgio di Piano, Giulietta Masina spent part of her teenage years living with a widowed aunt in Rome, where she cultivated a passion for the theater and studied for a degree in Philosophy. She began her career on the radio with the program "Terzoglio" (1942), about the adventures of newlyweds Cico and Pallina from scripts written by Federico Fellini. The series brought her great success. The following year she married Fellini and became the inspirational muse for many of his films.
She made her cinema debut in Without Pity (1948), directed by Alberto Lattuada, but really established her reputation with her next few films: Behind Closed Shutters (1951), directed by Luigi Comencini, Variety Lights (1950), which also marked Fellini's debut as director (the film credits both Fellini and Lattuada); and Europe '51 (1952), directed by Roberto Rossellini. Her artistic partnership with her husband really took off with the Oscar-winning The Road (1954), followed by The Swindle (1955) and the widely acclaimed Nights of Cabiria (1957), which again won an Oscar and brought her the award for Best Female Performance at the Cannes Film Festival. Over the following years she played many memorable roles in such films as Fortunella (1958), directed by Eduardo De Filippo; ...and the Wild Wild Women (1959), directed by Renato Castellani; and later in Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and Ginger & Fred (1986), both directed by Fellini.
From 1966 to 1969 she hosted the immensely popular radio show "Lettere aperte a Giulietta Masina" and starred in the television series Eleonora (1973), by Tullio Pinelli, directed by Silverio Blasi, and Camilla (1976), directed by Sandro Bolchi, based on the novel by Fausta Cialente, "Un inverno freddissimo" (1966).
She died in Rome in 1994, just a few months after the death of her husband.- Actress
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Jean Shirley Verhagen (later shortened to Hagen) was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 3, 1923. Her father was a Dutch immigrant. Hagen and her family moved to Elkhart, Indiana when she was twelve; she subsequently graduated from Elkhart High School. Afterwards, she graduated from Northwestern University, where she studied drama and was a roommate of fellow actress Patricia Neal.
Hagen began her show business career in the late 1940s, performing in radio programmes. She also dabbled in Broadway plays. She made her film debut in 1949 with a role as a comical femme fatale in the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy pairing Adam's Rib (1949). She had her first leading role the following year, when she starred opposite Sterling Hayden in the film noir classic The Asphalt Jungle (1950), a performance which gained her considerable attention and praise.
The performance for which Hagen is best remembered today came about in 1952, when she lent her support to the classic musical Singin' in the Rain (1952). Hagen's portrayal of the helium-voiced silent film star Lina Lamont earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress; she lost to Gloria Grahame for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).
Following her 'Singin' in the Rain' success, Ms. Hagen joined the cast of the television sitcom The Danny Thomas Show (1953). She was nominated for three Emmys for her role as Margaret Williams, but grew tired of the role after three seasons and subsequently left the show.
For the rest of her career, Hagen mostly made guest appearances on numerous television shows, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Andy Griffith Show (1960), Wagon Train (1957), and Starsky and Hutch (1975). She also had supporting roles in Sunrise at Campobello (1960) and Dead Ringer (1963).
Sadly, by the 1960s, Ms. Hagen's health had declined and she spent many years under medical care. She died of esophageal cancer on August 29, 1977 at the age of 54.- Actress
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Barbara Hale was born on April 18, 1922 in DeKalb, Illinois, to Wilma (née Colvin) and Luther Ezra Hale, a landscape gardener. She had one sister, Juanita. As a young girl, she intended to major in art and drawing but to work her way through The Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, she began her professional career as a model for a comic strip called "Ramblin' Bill."
Hale is best remembered as Della Street, long-time secretary to attorney Perry Mason on the TV series Perry Mason (1957) from 1957 to 1966 and again in over 25 Perry Mason TV movies from 1985 to 1995. She married actor Bill Williams in 1946. He was best remembered for his portrayal of Kit Carson in The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951) from 1951 to 1955. The couple had three children - two daughters: Jody (born in 1947), Juanita (born in 1953), and, in 1951, a son, William Katt (the spitting image of his father), and actor in his own right, probably best known as the titular character's ill-fated prom date in the film Carrie (1976) and, later, as Ralph Hinkley, the klutzy superhero on the quirky 1980s adventure series The Greatest American Hero (1981) (from 1981 to 1986).- Actress
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As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also enjoyed a brief stint as a singer. At age 15, an attack of palsy left her face partially paralyzed. She claimed that it was through facial exercises to overcome the paralysis that she learned the efficacy of facial expression in conveying human emotion, a skill she was renowned for using in her acting.- Actress
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Kathleen Freeman's introduction to show business came very early in life. Her parents were vaudevillians, and she made her debut at age 2 in their act. Later she attended UCLA with intentions of becoming a pianist, but was bitten by the acting bug and never looked back. She gained experience on stage in various stock and repertory companies, and made her film debut in 1948. One of the most memorable character actresses in recent memory, her stocky build, incredibly expressive face and hearty laugh have kept audiences convulsed for decades, playing a variety of neighborhood gossips, busybodies and eccentrics. Memorable as Sister Mary Stigmata ("The Penguin"), Dan Aykroyd's and John Belushi's nemesis, in The Blues Brothers (1980). She was used as a comic foil by Jerry Lewis in many of his films, always to great advantage. She did much television work, playing in everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) to Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964) to Hogan's Heroes (1965) to Married... with Children (1987), where she was the voice of Peg's monstrous but never-seen mother, Al Bundy's nemesis. She was working on Broadway in a production of "The Full Monty" when she died of lung cancer in 2001.- Beah Richards left her native Vicksburg, Mississippi, for New York City in 1950. She would not acquire a significant role on stage until 1955,when she appeared in the off-Broadway show "Take a Giant Step" convincingly portraying an 84-year-old grandmother without using theatrical makeup. In 1962 she appeared in writer James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner" directed by noted actor/director/activist Frank Silvera, who told Richards "Don't act, just be." She credited Silvera with helping her further develop the subtlety and quiet dignity that distinguished all of her performances.
A prolific actress, poet and playwright, her first authored play was "All's Well That Ends" that delved into the issues of racial segregation. Always ahead of her time, she defined herself as "Black" when the term "Negro" was the preferred ethnic/racial label of Black Americans. Richards would bring her salutary satisfaction with being "Black" and her immense acting talents to the role of the peacemaking mother in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), a role for which she was nominated for an Oscar. Additionally, she appeared in "Purlie Victorious" by Ossie Davis and "The Little Foxes" by Lillian Hellman.
In 1988, she won an Emmy Award for her performance in Frank's Place (1987). Although stricken with emphysema, she delivered a tour-de-force performance on the ABC legal drama The Practice (1997) in 2000; she received her second Emmy Award for this performance three days before her death in her native Vicksburg. - Actress
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She was truly one mother of a mom...on stage, on film and on TV. A favorite firecracker on 80s and 90s television, tiny character player Estelle Getty became best known for her carping, meddlesome moms -- complete with bemused, cynical looks, irreverent digs and dead-pan Henny Youngman-like one-liners. Blunt and down-to-earth off-stage as she was on-, she scored big points with both the young and the old...and all those who fell in between. The middle-class masses and society's underdogs deemed Estelle one of their own. The star who had a hard time playing the star card also taught an earnest lesson to the millions of actor wannabes that it was never too late to get into the big leagues, pursue your dream and come out a winner. After nearly five decades of stage work, she achieved "overnight" stardom at age 62. Ill health forced her retirement in 2000 after only a decade and a half of celebrity. Yet even something as sinister as Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disease, couldn't take away her indomitable spirit and feistiness. The affliction, which slowly clouds then erases the memory banks, should have claimed her a couple of years after its detection, but she proved the doctors wrong and lived nearly eight years from its onset, dying peacefully in her Hollywood home on July 22, 2008.
Getty was born Estelle Scher on July 25, 1923, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, the daughter of Sarah (Lacher) and Charles Scher, Polish Jewish immigrants who worked in the glass business. Starry-eyed as a very young child when her father first took her to see a vaudeville show at the New York Academy of Music, Estelle already had a mindset about her future. She almost immediately started taking singing, dancing and acting lessons and, following her graduation from Seward Park High School, she began building up experience in the Yiddish theater. She even attempted the stand-up comedy stage on the Catskills "borscht belt" circuit in upstate New York, but it was a time of rampant sexism and women comics were a rarity and seldom successful. She wasn't. Her young life took an abrupt, post-World War II turn when she married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman at age 24 in December of 1947 (she went on to use a derivative of her married last name for the stage). Not your typical domesticated wife by any stretch of the imagination, Estelle nevertheless raised two children, sons Barry and Carl, and worked as a secretary for various companies.
Determined as ever to be an actress, she found moderate compensation performing in community theatre plays. Adept at playing abrasive, insinuating types, she had an innate gift for comedy and stole many scenes in such light-hearted plays as "Arsenic and Old Lace," "Blithe Spirit," "6 Rms Riv Vu," "Light Up the Sky" and "Lovers and Other Strangers". On the flip side, Estelle demonstrated surprising dramatic stamina in such classics as "All My Sons," "The Glass Menaqerie" and "Death of a Salesman." Following decades of obscurity, it was her connection to the actor/playwright Harvey Fierstein that turned the tide and started the ball rolling. Forging a deep friendship in the late 70s after appearing in small New York theaters together, and after considerable prodding by Estelle, Harvey wrote a part for his diminutive friend in the ground-breaking, autobiographical "Torch Song Trilogy". Playing Harvey's recalcitrant mother, the show eventually made it to Broadway and Estelle's big debut was a resounding success. Winning the Helen Hayes Award for her performance, she played the feisty foil to Fierstein's raspy-voiced drag queen for five years.
While on tour with the play in Los Angeles, Estelle secured an audition for and won the role of viper-tongued Sicilian mama Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls (1985). She nearly lost out on the part when it was thought that she appeared too young to play Bea Arthur's mother. In truth, Estelle was 14 months younger than Bea. Given another go-around, and this time donning a grey wig, age makeup and frumpy apparel, Estelle fully convinced the powers-that-be that she WAS Sophia and the rest is history. The role was a breath of fresh air during an era of strong political correctness. A seven-time consecutive Emmy Award nominee for "Best Supporting Actress Award," she took home the trophy in 1988. In both 1991 and 1992 Estelle won the American Comedy Award for "Best Supporting Actress" in a series. The Sophia character was so popular she even went on to play the impish octogenarian in several other shows, including two "Golden Girls" spin-offs -- the short-lived The Golden Palace (1992) and "Empty Nest". Estelle went on to mother other stars on the big screen as well, including Cher in Mask (1985) and Sylvester Stallone in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992), in the latter of which she received second billing. The one maternal film role she wanted more than anything did not come her way. When Torch Song Trilogy (1988) was made into a film, actor Fierstein needed star power surrounding him. Anne Bancroft replaced Estelle in the part and she was heartbroken. The movie itself lost much of its impact in its transition from the stage. At the peak of her TV fame, Estelle wrote a 1988 autobiography entitled "If I Knew Then, What I Know Now... So What?" with Steve Delsohn.
The diminutive dynamo (4'10") with a big heart was an outspoken activist for gay rights and she regularly involved herself in AIDS causes, part of it propelled by a nephew who was diagnosed and later succumbed to the disease. She also became a spokesperson for Alternative Living for the Aging, a nonprofit organization that locates cooperative housing for senior citizens. In 2000, Getty stopped making public appearances after her health and mind began its slow decline. One of her last sightings was in the L.A. audience of "The Vagina Monologues," which starred "Golden Girls" co-star Rue McClanahan. Misdiagnosed as having both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, it was later learned she was suffering from advanced dementia. Estelle died of complications from her disease just three days before her 85th birthday. Long-time husband Arthur, who was only 5'3" tall himself, never adjusted to Estelle's meteoric rise and the media attention that had accompanied it. He quietly maintained her parents' glass business far from the Hollywood glitz...in Florida. He died in 2004. Lifetime television hosted a "Golden Girls" reunion, but by this time Estelle was too ill to appear. Shortly after her death on July 22, 2008, and in tribute to Ms. Getty, Lifetime, which shows reruns of "The Golden Girls" almost on a daily basis, announced that it would air ten episodes of the series featuring the "best of Sophia". A simple, unadorned service was conducted, as she would have wanted, and she was interred at Hollywood Forever Memorial Park in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west. The move there encouraged her to consider acting as a vocation. By the time she was 13 she had already appeared in a stage production of 'Seen but Not Heard'", and had garnered rave reviews from the tough Broadway critics. The play helped her gain entrance to an exclusive acting school.
In 1937, Anne made her first foray into Hollywood to test the waters there in the film industry. As she was thought to be too young for a film career, she packed her bags and returned to the New York stage with her mother, where she continued to act on Broadway and summer stock up and down the East Coast. Undaunted by the failure of her previous effort to crack Hollywood, Anne returned to California two years later to try again. This time her luck was somewhat better. She took a screen test which was ultimately seen by the moguls of Twentieth Century-Fox, and she was signed to a seven-year contract. However, before she could make a movie with Fox, Anne was loaned out to MGM to make 20 Mule Team (1940). At only 17 years of age, she was already in the kind of pictures that other starlets would have had to slave for years as an extra before landing a meaty role. Back at Fox, that same year, Anne played Mary Maxwell in The Great Profile (1940), which was a box-office dud. The following year she played Amy Spettigue in the remake of Charley's Aunt (1941). It still wasn't a great role, but it was better than a bit part. The only other film job Anne appeared in that year was in Swamp Water (1941). It was the first role that was really worth anything, but critics weren't that impressed with Anne, her role nor the movie. In 1942 Anne played Joseph Cotten's daughter, Lucy Morgan, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The following year she appeared in The North Star (1943), the first film where she received top billing. The film was a critical and financial success and Anne came in for her share of critical plaudits. Guest in the House (1944) the next year was a dismal failure, but Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) was received much better by the public, though it was ripped apart by the critics. Anne starred with John Hodiak, who would become her first husband in 1947 (Anne was to divorce Hodiak in 1954. Her other two husbands were Randolph Galt and David Klee).
In 1946 Anne portrayed Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), a film that would land her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had come a long way in so short a time, but for her next two films she was just the narrator: Mother Wore Tights (1947) and Blaze of Noon (1947). It would be 1950 before she landed another decent role--the part of Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950). This film garnered Anne her second nomination, but she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950). After several films through the 1950s, Anne landed what many considered a plum role--Queen Nefretiri in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Never in her Hollywood career did Anne look as beautiful as she did as the Egyptian queen, opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. After that epic, job offers got fewer because she wasn't tied to a studio, instead opting to freelance her talents. After no appearances in 1958, she made one film in 1959 Season of Passion (1959) and one in 1960 Cimarron (1960).
After Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she took a hiatus from filming for the next four years. She was hardly idle, though. She appeared often on stage and on television. She wasn't particularly concerned with being a celebrity or a personality; she was more concerned with being just an actress and trying hard to produce the best performance she was capable of. After several notable TV appearances, Anne became a staple of two television series, East of Eden (1981) and Hotel (1983). Her final moment before the public eye was as Irene Adler in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984). On December 12, 1985, Anne died of a stroke in New York. She was 62.- Actress
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Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in Canada but moved to California when he found employment there. The family was well-to-do and although Jane was the only girl among four brothers, her mother saw to it that she took piano lessons. In addition to music, Jane was interested in drama much as her mother had been and participated in high school stage productions. Upon graduation, Jane took a job as a receptionist for a doctor who specialized in foot disorders. Although she had originally planned on being a designer, her father died, and she had to go to work to help the family. Jane modeled on the side and was very much sought-after especially because of her figure.
She managed to save enough money to go to drama school, with the urging of her mother. She was signed by Howard Hughes for his production of The Outlaw (1943) in 1941, the film that was to make Jane famous. The film was not a classic by any means but was geared through its marketing to show off Jane's ample physical assets rather than acting abilities. Although the film was made in 1941, it was not released until two years later and then only on a limited basis due to the way the film portrayed Jane's assets. It was hard for the flick to pass the censorship board. Finally, the film gained general release in 1946. The film was a smash at the box office.
Jane did not make another film until 1945 when she played Joan Kenwood in Young Widow (1946). She had signed a seven-year contract with Hughes, and it seemed the only films he would put her in were those that displayed Jane in a very flattering light due to her body. Films such as His Kind of Woman (1951) and The Las Vegas Story (1952) did nothing to highlight her true acting abilities. The pinnacle of her career was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as Dorothy Shaw, with Marilyn Monroe. This film showed Jane's comedic side very well. Jane did continue to make films throughout the 1950s, but the films were at times not up to par, particularly with Jane's talents being wasted in forgettable movies to show off her sexy side. Films such as Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) and The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) did do Jane's justice and were able to show exactly the fine actress she was.
After The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957) (a flop), Jane took a hiatus from films, to dabble a little in television, returning in 1964 to film Fate Is the Hunter (1964). Unfortunately, the roles were not there anymore as Jane appeared in only four pictures during the entire decade of the 1960s. Her last film of the decade was The Born Losers (1967). After three more years away from the big screen, she returned to make one last film called Darker Than Amber (1970). Her last play before the public was in the 1970s when Jane was a spokesperson for Playtex bras. Had Jane not been wasted during the Hughes years, she could have been a bigger actress than what she was allowed to show. Jane Russell died at age 89 of respiratory failure on February 28, 2011, in Santa Maria, California.- A classic beauty, blonde French actress Michèle Morgan was one of her country's most popular leading ladies for over five decades. Born Simone Renee Roussel on Leap Year Day (February 29) in 1920, she ran away from home as a teenager and studied acting under René Simon, beginning her film career at 16 working as a film extra to pay for drama classes.
The young actress soon caught the eye of director Marc Allégret, who cast her in Heart of Paris (1937), which clinched her stardom. Her remote, enigmatic features and gloomy allure had audiences comparing her to a young Greta Garbo. She went on to appear elegantly opposite Charles Boyer in the drama Orage (1938) directed by Allegret; opposite Jean Gabin in Moth and the Flame (1938) directed by Marcel Carné, as well as both Coral Reefs (1939) and Remorques (1941). She had her first top-billed roles in L'entraîneuse (1939) and La loi du nord (1939).
Michèle's eventual fled war-torn France for Hollywood and earned roles based purely on her European prestige. She did not stand out among the other female foreign imports of that time, however, such as Ingrid Bergman. Cast in rather routine sultry roles amid WWII surroundings, she received only a modest reception for such US-based films as Joan of Paris (1942) with Paul Henreid; Two Tickets to London (1943) with Alan Curtis; Passage to Marseille (1944) opposite Humphrey Bogart; and the noirish The Chase (1946) starring Robert Cummings.
Michèle succeeded much better at home continuing prolifically in such films as The Proud and the Beautiful (1953), The Moment of Truth (1952), Oasis (1955), The Grand Maneuver (1955), Shadow of the Guillotine (1956) (as Marie Antoinette), Grand Hotel (1959), Bluebeard (1963), Web of Fear (1964), The Diary of an Innocent Boy (1968) and Cat and Mouse (1975). Back in the late 1940's, she received the very first Cannes Film Festival award for "best actress" for her touching performance as the blind heroine in Pastoral Symphony (1946). She also received an honorary Cesar Award in 1992.
Married during the war and early post-war years (1942-1949) to American actor/singer William Marshall, Michèle's second husband was handsome Gallic star Henri Vidal and they appeared together in a couple of films, including both the historical drama Fabiola (1949) and romantic drama La belle que voilà (1950), plus The Seven Deadly Sins (1952) (albeit different "sin" segments) and Napoleon (1955). Following Vidal's sudden death of a heart at age 40 in 1959, the actress married a third time one year later to well-known French actor/writer/director Gérard Oury. They had unbilled cameos in A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986). She was left a widow in 2006.
Semi-retired by the 1970's, Michèle's last feature film was a small bit in the Marcello Mastroianni film Everybody's Fine (1990). She retired in 1999 after a few sporadic 90's TV parts. She died in her home town of Hauts-de-Seine, France on December 20, 2016, at age 96. - Actress
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Linda Darnell, one of five children of a postal clerk, grew up fast. At 11, she was modeling clothes, giving her age as 16. At 13, she was appearing on the stage with little theater groups. Her mother encouraged her to audition when Hollywood talent scouts came to Dallas. She went to California and when the studio found out how young she really was, she was sent home and told to come back when she was 15. Her fourth film, Star Dust (1940), was based on this real life experience. It was Star Dust (1940) that Darnell was watching the night of April 9, 1965, at the home of her former secretary, located in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The house caught on fire in the early hours of the next morning and Darnell died that afternoon in Cook County Hospital. The character she played in one of her best known roles, Forever Amber (1947) survived the London fire, the plague and the perils of being the mistress of the English king, Charles II.- Actress
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One of Hollywood's more talented and watchable stars on screen was sullen and thin 50s actress Jan Sterling who didn't quite reach the top echelon of stardom but certainly ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy pout and flashy style in soaps, film noir and saucy comedy.
Jan was born Jane Sterling Adriance in Manhattan in 1921 to a well-to-do family. Her father was a prominent advertising executive who divorced her mother when the girl was only eight years old. Her mother remarried (to an oilman) when Jan was still a youngster and the family relocated abroad where Jan was schooled by private tutors in Brazil, then later in London and Paris.
Although both sets of parents disapproved, Jan, who by this time possessed a strong British accent, set her sites on acting and was eventually enrolled in Fay Compton's dramatic school in London. A strong-minded young lady with a heartfelt passion for the arts, she returned to Manhattan to conquer Broadway and by the age of 17 had found her first ingénue role in "Bachelor Born," playing (naturally) a young British lady. Over the next 11 years, Jan dominated Broadway as proper British ladies while billing herself as "Jane Adrian."
One of her highlights was working with the legendary Ruth Gordon in 1942 in Gordon's first play entitled "Over 21." As Billie Dawn in the Chicago company of "Born Yesterday," Jan bowled over the critics and seemed almost a shoo-in to do the 1950 film version but she lost out in the end to Judy Holliday. The ash-blonde broke quickly into films supporting Oscar-winning Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948) in a key, emotional role.
To her absolute delight, she left the docile, ladylike image behind her and was allowed to dig her nails into a florid array of cheap floozies, hard-bitten dames, and lethal schemers and stood out well with 'bad girl' parts in the films Caged (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), The Human Jungle (1954), and Female on the Beach (1955). In between she occasionally made a nicer, or at least a more sympathetic, impression in the movies Sky Full of Moon (1952) and The High and the Mighty (1954), the latter earning her an Oscar nomination.
Married to and divorced from actor John Merivale in the 1940s, Jan later married gruff film star Paul Douglas in 1950. The couple moved away from the Hollywood scene in Burlington, Vermont. The couple appeared together professionally on occasional TV shows and Douglas revived his "Born Yesterday" Harry Brock role with a stage tour starring Jan in the Billie Dawn part. It and they were a solid hit.
Jan's career slowed down considerably after the sudden death of her 52-year-old second husband in 1959. He suffered a massive heart attack at their Hollywood home. She refocused on stage and TV but at a slower step. Incidental filming occurred on occasion, including support roles in Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961) and The Incident (1967). She also involved herself in humanitarian causes. In the late 1960s she moved to London, England and in the 1970s, she entered into a strong personal relationship with actor Sam Wanamaker. An isolated film role came her way with a small part in First Monday in October (1981). They never married but stayed together until his death in 1993.
Inactive for nearly two decades, Jan made an appearance at the Cinecon Film Festival in Los Angeles in the fall of 2001, still charming audiences at the age of 80. On 26 March 2004, she passed away at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. She was 82.- Actress
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Ruth Roman was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the youngest of three daughters of Lithuanian-Jewish parents Mary Pauline (Gold) and Abraham Roman. Her father, a carnival barker, died when she was a small child, forcing her mother to support the family by working as a waitress and cleaning woman. Ruth grew up in the poor tenement district of Boston, Massachusetts, where she went to school. However, she left school after just two years to pursue an acting career. Her chosen path proved to be strewn with obstacles: in New York, she obtained a job posing for stills for a crime magazine, but theatrical work eluded her. She then worked as a hat check girl at a night club before calling it quits and returning to Boston. There, she made ends meet as an usherette during the day while at night performing with the New England Repertory Company, her first steady acting job. She also studied drama and eventually graduated from the Bishop-Lee Theatre School.
Trying to get into films, Ruth unsuccessfully made the rounds of agents and producers for two years (1940-42), until a bit part as a WAVE came her way in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943). With $200 to her name, she purchased a one-way ticket to Hollywood, where she found shared accommodation with other aspiring starlets, naming it, optimistically, 'the House of the Seven Garbos'. After a screen test with Warner Brothers failed to result in a contract, Ruth had another run of six hard years playing bit parts, many of them uncredited, some ending up on the cutting room floor. A sole speaking part of consequence was in the titular role of Jungle Queen (1945), a Universal serial (after subsequent acting lessons, Ruth was aghast when the serial was rereleased in 1951).
Ruth finally got her big break when producer Dore Schary cast her (against character, as a murderess) in the RKO thriller The Window (1949). That same year, she successfully auditioned for Stanley Kramer's boxing drama Champion (1949) as the dependable wife of the fighter (Kirk Douglas). After this turning point in her life, the shapely, smoky-voiced brunette secured a contract with Warner Brothers. During the next phase of her career, she moved effortlessly from glamorous and seductive to demure and wholesome in films opposite stars like James Stewart, Errol Flynn, and Gary Cooper. Look Magazine billed her as the 'Big Time Movie Personality of 1950', and by the following year she was receiving some 500 fan letters per week.
While many of her leads were in westerns (albeit mostly A-grade ones), Ruth was somewhat more memorable in support of Farley Granger (as his upper-crust lover and the raison d'etre for the planned murder of his wife) in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). Another offbeat role was as a gangster's moll in the British-made updated adaptation of Shakespeare's Joe MacBeth (1955). As Lily, she is the power behind angst-ridden Paul Douglas ('Joe'), whom she easily manipulates to do her bidding. In The Bottom of the Bottle (1956), she was at her dependable best as the supportive wife of lawyer Joseph Cotten. Arguably, her last noteworthy performance on the big screen was in Alexander Singer's romance/drama Love Has Many Faces (1965).
By the 1960s, Ruth had made the transition to middle-aged character parts and began to appear mostly on television in shows like The Outer Limits (1963), Mannix (1967), Gunsmoke (1955), and (in a recurring role) in The Long, Hot Summer (1965). She also toured nationally with theatrical productions of "Plaza Suite", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", and "Two for the Seesaw". For the actress, who was said to disdain the trimmings of Hollywood stardom, real-life drama came when she and her son counted among the 760 survivors of the sinking of the luxury cruise liner 'Andrea Doria' in 1956. In September 1967, she jumped from her burning car but still managed to make her scheduled performance in "Beekman Place" at the Ivanhoe Theatre. Ruth died in September 1999 at her home in Laguna Beach, aged 76.- Actress
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Statuesque, smart Canadian-born Alexis Smith, with her blue/green eyes and a seductively husky voice, lent a touch of class to her leading ladies of the 1940s and 1950s.
After her family moved to California, Alexis grew into a precocious talent and performed ballet in public by the age of thirteen -- dancing to 'Carmen' at the Hollywood Bowl. She later graduated with a degree in drama from Los Angeles City College having previously won an acting contest whilst still in high school. During a performance of a play on campus she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout and signed to a contract in 1941. Until the early 1950s she was paired with the top male stars in Hollywood, including Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden and Bing Crosby. While often simply decorative (as, for example, in Of Human Bondage (1946) and Stallion Road (1947)), stylishly attired by costume designers like Milo Anderson and Helen Rose in the most glamorous gowns, Alexis also proved to be a capable and spirited actress in spite of relatively few opportunities to break out of the mold of "the other woman".
Early on in her screen career the studio's publicity department touted Alexis -- much to her chagrin -- as the "Dynamite Girl". While she claimed in later years to have typecast herself (saying that few of her assigned roles ever challenged her on any level) Alexis nonetheless enjoyed good critical reviews for many of her performances. She was also popular with directors and film crews who appreciated her relaxed, professional manner on the set. Commencing her Hollywood tenure, she was cast in two films with Errol Flynn (she would make a total of four films with him): Dive Bomber (1941) and the boxing drama Gentleman Jim (1942). Though decidedly second fiddle to both the action and the charismatic Flynn, Alexis made a good first impression as the fetching romantic interest. Her next performance, in The Constant Nymph (1943) opposite Charles Boyer, was described by a reviewer as an "intelligent rendition". Her biggest hit of the mid-1940s was as Cole Porter's wife in the inaccurate--but hugely successful--biopic Night and Day (1946). She also appeared in two "noir" films with Humphrey Bogart at his most menacing: the interesting and underrated Conflict (1945) and the excellent The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947). As Clark Gable's wife in the gambling drama Any Number Can Play (1949) she was critically lauded as "genuinely appealing". In between, there were also some conspicuous failures, in particular her rather stolid performance in the period drama The Woman in White (1948). She had little to do in Here Comes the Groom (1951) and The Turning Point (1952) and her best part in the 1950s, though small, was that of Carol Wharton in The Young Philadelphians (1959).
During the 1960s, Alexis took a sabbatical from the screen to appear on stage with her husband, actor Craig Stevens (her marriage, a rare Hollywood success, lasted 49 years) in "Critic's Choice", "Cactus Flower" and "Mary, Mary". She reserved her best acting for the stage, becoming the Tony Award-winning star of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Follies" in which she played Phyllis during the 1971 run on Broadway (which landed her on the cover of the May 3 issue of 'Time' Magazine) and at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles in 1972. In 1973, she played Sylvia Fowler in a revival of Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women" and was nominated for another Tony for her leading role of Lila Halliday in "Platinum" in 1979.
Alexis was seen infrequently on television from the mid-'50s, sometimes appearing on the same show opposite her husband. She had a recurring role as the homicidal Lady Jessica Montfort in Dallas (1978) during the 1984 and 1990 seasons and was nominated for an Emmy for a guest-starring role on Cheers (1982). It was fitting, or perhaps ironic, that her last film role in The Age of Innocence (1993) was as a New York socialite, the kind of stereotypical persona she had portrayed so often in her heyday at Warners.- Actress
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Setsuko Hara became one of Japan's best-loved stars over her 30-year film career. Her signature character type, variations on a daughter devoted to her parents and home, inspired the nickname that stayed with her until retirement: the Eternal Virgin. To some extent, reality mirrored her roles in these films. In a society that considers marriage and parenting almost obligatory, she remained single and childless, something of a controversy in Japan in the 1950s. Fortunately she was popular enough to avoid criticism, but the 1950s were still a hard decade. She was plagued by ill health, missing out on several top roles as a result, and she witnessed the death of her camera-man brother in a freak train accident on set.
In 1963, shortly after the death of her mentor, director Yasujirô Ozu, she suddenly walked away from the film industry. At age 43, and at the height of her popularity, she bluntly refused to perform again, angering her fans, the industry, and the press. She implied acting had never been a pleasure and that she had only pursued a career in order to provide for her large family; this explanation is seen as the cause of her popularity backlash. She moved to a small house in picturesque Kamakura where she remained, living alone (though apparently sociable with friends), and refusing all roles offered.
She is undoubtedly known mostly for her work with Yasujiro Ozu, making six films with the great director, including the so-called Noriko trilogy, of which Tokyo Story (1953) is probably the best-known. She also worked with Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Inagaki, and many others.- Actress
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Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockleman on November 14, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Constance Charlotta (Trimble) and Harry Eugene Ockelman, who worked for an oil company as a ship employee. Her father was of half German and half Irish descent, and her mother was of Irish ancestry. While still a child, Veronica's parents moved to Florida when she was not quite a year old. By the time she was five, the family had returned to Brooklyn. When Connie was only twelve, tragedy struck when her father died in an explosion on an oil ship. One year later her mother married Anthony Keane and Connie took his last name as her own. In 1934, when her stepfather was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the family moved to Saranac Lake, where Connie Keane enjoyed the outdoor life and flourished in the activities of boating on the lakes, skating, skiing, swimming, biking around Moody Pond and hiking up Mt Baker. The family made their home in 1935 at 1 Watson Place, (now 27 Seneca Street) then they moved to 1 Riverside Drive,(now Lake Kiwassa Road). Both Connie and Anthony benefited from the Adirondack experience and in 1936 the family left the Adirondacks and moved to Miami, FL., however, the memories of those carefree Saranac Lake days would always remain deeply rooted in her mind.
Two years later, Connie graduated from high school in Miami. Her natural beauty and charm and a definite talent for acting prompted her mother and step-father to move to Beverly Hills, California, where they enrolled her in the well known Bliss Hayden School of Acting in Hollywood. Connie had previously been diagnosed as a classic schizophrenic and her parents saw acting as a form of treatment for her condition. She showed remarkable abilities and did not have to wait long for a part to come her way.
Her first movie was as one of the many coeds in the RKO film, Sorority House (1939). It was a minor part, to be sure, but it was a start. Veronica quickly followed up that project with two other films. All Women Have Secrets (1939) and Dancing Co-Ed (1939), were again bit roles for the pretty young woman from the East Coast, but she did not complain. After all, other would-be starlets took a while before they ever received a bit part. Veronica continued her schooling, while taking a bit roles in two more films, Young as You Feel (1940) and Forty Little Mothers (1940). Prior to this time, she was still under her natural name of Constance Keane. Now, with a better role in I Wanted Wings (1941), she was asked to change her name, and Veronica Lake was born. Now, instead of playing coeds, she had a decent, speaking part. Veronica felt like an actress. The film was a success and the public loved this bright newcomer.
Paramount, the studio she was under contract with, then assigned her to two more films that year, Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Sullivan's Travels (1941). The latter received good reviews from the always tough film critics. As Ellen Graham, in This Gun for Hire (1942) the following year, Veronica now had top billing. She had paid her dues and was on a roll. The public was enamored with her. In 1943, Veronica starred in only one film. She portrayed Lieutenant Olivia D'Arcy in So Proudly We Hail! (1943) with Claudette Colbert. The film was a box-office smash. It seemed that any film Veronica starred in would be an unquestionable hit. However, her only outing for 1944, The Hour Before the Dawn (1944) would not be well-received by either the public or the critics. As Nazi sympathizer Dora Bruckmann, Veronica's role was dismal at best. Critics disliked her accent immensely because it wasn't true to life. Her acting itself suffered because of the accent. Mediocre films trailed her for all of 1945. It seemed that Veronica was dumped in just about any film to see if it could be salvaged. Hold That Blonde! (1945), Out of This World (1945), and Miss Susie Slagle's (1946) were just a waste of talent for the beautiful blonde. The latter film was a shade better than the previous two. In 1946, Veronica bounced back in The Blue Dahlia (1946) with Alan Ladd and Howard Da Silva. The film was a hit, but it was the last decent film for Veronica. Paramount continued to put her in pathetic movies. After 1948, Paramount discharged the once prized star, and she was out on her own. In 1949, she starred in the Twentieth Century film Slattery's Hurricane (1949), which, unfortunately, was another weak film. She was not on the big screen again until 1952 when she appeared in Stronghold (1951). By Veronica's own admission, the film "was a dog". From 1952 to 1966, Veronica made television appearances and even tried her hand on the stage. Not a lot of success for her at all. By now alcohol was the order of the day. She was down on her luck and drank heavily. In 1962, Veronica was found living in an old hotel and working as a bartender. She finally returned to the big screen in Footsteps in the Snow (1966). Another drought ensued and she appeared on the silver screen for the last time in Flesh Feast (1970) - a very low budget film.
On July 7, 1973, Veronica died of hepatitis in Burlington, Vermont. The beautiful actress with the long blonde hair was dead at the age of 50.- Actress
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Vera-Ellen began dancing at the age of 10, and a few years later became one of the youngest Rockettes. She appeared in several Broadway musicals until she was spotted by film producer Samuel Goldwyn in 1945. She was only 24 years old when Goldwyn cast her opposite Danny Kaye in Wonder Man (1945). She danced with Fred Astaire in Three Little Words (1950) and with Gene Kelly in On the Town (1949). Blonde, slim of build, and a dancing sensation, she appeared in a string of light-hearted but successful films. Vera-Ellen retired from acting in the late 1950s.- Actress
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Coleen Gray was born in Staplehurst, Nebraska, in 1922. After graduating from high school she studied dramatics at Hamline University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then decided to see America and traveled to California, stopping off at La Jolla where she worked as a waitress. After several weeks there, she moved to L.A. and enrolled in a drama school. Her performances attracted a talent scout from 20th Century-Fox, with whom she signed a contract after a screen test. Although Fox put her in several good pictures (Kiss of Death (1947), Nightmare Alley (1947), The Razor's Edge (1946) in which she acquitted herself well, many of the roles they gave her were not worthy of her talent and she never became as big a star as many thought she should have. Still, she has an extensive list of credits in films, TV, radio and on the stage.- Actress
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A native-born Californian, Rhonda Fleming attended Beverly Hills public and private schools. Her father was Harold Cheverton Louis (1896-1951). Her mother, Effie Olivia Graham (1891-1985), was a famous model and actress in New York. She has a son (Kent Lane), two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly) and four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane and Cole). She has appeared in over 40 films, including David O. Selznick's Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947); and Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946). She later got starring roles in such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Home Before Dark (1958), Pony Express (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), While the City Sleeps (1956) and The Big Circus (1959). While she was always a competent actress, she was more renowned for her exquisite beauty, and the camera absolutely adored her. One time a cameraman on one of her films remarked on how he was so struck by her beauty that, as a gag, he intentionally tried to photograph her badly; he was astonished to discover that no matter how deliberately he botched it, she still came out looking ravishing.
Among her co-stars over the years were Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan (with whom she made four films). In addition to motion pictures, Fleming made her Broadway debut in Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women", essayed the role of "Lalume" in "Kismet" at the Los Angeles Music Center and toured as "Madame Dubonnet" in "The Boyfriend". She made her stage musical debut in Las Vegas at the opening of the Tropicana Hotel's showroom. Later she appeared at the Hollywood Bowl in a one-woman concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin compositions. She also starred in a national ten-week concert tour with Skitch Henderson, featuring the music of George Gershwin. She has guest-starred on numerous television series, including Wagon Train (1957), Police Woman (1974), The Love Boat (1977), Last Hours Before Morning (1975) and a two-hour special of McMillan & Wife (1971). Waiting for the Wind (1991) reunited her with former co-star Robert Mitchum.
In private life she resides in Century City, California, and was married for 23 years to Ted Mann, a producer and chairman of Mann Theatres, until his death in January 2001. She is a member and supporter of Childhelp USA, ARCS (Achievement Rewards For College Scientists); a Life Associate of Pepperdine University; a Lifetime Member of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge; a Founding Member of the French Foundation For Alzheimer Research; a Benefactor of the Los Angeles Music Center: and a Member of the Center's Blue Ribbon Board of Directors. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of Olive Crest Treatment Centers for Abused Children and serves as a Board of Directors Trustee of World Opportunities International. Along with her husband she helped build the Jerusalem Film Institute in Israel. She also is a member of the Board of Trustees of The UCLA Foundation and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Revlon/UCLA Women's Health Research Program. In addition, she created at the City of Hope Hospital The Rhonda Fleming Mann Research Fellowship to further advance research and treatment associated with women's cancer.
In 1991, she and her husband established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at UCLA Medical Center. This clinic provides a full range of expert gynecologic and obstetric care to women. Since 1992, she has devoted her time to a second facility at UCLA - the Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center for Women with Cancer, which opened in early 1994. This Center is the fulfillment of her vision to create a safe, warm place where women cancer patients and their families might receive the highest quality psychosocial and emotional care as well as assistance with the complex practical problems that arise with cancer. In August 1997, the Center opened "Reflections", a unique retail store and consultation suite that carries wigs, head coverings, breast prostheses and other items to help men, women and children deal with the physical appearance changes brought on by cancer and its treatments. The staffs of the clinic, center and store are guided by her belief that caring, compassion, communication and commitment are essential components of the healing process.- Actress
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Arguably best remembered for her role as Miss Ellie, the Ewing family matriarch on the long-running TV series Dallas (1978), Barbara Bel Geddes had earlier scored success on stage and screen long before gaining more lasting fame on television. She was born in New York City on Halloween Day 1922, the daughter of noted theatrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, who staged more than 200 plays. After growing up amidst the theatre, Bel Geddes began acting on stage at age 18 and soon moved on to Broadway. The silver screen also beckoned; she made her film debut in The Long Night (1947). She was quickly labeled a star, gracing the cover of Life magazine on April 12, 1948. Her third motion picture, I Remember Mama (1948), garnered Bel Geddes an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Other notable films include Panic in the Streets (1950) directed by Elia Kazan; Alfred Hitchcock's classic mystery-thriller Vertigo (1958) with James Stewart and Kim Novak; and The Five Pennies (1959) opposite Danny Kaye. Though she achieved immediate success in films, Bel Geddes also continued to tread the boards on Broadway, since theatre was her first love. In 1952, she received the prestigious Woman of the Year Award from Hasty Pudding Theatricals USA, America's oldest theater company. She was nominated for Tony Awards as best dramatic actress for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1956 and for the lead in Mary, Mary in 1961. Bel Geddes made several TV appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) and other programs in the mid 1950s, but her greatest television role came as Miss Ellie Ewing Farlow on Dallas (1978), which enjoyed a run of 13 years (1978-1991). She won the Emmy Award for best actress in 1980 and was nominated in the same category in 1979 and 1981. Bel Geddes left the show for health reasons during the 1984-85 season, with Donna Reed taking over the role of Miss Ellie. Bel Geddes returned for the 1985-86 season and continued on Dallas (1978) until 1990, when she effectively retired from acting. She did not appear in either of the two Dallas TV reunion movies. On August 8, 2005, she died following a long illness.- Actress
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For one tough cookie who achieved major cult stardom with her hard-bitten blonde looks and "Perfect Vixen" tag, Ann Savage in real life was a lovely, spirited, gentle-looking lady. She may have peaked only briefly in 1940s Hollywood low-budgeters, but she made the most of it during that fairly short tenure. Out of the dozens of movies under her belt, one film part shot her to femme fatale infamy and, to this day, remains her biggest claim to fame. It took only four (some accounts say six) days to shoot, but Detour (1945) stands out as one of the best examples of surreal film noir, and the unforgettable dialogue and riveting teaming of Ann and sulky co-star Tom Neal are the primary reasons for its enduring fame.
An only child, Ann was born Bernice Maxine Lyon in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 19, 1921. Her father was a US Army officer and the family traveled with him to his various duty stations, including Dallas and New Orleans, until settling in Jacksonville, Florida. He died when she was only four years old. Ann's mother, a jewelry buyer, took the two of them to Los Angeles before Ann was 10 years old. Appearing in local theater productions, the young girl trained at Max Reinhardt's acting school. The school's manager happened to be Bert D'Armand, who later became her agent. They married in 1945.
She changed her name to "Ann Savage" before even stepping onto a sound stage and it was a workshop production of "Golden Boy" that led to her initially signing up at Columbia Pictures. The first glimpse of Ann came as an extra in MGM's The Great Waltz (1938) and she gradually earned on-camera experience in unbilled parts in such war-era movies as The More the Merrier (1943) and Murder in Times Square (1943). She rose to featured and co-star status in such lightweight Columbia films as Two Señoritas from Chicago (1943), Footlight Glamour (1943) and Saddles and Sagebrush (1943).
Although Ann played devilish dames in The Unwritten Code (1944), Apology for Murder (1945) and The Last Crooked Mile (1946), it was venomous Vera, the blackmailing, tough-talking, cigarette-dangling, good-for-nothing who bullies hapless wanna-be tough-guy musician (Tom Neal) into her schemes in Detour (1945) that truly summed up her "bad girl" charisma. At the inducement of Columbia Pictures honcho Harry Cohn, Savage and Neal made four films together (the last being "Detour"). The other three were Klondike Kate (1943), Two-Man Submarine (1944) and The Unwritten Code (1944) (the two would reunite years later in a 1955 TV episode of the series Gang Busters (1952)).
Ann was one of the more popular WWII pinups. After appearing in a photo layout in "Esquire" magazine in 1944 that was shot by renowned studio photographer George Hurrell Sr., she became a favorite with the troops, making numerous personal appearance tours at various military bases in order to raise war bonds. Freelancing after leaving Columbia, Ann appeared in a host of other second-string pictures, including You Can't Do Without Love (1944), The Spider (1945), The Dark Horse (1946), Renegade Girl (1946), Jungle Flight (1947), Satan's Cradle (1949), Pygmy Island (1950) and Woman They Almost Lynched (1953), which would be her last film for over three decades. While she certainly demonstrated talent and range, she was unable to rise out of the "B" mold. This led her to look at TV for a time in the 1950s as a possible medium, guesting on such shows as The Ford Television Theatre (1952), City Detective (1953), Schlitz Playhouse (1951), Death Valley Days (1952) and Fireside Theatre (1949).
Ann semi-retired in the late 1950s and moved from Hollywood to Manhattan with husband Bert, who by now had traded his agent business for the financing and professional trading world. She occasionally appeared on local TV and in industrial films. The couple traveled extensively until his sudden death in 1969. A grief-stricken Ann returned to Hollywood to be near her mother, sharpened her legal secretarial skills by working as a docket clerk with Bert's attorneys in Los Angeles (Loeb & Loeb) and became an avid speed-rated pilot in her spare hours.
Elsewhere the veteran actress continued to delight her fans with her appearances at "film noir" festivals, nostalgia conventions and special screenings of her work. Refusing to appear in exploitative material, Ann turned down much work. In later years she appeared very sporadically--in the movie Fire with Fire (1986) and an episode of Saved by the Bell (1989). Out of nowhere the resilient octogenarian was cast by Canadian director Guy Maddin, a film noir fan, to play a shrewish mother in the highly acclaimed My Winnipeg (2007), earning "bad girl" raves all over again.
Named an "icon and legend" by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2005, Ann was applauded for her body of work by "Time" Magazine twice in 2007. She died at a Hollywood nursing home at age 87 on Christmas Day in 2008 from complications of multiple strokes.- Actress
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Virginia Clara Jones was born on November 30, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. The family had a rich heritage in the St. Louis area: her great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution and later founded the city of East Saint Louis, Illinois, located right across the Mississippi River from its namesake. Virginia was interested in show business from an early age. Her aunt operated a dance studio and Virginia began taking lessons at the age of six. After graduating from high school in 1937, she became a member of the St. Louis Municipal Opera before she was signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn after being spotted by an MGM talent scout during a Broadway revue. David O. Selznick gave her a screen test, but decided she wouldn't fit into films. Goldwyn, however, believed that her talent as an actress was there and cast her in a small role in 1943's Jack London (1943). She later had a walk-on part in Follies Girl (1943) that same year. Believing there was more to her than her obvious ravishing beauty, producers thought it was time to give her bigger and better roles. In 1944 she was cast as Princess Margaret in The Princess and the Pirate (1944), with Bob Hope and a year later appeared as Ellen Shavley in Wonder Man (1945). Her popularity increasing with every appearance, Virginia was cast in two more films in 1946, The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), with Danny Kaye, and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), with Dana Andrews, and received good notices as Andrews' avaricious, unfaithful wife. Her roles may have been coming in slow, but with each one her popularity with audiences rose. She finally struck paydirt in 1947 with a plum assignment in the well-received The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) as Rosalind van Hoorn. That same year she married Michael O'Shea and would remain with him until his death in 1973 (the union produced a daughter, Mary Catherine, in 1953). She got some of the best reviews of her career in James Cagney's return to the gangster genre, White Heat (1949), as Verna, the scheming, cheating wife of homicidal killer Cody Jarrett (Cagney). The striking beauty had still more plum roles in the 1950s. Parts in Backfire (1950), She's Working Her Way Through College (1952) and South Sea Woman (1953) all showed she was still a force to be reckoned with. As the decade ended, Virginia's career began to slow down. She had four roles in the 1960s and four more in the following decade. Her last role was as Lucia in 1997's The Man Next Door. She died on January 17, 2005.- Actress
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It would have been pretty difficult for willowy actress/model Dina Merrill to have pulled off playing a commoner on stage, film or TV in her day. She reeked of elegance and class. The epitome of style, poise and glamour, the New York-born socialite and celebrity was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton on December 29, 1923, the daughter of E.F. Hutton, the financier and founder of the Wall Street firm that bore his name, and heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, of the Post cereal fortune. Although Dina made elegant, elaborate use of her upbringing over the decades, she handled it all positively and graciously without tabloid incidents, instilling these same refined credentials into a large portion of her characters.
Dina did not originally intend on an acting career. After studying at George Washington University, she suddenly dropped out after only a year (to the chagrin of her disapproving parents) after demonstrating a late desire to perform. Enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studying with Uta Hagen among others, Dina appeared in the comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner" before taking her first Broadway curtain call in "The Mermaids Singing" in 1945. She took some time off to play wife and mother to three children after marrying Stanley Rumbough, Jr., heir to the Colgate toothpaste fortune.
Dina finally made an official film debut with a smart and stylish support role in the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn vehicle Desk Set (1957). She continued to charm in the same upper crust vein playing some version of the model wife or blue-blooded maven in frequent posh outings. Some of her more noticeable roles came with Operation Petticoat (1959) with the equally classy Cary Grant; BUtterfield 8 (1960) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey; and The Young Savages (1961) opposite Burt Lancaster.
Following her divorce to Rumbough after 20 years, Dina married ruggedly handsome actor Cliff Robertson in 1966. The pair had one daughter and were a popular Hollywood fixture for nearly 20 years. With her film career on the wane in the mid 1960's, Dina gravitated toward TV guest spots on such popular shows as "Dr. Kildare," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Burke's Law," "Rawhide," "Daktari," "Bonanza," "Daniel Boone," "Batman" (as the villainous "Calamity Jan" alongside Robertson's western bad guy "Shame"), "The Name of the Game," "The Virginian," "Night Gallery," "Marcus Welby," "The Love Boat" and "The Odd Couple." She also graced a number of TV-movie dramas beginning with The Sunshine Patriot (1968) co-starring husband Robertson and Seven in Darkness (1969) (as a blind survivor of a plane crash), and continuing with The Lonely Profession (1969), Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1971), Family Flight (1972), The Letters (1973), The Tenth Month (1979), and a featured part in the mini-series sequel Roots: The Next Generations (1979).
Dina returned to Broadway as the co-star of the drama "Angel Street" (1975) and again with the revival of the musical "On Your Toes" in which she played "Peggy Porterfield" in both the 1983 Broadway revival and 1986 national tour. In the same year that Dina divorced second husband Cliff Robertson (1989), she married actor/investment banker Ted Hartley. Together the couple bought RKO Studios and renamed it RKO Pavilion. He serves as chairman and she vice chairperson/creative director. The studio produced such popular efforts as Milk & Money (1996) and the remake of Mighty Joe Young (1998).
Admired for her tireless philanthropic contributions, Dina was a moderate Republican (vice chair of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition), and an active lobbyist for women's health issues. She also devoted much time working for the disadvantaged, particularly for the New York City Mission Society. She remained active and was an avid tennis and golf player for quite some time. Broaching age 90, the ever-glamorous actress appeared in a summer stock production of "Only a Kingdom" (2004) and continued to appear in occasional movie and television productions until developing dementia. Dina died on May 22, 2017, at age 93, survived by her third husband.- Actress
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Martha Hyer was born on August 10, 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. Once she finished her formal schooling, Martha played a bit role in 1946's The Locket (1946). Slowly, Martha began picking up roles with more and more substance. The best years for the beautiful actress began in 1954 when she played in films such as Down Three Dark Streets (1954), Showdown at Abilene (1956) and Battle Hymn (1957). Perhaps the best role of her long career was as "Gwen French" in 1958's Some Came Running (1958) in which she starred opposite Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. As a result of her stellar role, Martha received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she lost out to Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958). Afterwards, Martha's stint on the US silver screen's trailed off some. She did make a handful of foreign films, returning to appear in the US from time to time, but nothing compared to the pace she had in the fifties. Her last film was in 1973 in the film The Day of the Wolves (1971). In 1966, she married producer Hal B. Wallis and remained with him until his death in 1986.- Actress
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The daughter of a West Virginia druggist, Joanne Dru came to New York in 1940. In New York she worked as a model and was cast by Al Jolson as one of the showgirls in his Broadway play "Hold Onto Your Hats." When the show closed in 1941, she married popular singer Dick Haymes and went with him to Hollywood. Discovered by a talent scout while working in the theater, Joanne made her screen debut in Abie's Irish Rose (1946), and that picture almost ended her career. Two years later she "redeemed" herself with her role in the classic Howard Hawks western Red River (1948). She followed that with another western, John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), again playing opposite John Wayne. Unfortunately, her success in those two classics resulted in the scripts being submitted to her consisting of mostly westerns, and she got typecast (this from a woman who said, "I simply hated horses...").
In 1950 she was cast in another John Ford western, Wagon Master (1950), which became the basis for the Ward Bond TV series Wagon Train (1957). Even though she played in films other than westerns--All the King's Men (1949), The Pride of St. Louis (1952) and Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), for example--it was the westerns for which she was remembered. By the late 1950s westerns were running out of steam and so was her screen career, so she turned to TV, where she appeared on shows such as Playhouse 90 (1956).
In 1960 Joanne was cast in the role of the Eastern owner of a dude ranch in the comedy series Guestward Ho! (1960). Perhaps even funnier is that she would play an Easterner after all those westerns is the fact that her character name was Babs. The show ended in 1961.- Actress
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Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944) was auspicious, but her first public recognition came on loan-out in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although her talent and sex appeal were of star quality, she did not fit the star pattern at MGM, who sold her contract to RKO in 1947. Here the same problem resurfaced; her best film in these years was made on loan-out, In a Lonely Place (1950). Soon after, she left RKO. The 1950s, her best period, brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and typecast her as shady, inimitably sultry ladies in seven well-known film-noir classics.
Rumors of being difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma! (1955) helped sideline her film career from 1956 onward. She also suffered from marital and child-custody troubles. Eight years after divorce from Nicholas Ray, who was 12 years her senior (and reportedly had discovered her in bed with his 13 year old son), and after a subsequent marriage to Cy Howard ended in divorce, in 1960 she married her former stepson Anthony Ray (who was almost 14 years younger than she was.) This led former husbands Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to sue Grahame; each man seeking custody of his respective child, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Grahame herself underwent electroconvulsive therapy after the ensuing stress caused a nervous breakdown. Surprisingly, however, Grahame and Anthony "Tony" Ray proved a happy couple. The union would be Grahame's longest marriage, lasting almost 14 years (10 years longer than her previous union with Ray's father); the couple had two children, Anthony Jr. and James.
In 1960, Grahame resumed stage acting, combined with TV work and, from 1970, some mostly inferior films. She was described as a serious, skillful actress; spontaneous, honest, and strong-willed; imaginative and curious; incredibly sexy but insecure about her looks (prompting plastic surgery on her famous lips); loving appreciative male company; "a bit loony". In 1975, she was treated for breast cancer. Five years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again, although it is unclear if this was a new cancer or a metastasis of her breast cancer. Grahame eventually moved to England in 1978. Her busiest period of British and American stage work ended abruptly in 1981 when she collapsed from cancer symptoms during a rehearsal. She wished to remain in Liverpool with her partner, Peter Turner (almost 30 years her junior), but after Turner notified her children of her health condition and impending death, two of her children flew to England to retrieve her, insisting she return to the United States. She died a few hours later that same day of stomach cancer and peritonitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on October 5, 1981 at age 57.- Actress
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Lola Jean Albright was born on July 20, 1924 in Akron, Ohio, the daughter of John Paul Albright and Marion Harvey, both of whom were gospel singers. She worked as a model before moving to Hollywood in the mid-1940s, studied piano for 20 years and worked as a receptionist at radio station WAKR in Akron. Considered one of the most stylish, sultriest and beautiful actresses in Hollywood, with one of the throatiest, smokiest and most distinctive voices in the business, she starred with Kirk Douglas in the film noir Champion (1949). From 1958 to 1961, she played sultry nightclub singer Edie Hart on the popular television series Peter Gunn (1958).
She also made guest appearances on the television series Gunsmoke (1955), Bonanza (1959), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). She played Constance McKenzie on the night-time soap opera Peyton Place (1964) after Dorothy Malone became sick and could no longer play the role. She received critical acclaim for her performances in A Cold Wind in August (1961), Joy House (1964) and How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967). Retired from acting, Lola Albright died at age 92 on March 23, 2017 in Toluca Lake, California.- Actress
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Considered by many to be one of the greatest American actresses of all time, Geraldine Page was a master craftswoman who seemed to bring out the most inner detail of the character she was playing. Her dedication to her craft has earned her the respect of many of today's great actors including Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Geraldine Sue Page was born on November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri to Dr. Leon Elwin Page, an osteopathic physician and Pearl Maize Page, a homemaker. She had an older brother named Donald. The family moved to Chicago when Page was five years old. Growing up, her interests and hobbies always were directed toward the arts. She tried writing and painting while younger, but that proved to be too frustrating. She wanted to be a concert pianist, but her family couldn't afford all that training. While she was still a preteen, she joined the drama club at her church and soon found her passion. She began reading all kinds of plays as well as reading about actors. She was fascinated with the careers of actresses like Lucille La Verne, Maude Adams, and Eva Le Gallienne.
Upon graduation from high school in 1942, she entered the Goodman Theater School, where she performed in just about everything in which students could perform, as well as earning money working for a children's theater group. When she completed the three-year program in 1945, she and several other students organized a summer stock theater in Lake Zurich, Illinois. After the summer season, she headed for New York City. Unfortunately, by Christmas she was working three part-time jobs just to get by and not finding any work as an actress. She returned to Chicago that winter and accepted a position as a part-time instructor in the theater department at DePaul University for the spring semester. After another summer at Lake Zurich, Miss Page headed for New York again, this time joining a stock company in Woodstock, New York. She spent the next two summers in Lake Zurich, and the rest of the time performing in Woodstock playing everything from young girls to grandmothers.
In 1948, she made her New York City debut with an Off-Broadway production of "Seven Mirrors." She spent the next four years performing with Off-Broadway groups and summer stock in New Jersey. She also performed character parts on radio shows. In 1952, she had the lead in an Off-Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke." That production caused a sensation, not only with critics but with a growing audience marking the first big hit Off-Broadway. Page won the Drama Critics Award, becoming the first person from a non-Broadway production to receive such an award.
Page put off a number of film offers and instead played leading roles on radio and television, and made her Broadway debut in January 1953 in Vina Delmar's play "Mid-Summer." Although the play was dismissed by most critics, she was hailed by critics for her portrayal of an uneducated woman married to a schoolteacher.
In the fall of 1953, she made her film debut opposite John Wayne in the western Hondo (1953). Although she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, she wasn't offered any good parts in Hollywood and returned to New York.
During the 1950s, Page's theater career flourished. She played a variety of roles on Broadway including a vindictive wife of a homosexual in "The Immoralist," to a lonely spinster in "The Rainmaker." She also made frequent radio and television appearances and honed her craft at the Actors Studio. It was in the fall of 1959 that Page starred opposite Paul Newman in Tennessee Williams's "Sweet Bird of Youth." Her role as a pathetic fading movie star earned universal praise, her first Tony Award nomination, and interest again from Hollywood. It was also when she met and married one of her co-stars, actor Rip Torn.
In 1961 she starred in the film version of Summer and Smoke (1961) and in 1962 in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). She earned consecutive Golden Globe awards as well as Academy Award nominations for these two performances.
From now on, Page divided her time between the stage and the screen. Her selectivity was high, whatever the medium. She turned down many famous roles, including the role of Martha in the original Broadway production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and the role of Chris MacNeil in the film "The Exorcist." She was first and foremost a character actress who believed in repertory. She tended to accept parts that were very different from the one she had just played and often liked to rotate between leading roles and supporting roles.
Despite the fact that she was such a highly respected stage actress, very few of her Broadway productions after "Sweet Bird of Youth" were hits, and often closed after just a few performances. The few productions that were hits included revivals of "Strange Interlude" and "The Three Sisters." Most of her better stage work through the rest of her life came in productions Off-Broadway, or in regional theaters across the country. She liked touring the United States and performing theater in states and cities often neglected by Broadway touring companies. In the 1960s, some of her notable film work included "The Happiest Millionaire," "What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice" and "You're a Big Boy Now." She earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the latter. She also won two Emmy Awards for television work.
In the 1970s one of her few hits on Broadway was as a banker's alcoholic wife in "Absurd Person Singular." This role netted her a second Tony Award nomination. One of her bigger triumphs on the stage was the Sanctuary Theater Company which she and her husband Rip Torn founded off-Broadway. Although it only lasted a couple of years, it gave young actors a chance to work, and many of the productions were given rave reviews by critics. Some of her more memorable film roles in the 1970s included a nosy matchmaker in Pete 'n' Tillie (1972) (Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress), a controversial religious leader in The Day of the Locust (1975), the voice of the villain Madame Medusa in The Rescuers (1977) and the suicidal mother in Interiors (1978) (Oscar nomination as Best Actress).
In the 1980s, she began teaching acting at the Pelican Theater School. In 1982 she had another triumph on Broadway as Mother Superior in "Agnes of God," a role which earned her a third Tony Award nomination. In 1983 she co-founded the Mirror Repertory Company, an Off-Broadway theater group dedicated to preserving the art of repertory theater. She performed and directed in a variety of productions with the group. She continued to work in films despite her hectic theater schedule. One of her film roles in 1984 was a scene stealing bit part as a chain-smoking mother of a murdered cop in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). She received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. With that she became the first woman to receive seven Oscar nominations for acting without a single win. In 1985, she starred in the independent film The Trip to Bountiful (1985). Based on Horton Foote's play, it tells the story of a 60-year-old woman who yearns to run away from her cramped city apartment that she shares with her son and daughter-in-law, to see the old country town where she grew up. Page's performance was hailed by critics and she began to rack up a number of award nominations. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, making it her eighth try for the golden boy. Although Meryl Streep looked like a sure bet for Out of Africa (1985), many critics predicted Page would emerge as the dark horse winner. When F. Murray Abraham opened the envelope on Oscar night he announced "Ah! I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language. The winner is Geraldine Page in 'The Trip to Bountiful!'" As Page scrambled to find her shoes which she had kicked under her seat, Meryl Streep led the long standing ovation for her.
In the 1980s she received a number of other honors. She received several lifetime achievement awards from various theater groups. In 1983, she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a Tony Award. In the spring of 1987, Page took a break from the Mirror Theater, to return to Broadway in a revival of "Blithe Spirit." For her leading performance as the wacky medium, she was nominated for her fourth Tony Award. Many critics predicted her to be the sentimental favorite for the award. She did not win. Six days after the Tony Awards ceremony, she died of a heart attack, leaving behind her husband and their three children. She was 62 years old. A memorial service was held at a Broadway theater and numerous actors and celebrities paid their respects including Meryl Streep, Jessica Tandy, and Paul Newman among others. Ronald and Nancy Reagan had flowers sent from the White House to the memorial service.
Page dedicated her life to her craft and is regarded as one of the most important actresses of the 20th century. She appeared in 28 films, 16 Broadway plays, memorable television plays and radio plays, and innumerable repertory, stock, regional and Off-Broadway performances. As People magazine noted: "Geraldine Page wasn't resting on her laurels at the time of her death; she was on a role. After a performance, she asked, 'I wasn't overdone, was I?' Then she added with a smile, 'Wasn't I exquisite?' As ever, she was."- Actress
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Tall, luminous and leonine, the legendary Colleen Dewhurst must go down as one of the theater's finest contemporary tragediennes of the late 1900s. With trademark dusky tones and a majestically careworn appearance, she possessed an inimitable down-to-earth fierceness that not only earned her the title "Queen of Off-Broadway" but allowed her to put a fiery and formidable stamp on a number of Eugene O'Neill's heroines. She was no slouch in the on-camera department, either, reaping trophies for a host of wryly comedic and electrifying dramatic turns on TV. While most of her towering achievements occurred in mid- to late career, she quickly made up for lost time. In addition, she and two-time actor/husband George C. Scott became an acting force together throughout much of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Colleen Rose Dewhurst was born on June 3, 1924, in Montreal, Quebec, the only child of Ferdinand Augustus "Fred" Dewhurst, a hockey and football player who later became sales manager of a lighting concern to support his family. Her mother, Frances Marie (nee Woods), a homemaker, was a Christian Science practitioner. Raised in the United States from the age of 13 (mostly in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin), she graduated from Riverside High School in Milwaukee in 1942 and then enrolled at Milwaukee's Downer College for Young Ladies. Working such odd jobs as a receptionist and elevator operator in between summer-stock engagements, she prepared for the stage in New York at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she met and later married fellow acting student James Vickery in 1947. She also took up studies with such illustrious teachers as Harold Clurman and Tyrone Guthrie.
Dewhurst played Julia Cavendish in "The Royal Family" while a student at Carnegie Lyceum in 1946. However, it took six years for her to make her professional debut at the ANTA in New York with a small dancing role in O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" (1952). In 1963, she won an Obie Award in the same play's leading role, Abbie. She built up her esteemed resumé gradually. In 1956 Joseph Papp featured her strongly at his New York Shakespeare Festival with roles in "Tamburlaine the Great", "Titus Andronicus", "Camille" (title part), "The Taming of the Shrew" (as Kate), and "The Eagle Has Two Heads". She won another Obie Award for her combined performances in the last three productions mentioned. The following year she portrayed Lady Macbeth in "Macbeth" and Mrs. Squeamish in "The Country Wife".
Dewhurst divorced her first husband, actor James Vickery in 1959 after meeting George C. Scott during the 1958 run of Broadway's "Children of Darkness", for which she won a Theatre World Award. Scott divorced his wife to marry Dewhurst in 1960 (ex-husband Vickery later married actress Diana Muldaur). Scott and Dewhurst had two children, Alexander Robert Scott ("Alex") and Campbell Scott.
Dewhurst's signature O'Neill role was that of Irish-American Josie Hogan in "The Moon for the Misbegotten". She first played the part in 1958 in Italy, then tackled the role again in 1965 in a production in Buffalo, New York. The third time was the charm when she recreated the role on Broadway in December of 1973 at age 49, not only earning the coveted Tony Award (her second), but the Los Angeles Drama Critics and Sarah Siddons awards as well. Over the years, O'Neill's plays would benefit greatly from her searing, impassioned performances, which included Sara in "More Stately Mansions," Christine Mannon in "Mourning Becomes Electra," Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night," Essie Miller in "Ah, Wilderness!" and, of course, Abbie Putnam in "Desire Under the Elms". In 1987, she portrayed Carlotta Monterey O'Neill (Eugene's wife) in an acclaimed one-woman show, "My Gene", in New York.
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Dewhurst became a frequent contender at the Tony Awards ceremonies. She won her first Tony for James Agee's "All the Way Home" in 1960, and went on to be nominated for "Great Day in the Morning" (1962), "The Ballad of the Sad Café" (1963), "More Stately Mansions" (1967), "All Over" (1971), "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1972) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1976). One of her few career failures was directing the Broadway production of "Ned & Jack", which opened and closed the same night on November 8, 1981. Very much a theater activist, she joined several advisory boards in her time and became president of the Actor's Equity Association in 1985, serving until her death six years later.
While Dewhurst and then-husband Scott were heralded for their explosive appearances together on stage ("Desire Under the Elms" [both won Obies], "Antony and Cleopatra," "The Lion in Winter"), film (The Last Run (1971)) and TV (The Crucible (1967)), the couple's personal relationship was equally turbulent. Separated in 1963 and divorced in 1965, they remarried two years later. After appearing together in "The Last Run", Scott and Dewhurst parted ways again when he took up with another actress from the movie, Trish Van Devere, whom he later married. Scott and Dewhurst had two sons together and remained amicable.
Preferring the stage, Dewhurst was vastly underused on the big screen. Despite showing Hollywood her potential on film with a small but spectacular, spine-tingling role as an asylum patient who nearly does in poor Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959), she offered only a sprinkling of film roles over the years--Man on a String (1960), A Fine Madness (1966), The Cowboys (1972), McQ (1974), Ice Castles (1978), When a Stranger Calls (1979), Tribute (1980), The Dead Zone (1983), The Boy Who Could Fly (1986), Termini Station (1989) and Dying Young (1991).
Better utilized on TV, the multiple Emmy Award winner appeared delightfully as Candice Bergen's brash worldly mother on the popular Murphy Brown (1988), earning two of her Emmy statuettes. The other two came for her strong supporting performances in the mini-movies Between Two Women (1986) and Those She Left Behind (1989). In 1985, she played Marilla Cuthbert in Kevin Sullivan's strong adaptation of Anne of Green Gables (1985) and continued her role in the mini-movie Anne of Avonlea (1987). She graced Sullivan's series Avonlea (1990) with the same character in a recurring format. Sadly, Dewhurst died before her role could be written out of the show properly. A touching death scene was edited into one episode as a tribute.
Diagnosed with cervical cancer, Colleen's fervent Christian Science beliefs led her to refuse any kind of surgical treatment. She died at age 67 at the pet-friendly South Salem, New York, farmhouse she shared with her companion (since 1974), producer Ken Marsolais on August 22, 1991. Two months later, her ex-husband George C. Scott starred in and directed a production of "On Borrowed Time", dedicating the show to her memory. Both of their sons, Alexander Robert Scott ("Alex") and Campbell Scott entered the entertainment field. Alex became a theatrical manager and writer, while Campbell has appeared on stage and in films. He appeared with his mother on Broadway in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Ah, Wilderness!" (both by Eugene O'Neill) in the late 1980s, and in the film "Dying Young (1991)" (one of her last performances).
Her autobiography, incomplete at the time of her death (she had been working on it for nearly 15 years), finally arrived in bookstores in 1997, six years after her death.- Actress
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They say big things often come in small packages, and never was that saying more true than when sizing up the talents of that diminutive dynamo Nancy Walker. Born Anna Myrtle Swoyer in Philadelphia on May 10, 1922, she lived a born-in-a-trunk existence as the daughter of vaudevillian Dewey Barto (né Stewart Steven Swoyer). At the time of his run of Broadway's "Hellzapoppin", Barto was part of the comedy team of Barto & Mann (George Mann). Her younger sister, Betty Lou Barto (born 1930), had a less impressive and briefer performing career. Although she had designs on becoming a legit singer, it was hard for others to take Nancy seriously with her naturally aggressive manner backed up by this tiny frame. Comedy became her forte.
Broadway legend George Abbott picked up on her innate comic abilities immediately and set her up as his blind date in the Broadway musical smash "Best Foot Forward" in 1941. The show, starring June Allyson, was a certifiable hit, and when MGM turned Best Foot Forward (1943) into a musical film, Nancy, as well as June, went right along with it. Nancy continued giving top support for MGM in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney starrer Girl Crazy (1943) and in Broadway Rhythm (1944). Back on Broadway, Nancy all but stole the proceedings as the hoydenish cabbie Hildy Esterhazy, who pursues a sailor on leave, in "On the Town" (1944). After a brief first marriage, she met vocal coach David Craig during the 1948 run of "Look, Ma, I'm Dancing", when she was plagued by vocal problems. They married a few years later and had a daughter, Miranda. When Nancy left the show, she was replaced by her sister, Betty Lou Barto. Other musical plaudit came her way, including Tony nominations for the revue "Phoenix '55" and for her lead role in "Do Re Mi" with Phil Silvers.
Nancy experienced some tough, lean years in the late 1950s and 1960s until she found TV an accepting medium. She became popular all over again, and a household name to boot, as Rosie the waitress in a series of Bounty paper-towel commercials. At around the same time, she won a regular role as Mildred, the sardonic maid on McMillan & Wife (1971). Her prototypical wisecracking role, however, came as the outlandish Jewish mom Ida Morgenstern, mother of Valerie Harper's "Rhoda" character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970).
When Harper spun off into her own series--Rhoda (1974)--interfering Ida was right alongside her still-unmarried daughter, wreaking havoc. Alas, nominated for eight Emmys and four Golden Globe Awards for her collective work on series TV, she never won. Her renewed popularity, however, led to a couple of TV star vehicles that plainly didn't suit her second-banana talents. Neither lasted very long. She eventually moved into stage and film directing. Nancy made her final regular TV-series appearance on the sitcom True Colors (1990), playing another of her long line of delightfully brash buttinskys. During the run of the show, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and died about six weeks before her 70th birthday in 1992. She was survived by her husband, daughter, and sister.- Actress
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Ms. Lindfors was a Swedish-born actress whose stage and screen career in the U.S. and Sweden spanned more than half a century. She was brought to Hollywood in 1946 by Warner Brothers in the hope that she would be a new Greta Garbo or Ingrid Bergman. She appeared with Ronald Reagan in her first Hollywood film, Don Siegel's Night Unto Night (1949). Perhaps best known as a stage actress, she returned to Sweden in August 1995 to tour with the play "In Search of Strindberg".- Constance Ford began her career in television in the 1950s, performing in live television dramas on Studio One (1948), Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950), Goodyear Playhouse (1951), and other acclaimed series, and playing recurring characters in four afternoon serials; "Rose Peabody" in Search for Tomorrow (1951), "Lynn Sherwood" in Woman with a Past (1954), "Eve Morris" in The Edge of Night (1956) and "Ada Davis Downs Hobson" in Another World (1964).
Ford's assertive style made her a favorite of TV casting directors, and she was often featured in episodes of Ponds Theater (1953), Bat Masterson (1958), Rawhide (1959), Gunsmoke (1955), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Twilight Zone (1959), and other series, as tough but sensible career women. - Sultry, brunette Faith Domergue was born in New Orleans, part Creole, but primarily of Irish and English extraction. She was adopted when she was six weeks old. In 1927 her adoptive parents took her to live in California, where she was educated at Catholic schools in Santa Monica. She had her first flirt with the acting profession while still at school, on stage at the Bliss Hayden Theatre. Just after her graduation she suffered a disfiguring injury during a car accident when she was thrown into a windshield, and spent 18 months undergoing intensive plastic surgery. Still in her teens, she was briefly married to Acapulco night club owner and bandleader Teddy Stauffer.
By 1941 she was properly back in circulation. "Discovered" by a Warner Brothers talent scout, she was signed to a contract and her name streamlined a la Hollywood to "Faith Dorn". Sometime at the end of May that year young Faith found herself at a studio party (it was not unheard of for underage ingénues to be thrown together with rich or influential men) given on board the Southern Cross, a yacht owned by billionaire Howard Hughes. Hughes, 21 years her senior, became quickly infatuated with the teenager and bought out her contract from Warner Brothers for $50,000, then signed her to the studio he owned, RKO Pictures. He also mollified her adoptive parents by buying them a house, and he paid for Faith to take lessons to perfect her diction and acting. The romantic affair continued on-and-off until mid-1943, and was eventually scuttled by Hughes' various indiscretions with stars Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth.
In 1945 Faith reclaimed her original name, Domergue (insisting it be pronounced "Dah-mure") and, by the following year, made her screen debut in Young Widow (1946), a film starring another Hughes find, Jane Russell. Hughes then spent the extravagant--for the time--amount of $3.2 million on Vendetta (1950), the picture that was to catapult Faith to stardom. Three directors went to work on the project, only to be fired in quick succession: Max Ophüls, Preston Sturges and Stuart Heisler. Faith's lack of theatrical training also proved to be a detriment. The picture was eventually completed by Mel Ferrer, but not released until 1950. When it finally arrived in cinemas, it--like Hughes other fiasco, the Spruce Goose--failed to take off. An earlier effort, the film noir Where Danger Lives (1950), was also released at this time. It starred Domergue in the role as a homicidal femme fatale, opposite Robert Mitchum as the lover she manipulates into taking the blame for her murdering millionaire hubby Claude Rains. In spite of another huge publicity campaign, with Faith featured on the cover of "Look" Magazine and articles in numerous other publications, this film also performed indifferently at the box office and caused Hughes to lose interest in his erstwhile protégé.
During the next few years Faith began to freelance at other studios, appearing in westerns: The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), with Audie Murphy; The Great Sioux Uprising (1953), with Jeff Chandler; and Santa Fe Passage (1955) with John Payne at Republic. In 1955 she starred in the first of a trio of sci-fi/horror outings for which she is chiefly remembered. In This Island Earth (1955), shot in Technicolor at Universal, she played a scientist kidnapped by aliens and, with her colleagues, pressed into service defending their world against interplanetary attack. Helped by a clever script and make-up artist Bud Westmore's $24,000 creation of a bug-eyed mutant monster, the film was a huge success and has become a cult favorite. Faith essayed yet another scientist engaged in destroying Ray Harryhausen's giant octopus (six-tentacled, because of the minuscule budget) in It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). In Cult of the Cobra (1955), Faith replaced Mari Blanchard in the role of the high-priestess of a cobra-worshiping cult who assumes the shape of a serpent in order to kill six GIs who have witnessed a secret ceremony.
Following her separation from Argentine writer/director Hugo Fregonese, Faith made three films in England, most notably as queen of the London underworld in Vernon Sewell's Spin a Dark Web (1956) (aka "Spin a Dark Web"). During the 1960s she concentrated on television and appeared in everything from Bonanza (1959) to Combat! (1962), from Perry Mason (1957) to Bronco (1958). After making several films in Italy (and getting married for a third time, to assistant director and theatrical producer Paolo Cossa in 1966)) , she revisited the horror genre in the cheap but cheerful The House of Seven Corpses (1974), as the emotive star of a horror movie who awakens the deceased after reading from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead".
Faith Domergue never quite made it as a major star, unlike Jane Russell. She did, however, acquire something of a cult following because of her involvement in the seminal This Island Earth (1955), as well as her other science-fiction films from this period. Ironically, Faith later confessed that she never much cared for the genre. - Actress
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A leading lady of the 1940s, the tall and blonde Foch usually played cool, aloof and often foreign, women of sophistication. As film roles became harder to find, Foch proved to be versatile in many areas. She was a panelist on several TV quiz shows, worked as George Stevens' assistant director for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and directed plays. Since the 1960s, she has been an acting teacher for USC and the American Film Institute.- Actress
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Ann Miller was born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier on April 12, 1923 in Chireno, Texas. She lived there until she was nine, when her mother left her philandering father and moved with Ann to Los Angeles, California. Even at that young age, she had to support her mother, who was hearing-impaired and unable to hold a job. After taking tap-dancing lessons, she got jobs dancing in various Hollywood nightclubs while being home-schooled. Then, in 1937, RKO asked her to sign on as a contract player, but only if she could prove she was 18. Though she was really barely 14, she managed to get hold of a fake birth certificate, and so was signed on, playing dancers and ingénues in such films as Stage Door (1937), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Room Service (1938) and Too Many Girls (1940). In 1939, she appeared on Broadway in "George White's Scandals" and was a smash, staying on for two years. Eventually, RKO released her from her contract, but Columbia Pictures snapped her up to appear in such World War II morale boosters as True to the Army (1942) and Reveille with Beverly (1943). When she decided to get married, Columbia released her from her contract. The marriage was sadly unhappy and she was divorced in two years. This time, MGM picked her up, showcasing her in such films as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949) and Kiss Me Kate (1953). In the mid-1950s, she asked to leave to marry again, and her request was granted. This marriage didn't last long, either, nor did a third. Ann then threw herself into work, appearing on television, in nightclubs and on the stage. She was a smash as the last actress to headline the Broadway production of "Mame" in 1969 and 1970, and an even bigger smash in "Sugar Babies" in 1979, which she played for nine years, on Broadway and on tour. She has cut back in recent years, but did appear in the Paper Mill Playhouse (Millburn, New Jersey) production of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" in 1998, in which she sang the song "I'm Still Here", a perfect way to sum up the life and career of Ann Miller. On January 22, 2004, Ann Miller died at age 80 of lung cancer and was buried at the Holy Cross Cemetary in Culver City, California.- Actress
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Enigmatic, dark-haired foreign import Alida Valli was dubbed "The Next Garbo" but didn't live up to postwar expectations despite her cool, patrician beauty, remote allure and significant talent. Born in Pola, Italy (now Croatia), on May 3, 1921, the daughter of a Tridentine journalist and professor and an Istrian homemaker, she studied dramatics as a teen at the Motion Picture Academy of Rome and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia before snaring bit roles in such films as Il cappello a tre punte (1935) ["The Three-Cornered Hat"] and I due sergenti (1936) ["The Two Sergeants"]. She made a name for herself in Italy during WWII playing the title role in Manon Lescaut (1940), won a Venice Film Festival award for Piccolo mondo antico (1941) ["Little Old World"] and was a critical sensation in We the Living (1942) ["We the Living"]. She briefly abandoned her career, however, in 1943, refusing to appear in what she considered fascist propaganda, and was forced into hiding. The next year she married surrealist painter/pianist/composer Oscar De Mejo. They had two children, and one of them, Carlo De Mejo, became an actor. She divorced in 1955, then she came back to Italy,
Following her potent, award-winning work in the title role of Eugenie Grandet (1946), she was discovered and contracted by David O. Selznick to play the murder suspect Maddalena Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). She was billed during her Hollywood years simply as "Valli," and Selznick also gave her top femme female billing in Carol Reed's classic film noir The Third Man (1949), but for every successful film--such as the ones previously mentioned--she experienced such failures as The Miracle of the Bells (1948), and audiences stayed away. In 1951 she bid farewell to Hollywood and returned to her beloved Italy. In Europe again, she was sought after by the best directors. Her countess in Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954) was widely heralded, and she moved easily from ingénue to vivid character roles. Later standout films encompassed costume dramas as well as shockers and had her playing everything from baronesses to grandmothers in such films as Eyes Without a Face (1960) ["Eyes Without a Face"], Le gigolo (1960), Oedipus Rex (1967) ["Oedipus Rex"], The Big Scare (1974), 1900 (1976), Suspiria (1977), Luna (1979), Inferno (1980), Aspern (1982), A Month by the Lake (1995) and, her most recent, Angel of Death (2001).- Actress
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Born into a prominent Mormon family in Utah, Laraine Day's acting career began after her parents moved to Long Beach, California, where she joined the Long Beach Players. She appeared in her first film in 1937 in a bit part, then did leads in several George O'Brien westerns. Signing a contract with MGM, she achieved popularity playing the part of Nurse Lamont in that studio's "Dr. Kildare" series. An attractive, engaging performer, she had leads in several medium-budget films for various studios, but never achieved major stardom. She was married for 13 years to baseball manager Leo Durocher, and took such an active interest in his career and the sport of baseball in general that she became known as "The First Lady of Baseball".- Actress
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Whether portraying a glum, withering wallflower, a drab and dowdy housewife, a klutzy maid or a cynical gossip, eccentric character comedienne Alice Ghostley had the ability to draw laughs from the skimpiest of material with a simple fret or whine. Making a name for herself on the Tony-winning Broadway stage, her eternally forlorn looks later evolved as an amusingly familiar plain-Jane presence on TV sitcoms and in an occasional film or two during the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Alice was born in a whistle-stop railroad station in the tiny town of Eve, Missouri, where her father was employed as a telegraph operator. She grew up in various towns in the Midwest (Arkansas, Oklahoma) and began performing from the age of 5 where she was called upon to recite poetry, sing and tap-dance. Spurred on by a high school teacher, she studied drama at the University of Oklahoma but eventually left in order to pursue a career in New York with her sister Gladys.
Teaming together in an act called "The Ghostley Sisters", Alice eventually went solo and developed her own cabaret show as a singer and comedienne. She also toiled as a secretary to a music teacher in exchange for singing lessons, worked as a theater usherette in order to see free stage shows, paid her dues as a waitress, worked once for a detective agency, and even had a stint as a patch tester for a detergent company. No glamourpuss by any stretch of the imagination, she built her reputation as a singing funny lady.
The short-statured, auburn-haired entertainer received her star-making break singing the satirical ditty "The Boston Beguine" in the Broadway stage revue "New Faces of 1952", which also showcased up-and-coming stars Eartha Kitt, Carol Lawrence, Hogan's Heroes co-star Robert Clary and Paul Lynde to whom she would be invariably compared to what with their similarly comic demeanors. The film version of New Faces (1954)_ featured pretty much the same cast. She and "male counterpart" Lynde would appear together in the same films and/or TV shows over the years.
With this momentum started, she continued on Broadway with the short-lived musicals "Sandhog" (1954) featuring Jack Cassidy, "Trouble in Tahiti" (1955), "Shangri-La" (1956), again starring Jack Cassidy, and the legit comedy "Maybe Tuesday" (1958). A reliable sketch artist, she fared much better on stage in the 1960s playing a number of different characterizations in both "A Thurber Carnival" (1960), and opposite Bert Lahr in "The Beauty Part" (1962), for which she received a Tony nomination. She finally nabbed the Tony trophy as "featured actress" for her wonderful work as Mavis in the comedy play "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" (1965).
By this time Alice had established herself on TV. She and good friend Kaye Ballard stole much of the proceedings as the evil stepsisters in the classic Julie Andrews version of Cinderella (1957), and she also recreated her Broadway role in a small screen adaptation of _Shangri-La (1960) (TV)_. Although it was mighty hard to take away her comedy instincts, she did appear in a TV production of "Twelfth Night" as Maria opposite Maurice Evans' Malvolio, and graced such dramatic programs as "Perry Mason" and "Naked City", as well as the film To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). She kept herself in the TV limelight as a frequent panelist on such game shows as "The Hollywood Squares" and "The Match Game".
Enjoying a number of featured roles in such lightweight comedy fare as My Six Loves (1963) with Debbie Reynolds, With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) starring Doris Day, and the Joan Rivers starrer Rabbit Test (1978), she also had a small teacher role in the popular film version of Grease (1978). Alice primarily situated herself, however, on the sitcom circuit and appeared in a number of recurring 'nervous Nellie" roles, topping it off as the painfully shy, dematerializing and accident-prone witch nanny Esmeralda in Bewitched (1964) from 1969-1972 (replacing the late Marion Lorne, who had played bumbling Aunt Clara), and as the batty friend Bernice in Designing Women (1986).
In 1978 Alice replaced Dorothy Loudon as cruel Miss Hannigan in "Annie", her last Broadway stand. Alice would play the mean-spirited scene-stealer on and off for nearly a decade in various parts of the country. Other musicals during this time included "Take Me Along", "Bye, Bye Birdie" (as the overbearing mother), and the raucous revue "Nunsense".
A series of multiple strokes ended her career come the millennium and she passed away of colon cancer on September 21, 2007. Her long-time husband of fifty years, Italian comedic actor Felice Orlandi died in 2003. The couple had no children.- Actress
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Gail Russell was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 21, 1924. She remained in the Windy City, going to school until her parents moved to California when she was 14. She was an above-average student in school and upon graduation from Santa Monica High School was signed by Paramount Studios.
Because of her ethereal beauty, Gail was to be groomed to be one of Paramount's top stars. She was very shy and had virtually no acting experience to speak of, but her beauty was so striking that the studio figured it could work with her on her acting with a studio acting coach.
Gail's first film came when she was 19 years old with a small role as "Virginia Lowry" in Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour (1943) in 1943. It was her only role that year, but it was a start. The following year she appeared in another film, The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland (it was also the first time Gail used alcohol to steady her nerves on the set, a habit that would come back to haunt her). It was a very well done and atmospheric horror story that turned out to be a profitable one for the studio. Gail's third film was the charm, as she co-starred with Diana Lynn in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944) that same year. The film was based on the popular book of the time and the film was even more popular.
In 1945 Gail appeared in Salty O'Rourke (1945), a story about crooked gamblers involved in horse racing. Although she wasn't a standout in the film, she acquitted herself well as part of the supporting cast. Later that year she appeared in The Unseen (1945), a story about a haunted house, starring Joel McCrea. Gail played Elizabeth Howard, a governess of the house in question. The film turned a profit but was not the hit that Paramount executives hoped for.
In 1946 Gail was again teamed with Diana Lynn for a sequel to "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay"--Our Hearts Were Growing Up (1946). The plot centered around two young college girls getting involved with bootleggers. Unfortunately, it was not anywhere the caliber of the first film and it failed at the box-office. With Calcutta (1946) in 1947, however, Gail bounced back with a more popular film, this time starring Alan Ladd. Unfortunately, many critics felt that Gail was miscast in this epic drama. That same year she was cast with John Wayne and Harry Carey in the western Angel and the Badman (1947). It was a hit with the public and Gail shone in the role of Penelope Worth, a feisty Quaker girl who tries to tame gunfighter Wayne. Still later Gail appeared in Paramount's all-star musical, Variety Girl (1947). The critics roasted the film, but the public turned out in droves to ensure its success at the box-office. After the releases of Song of India (1949), El Paso (1949), and Captain China (1950), Gail married matinée idol Guy Madison, one of the up-and-coming actors in Hollywood.
After The Lawless (1950) in 1950 Paramount decided against renewing her contract, mainly because of Gail's worsening drinking problem. She had been convicted of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, and the studio didn't want its name attached to someone who couldn't control her drinking. Being dumped by Paramount damaged her career, and film roles were coming in much more slowly. After Air Cadet (1951) in 1951, her only film that year, she disappeared from the screen for the next five years while she attempted to get control of her life. She divorced Madison in 1954.
In 1956 Gail returned in 7 Men from Now (1956). It was a western with Gail in the minor role of Annie Greer. The next year she was fourth-billed in The Tattered Dress (1957), a film that also starred Jeanne Crain and Jeff Chandler. The following year she had a reduced part in No Place to Land (1958), a low-budget offering from "B" studio Republic Pictures.
By now the demons of alcohol had her in its grasp. She was again absent from the screen until 1961's The Silent Call (1961) (looking much older than her 36 years). It was to be her last film. On August 26, 1961, Gail was found dead in her small studio apartment in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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Best known for the role of Florida Evans on the 1970s sitcoms Maude (1972) and Good Times (1974), African-American actress Esther Rolle proved to be as spirited and iron-willed off-camera as well. The gap-toothed actress with the gravelly voice was born in Pompano Beach, Florida, the 10th child of 18 born to Caribbean farming immigrants. Her first important work came with the Negro Ensemble Company and over the years would earn a solid careworn reputation in such theater plays as "The Blacks", "Blues for Mister Charlie", "The Amen Corner", "A Raisin in the Sun" and "A Member of the Wedding". Ironically, her father insisted she promise him that she would never become a servant or maid in real life. She didn't, and however Esther would have her biggest successes playing just those types of roles. She caught the attention of television producer Norman Lear while performing on stage who cast her in the Maude (1972) supporting role in 1972. Audiences loved her so much as the feisty domestic who stood her ground, and then some, against her volatile and liberal-minded employer Maude Findley (Bea Arthur), that Esther earned her own spin-off series with Good Times (1974). Compelled to fight racial stereotypes, she insisted before accepting the series that a strong father figure be central in the show (actor John Amos). And while she still played the role of a lower middle-class maid, the show's emphasis was to be on her home and family life, not her outside work. Still, Esther left the show for one season when she was unhappy about the negative role model perpetuated by Jimmie 'JJ' Walker's jive-talking character J.J., but later returned after the producers assured her that more responsibility would be taken. In other assignments, she won an Emmy Award for the television movie Summer of My German Soldier (1978) and gained further respect for her work in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979) and for her film work in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Rosewood (1997). Two of her sisters, Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter, were also character actresses. Afflicted with diabetes, Esther's health failed in the 1990s and toward the end of her life she was on kidney dialysis. The actress, who was divorced and had no children, died nine days after her 78th birthday on November 17, 1998.- Actress
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Nancy Kulp wore many hats: Publicity person, actress, linguist, would-be politician, and teacher. Originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Kulp attended college in Florida, then headed for Hollywood to work in publicity for the movies, not star in them. Soon after arriving in Hollywood, Kulp was convinced by director George Cukor and casting director Billy Gordon that she should be in front of the camera, not behind the scenes. She then began a solid career as a character actress in films and television, including two memorable roles: on The Bob Cummings Show (1955) as bird-loving "Pamela Livingstone", and on The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) as the long-suffering, lovesick, and bird-loving "Miss Jane Hathaway". After the Hillbillies ended its 9-year run, Kulp found work in theater, Broadway, and television, and dabbled in politics, making an unsuccessful 1984 run for Congress in Pennsylvania. Later, she taught acting and retired to a farm in Connecticut and, later, Palm Springs, where she died of cancer in 1991.- Actress
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Joyous scene-stealer Janis Paige started out playing rather bland film ingénues, but never seemed to be comfortable in those roles--she had too much snap, crackle and pop to be confined in such a formulaic way.
Born Donna Mae Tjaden in 1922 in Tacoma, Washington, she was singing in public from age 5 in local amateur shows. She moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school and earned a job as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during the war years. The Canteen, which was a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen, is where she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout, who saw potential in her and signed her up. She began co-starring in secondary musicals that often paired her with either Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. Later she was relegated to rugged adventures and dramas that just seemed out of her element. Following her role in the forgettable Two Gals and a Guy (1951), she decided to leave the Hollywood scene. She took to the Broadway boards and scored a huge hit with the 1951 comedy-mystery play "Remains to Be Seen", co-starring Jackie Cooper. She also toured successfully as a cabaret singer, performing everywhere from New York to Miami to Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Definitive stardom came in 1954 with the feisty role of Babe in Broadway's "The Pajama Game" opposite John Raitt. Her old Warner Bros. rival Doris Day, however, was a bigger name and went on to play the role on film (The Pajama Game (1957)) with Raitt. After a six-year hiatus, Janis returned to films in tongue-and-cheek support, all but stealing Silk Stockings (1957) from co-stars Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. She then grabbed her share of laughs in a flashy role with the comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960) opposite Ms. Day. Janis carried on in summer stock, playing such indomitable roles as Annie Oakley in "Annie Get Your Gun", Margo Channing in "Applause", Mama Rose in "Gypsy" and Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls". From the mid-'50s on, Janis also tapped into TV with such series as It's Always Jan (1955), Lanigan's Rabbi (1976) and Trapper John, M.D. (1979). In the 1990s, among other TV appearances, she had recurring roles on the daytime serials General Hospital (1963) and Santa Barbara (1984). Married three times, she was the widow of Disney composer Ray Gilbert, who wrote the classic children's song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah."- Actress
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Sylvia Miles was an American actress, born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, without ever winning the Award.
Miles was born under the name "Sylvia Scheinwald". Her parents were furniture maker Reuben Scheinwald and his wife Belle Feldman. Miles attended Washington Irving High School, located in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan. She received her acting education at the Actors Studio, located the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.
Miles made her theatrical debut in 1947, at the age of 23. She started appearing on television in 1954. Her film debut was the gangster film "Murder, Inc." (1960), dramatizing the career of an organized crime group active from c. 1930 to 1940. The real-life group were enforcers for the National Crime Syndicate, a loose confederation of American crime organizations.
Subsequent film appearances for Miles included the generation-gap themed drama "Parrish" (1961), the serial-killed themed horror film "Violent Midnight" (1963), and the child-labor themed drama "Pie in the Sky" (1964), Meanwhile, Miles lost a chance at television fame, when playing the character of comedy writer Sally Rogers in the 1960 pilot episode "Head of the Family". The pilot was the basis of the popular television show "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961-1966), and Sally Rogers was part of the main cast. But in the regular series, Miles was replaced by fellow actress Rose Marie (1923-2017).
Miles had a scene-stealing performance in her next film project, "Midnight Cowboy" (1969). She played Cass, an aging kept woman, who invites Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight) to her apartment for sex. The role allowed Miles to Show off her "voluptuous figure" and overall sex-appeal. For this role, she received her first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Goldie Hawn (1945-).
Miles subsequent films included the meta-fictional drama "The Last Movie" (1971), the mystery film "Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name?" (1971), and the seduction-themed comedy-drama "Heat" (1972). Her most notable role at the time was that of Jessie Halstead Florian in the crime thriller "Farewell, My Lovely". The film was the second film adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel, and depicted private detective Philip Marlowe working in a missing-person case. For her role in the film Miles received her second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Lee Grant (c. 1925-).
Miles subsequent films films included the rivalry-themed drama "92 in the Shade" (1975), the period comedy "The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday" (1976), the supernatural horror film "The Sentinel" (1977), the repossession-themed comedy "Zero to Sixty" (1978), and the heist film "Shalimar".
The 1980s opened with Miles playing murdered prostitute Madame Zena in the horror film "The Funhouse" (1981), with the murder setting off the film's main plot. She next played theatrical producer Myra Gardener in the mystery film "Evil Under the Sun" (1982). The film was an adaptation of the 1941 novel by Agatha Christie, and featured Myra as one on the film's murder suspects.
Miles' next few films included hospital-themed comedy "Critical Condition" (1987), the fairy-tale themed fantasy film "Sleeping Beauty" (1987), the romantic comedy "Crossing Delancey" (1988), the mafia-themed comedy-drama "Spike of Bensonhurst" (1988), and the revenge-themed black comedy "She-Devil" (1989). Her most notable role in this period was that of Dolores the Realtor in the corporate-raider themed drama "Wall Street" (1987), a box office hit of the time.
Miles' career slowed down in the 1990s, in part due to her increasingly poor health. She was suffering from anemia and respiratory issues. Her next few films included the friendship-themed comedy "Denise Calls Up" (1995), the marijuana-themed comedy "High Times' Potluck" (2002), and the strip-club themed comedy "Go Go Tales" (2007).
Miles returned to the role Dolores the Realtor in the sequel film "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" (2010). It was her last notable film role. She spend the last months of her life in a nursing home, and died during her transportation to a hospital in 2019. She was 94 years old, one of the oldest living actresses at the time.- A reliable featured player and occasional co-star, actress Jeff Donnell was born Jean Marie Donnell in a boys' reformatory in South Windham, Maine in 1921, the younger of schoolteacher Mildred and penologist Howard's two daughters. She took piano and dance lessons during her childhood in Maryland; she loved the popular "Mutt and Jeff" cartoon strip so much that she gave herself the nickname "Jeff."
She studied at the Yale School of Drama and performed briefly in summer stock before marrying her first husband at 19: Bill Anderson, a drama teacher from her Boston alma mater, Leland Powers Drama School. Together they started the Farragut Playhouse in Rye, New Hampshire. Almost immediately a Columbia Studios talent scout noticed her in a play there and quickly signed her.
Whisked to Los Angeles, Jeff made her first appearance in the war-era movie My Sister Eileen (1942) while husband Bill was hired on as a dialogue director. Hardly the chic, glamour-girl type, Jeff possessed a perky, unpretentious, tomboyish quality that worked comfortably in unchallenging "B" escapism --usually the breezy girlfriend or spirited bobbysoxer. Typical of her movie load at the time were the fun but innocuous Doughboys in Ireland (1943), What's Buzzin', Cousin? (1943), Nine Girls (1944), A Thousand and One Nights (1945), Carolina Blues (1944), and Eadie Was a Lady (1945). She also enlivened a number of musical westerns that prominently featured Ken Curtis (Festus of "Gunsmoke").
On a rare occasion, Jeff found herself in "A" pictures, most notably the Bogart film noir classic In a Lonely Place (1950), but more often than not she played the obliging or supportive friend of the leading lady. Unable to break away from her established "B" ranking, she later tried a move to RKO Studios (1949) but fared no better or worse. She did make a successful move to TV in the early 50s and was seen in a number of comedy and dramatic parts.
Long separated from and finally divorcing her first husband in 1953 (they had one son, Michael, and an adopted daughter, Sarah Jane), she married rising film actor Aldo Ray in 1954, but the marriage crumbled within two years, beset by drinking problems; she also suffered a miscarriage. She went on to marry and divorce twice more. As the 1950s rolled on, she earned steady work on TV, bringing to life comedian George Gobel's often-mentioned wife Alice on the sitcom The George Gobel Show (1954) for four seasons. She also had the opportunity to play Gidget's mom in a couple of the popular lightweight movies of the early 1960s -- Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963).
Most daytime fans will remember Jeff's long-running stint on the soap drama General Hospital (1963) as Stella Fields, the Quartermain housekeeper, which started in 1979 and lasted until her death in 1988. Dogged by ill health in later years (including a serious bout with Addison's disease), Jeff died peacefully of a heart attack in her sleep at age 66. - Actress
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Nobuko Otowa was born on 1 October 1924 in Tottori, Japan. She was an actress, known for The Strange Tale of Oyuki (1992), Onibaba (1964) and Epitome (1953). She was married to Kaneto Shindô. She died on 22 December 1994.- Actress
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The youngest of five children, and born with the drab, unlikely name of Josephine Cottle on April 5, 1922, this pleasantly appealing, Texas-born, auburn-haired beauty was only seventeen months old when her father, William, passed away. The family moved from Bloomington (her home town) to McDade (between Austin and Houston), where her mother, Minnie, made ends meet as a seamstress and milliner. The family eventually settled in Houston, where Gale took dance and ice skating lessons, developed a strong interest in acting, and performed in high school dramatics. Encouraged by her teachers, Gale by chance entered and was chosen the winner of a local radio talent contest called Jesse L. Lasky's "Gateway to Hollywood" in 1939. This took her and her mother to Hollywood, where she captured the national contest title.
Handed the more exciting stage moniker of "Gale Storm", she was soon put under contract to RKO Pictures. Although she was dropped by the studio after only six months, she had established herself enough to find work elsewhere, including at Monogram and Universal. Appearing in a number of "B" musicals, mysteries and westerns, her wholesome, open-faced prettiness made her a natural for filming. The programmers, however, that she co-starred in were hardly the talk of the town. Making her inauspicious debut with Tom Brown's School Days (1940), her '40s movies bore such dubious titles as Let's Go Collegiate (1941), Freckles Comes Home (1942), Revenge of the Zombies (1943), Sunbonnet Sue (1945), Swing Parade of 1946 (1946), and Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950), indicating the difficulty of finding material worthy of her talent. Arguably, her better movies include the family Christmas tale It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), which co-starred Don DeFore; the overlooked western comedy The Dude Goes West (1948) opposite Eddie Albert; and the film noir piece The Underworld Story (1950) with Dan Duryea.
After years of toiling in films, Gale finally turned things around at age 30 by transplanting herself to the small screen. Her very first TV series, My Little Margie (1952), which was only supposed to be a summer replacement series for I Love Lucy (1951), became one of the most watched sitcoms in the early '50s while showing up in syndicated reruns for decades. Co-starring the popular film star Charles Farrell as her amiable dad, Gale's warmth and ingratiating style suited TV to a tee, making her one of the most popular light comediennes of the time. She segued directly into her second hit series as a cruise ship director in The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956), which was better known as "Oh! Susannah" after it went into syndication. Co-starring woebegone Zasu Pitts as the ship's manicurist and her "Ethel Mertz" counterpart, this show lasted a season longer than her first.
In the midst of all this, the (gasp!) thirty-something star dared to launch her own Las Vegas nightclub and pop recording careers. Always looking much younger than she was, she produced a number of Billboard chart makers, including "I Hear You Knocking" (her first hit), "Memories Are Made of This", "Ivory Tower" and her own cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Her most successful song of the decade was "Dark Moon", which peaked at #4.
Gale's film career took a sharp decline following the demise of her second series in 1960. Most of her focus was placed modestly on the summer stock or dinner theater circuit, doing a revolving door of tailor-made comedies and musicals such as "Cactus Flower", "Forty Carats", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "South Pacific". She finally appeared again on TV in a The Love Boat (1977) segment in 1979 after nearly a two-decade absence. It was later revealed in Gale's candid autobiography "I Ain't Down Yet" (1981) and on the talk show circuit that the disappearance was triggered by a particularly vicious battle with alcohol. Years later, Gale became an outspoken and committed lecturer, helping to remove the stigma attached to such a disease, particularly as it applied to women.
Fully recovered, she has been widowed twice (by actor Lee Bonnell in 1986 and Paul Masterson in 1996). Incredibly accommodating over the years, Gale has appeared on the nostalgia and film festival circuits to the delight of her many fans. She died on June 27, 2009, at a Danville, California convalescent home at age 87.- Elizabeth Wilson was born April 4, 1921, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Marie Ethel and Dunning Wilson. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Elizabeth's film debut was in Notorious (1946) in an uncredited role. She later appeared in Patterns (1956), and her performance was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Film. With over 70 film and television appearances, we should acknowledge her work in The Graduate (1967), 9 to 5 (1980), The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), The Addams Family (1991), and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).
- Louise Latham was an American actress from Texas, whose career lasted from the 1950s to the early 2000s. She is primarily remembered for her film debut as the invalid mother Bernice Edgar, who is financially dependent on her daughter Marnie (played by Tippi Hedren). At age 42, Latham was playing the mother of 34-year-old Hedren.
In 1922, Latham was born in Hamilton, Texas. Hamilton is a small city, and had a population of about 2000 people in 1920. Hamilton has a "humid subtropical climate", with hot, humid summers and typically mild winters. Latham's family were ranchers, and she had relatives working as ranchers in both San Saba County and Mason County.
Latham received her secondary education at Sunset High School, located in Dallas. Little is known about her early adulthood. By the 1950s, Latham had started following an acting career. She was primarily a theatrical actress. Around 1954, Latham was working for the famed Texan stage director Margo Jones (1911-1955). Jones died of kidney failure in 1955, after accidentally inhaling toxic fumes.
In 1956, Latham was cast in the Broadway revival of the play "Major Barbara" (1905) by George Bernard Shaw. The play concerns the difficult relationship between self-righteous charity worker Barbara Undershaft (a Major of the Salvation Army) and her estranged father Andrew Undershaft. Andrew is a somewhat shady businessman, whose newfound wealth derives from owning a successful munitions factory. Andrew offers to help the poor by providing them with jobs and a steady income, which he argues is far more useful than providing them with a cheap meal (like his daughter). Barbara is an idealist, while Andrew is more practical in his views.
In 1958, Latham was part of touring company which performed the play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955) by Tennessee Williams. The play features the family of successful tycoon Big Daddy Pollitt gathering to celebrate his birthday. The aging patriarch is unaware that he is dying of cancer, as his family has kept the diagnosis secret from him. His potential heirs have already started scheming over who gets the lion's share of his estate. Greed and decay are among the play's main themes.
By the early 1960s, Latham was regularly performing in Broadway. She appeared in plays such as "Invitation to a March" (1960), and "Isle of Children" (1962). She received press attention when cast in a key supporting role in the psychological thriller "Marnie" (1964), despite having no experience with film roles. The film had a box office gross of about 7 million dollars, becoming the 22nd highest-grossing film of 1964. Professional film critics initially hated the film, but the film's critical reputation has improved over the years and it is often listed among director Alfred Hitchcock's best films. Latham reportedly enjoyed the experience of working in film. In a 1965 press interview, she informed the press that she was interested in more film roles.
Following her film debut, Latham started regularly appearing as a guest star in various television series. She was twice cast as the murderer in 1965 episodes of then-popular legal drama series "Perry Mason" (1957-1966). In 1966, Latham was cast in the recurring role of aunt Fran Heiger in the sitcom "Family Affair" (1966-1971). In the pilot episode, Latham's character convinces her bachelor kinsman Bill Davis to become the legal guardian of his orphaned niece Buffy Patterson Davis (played by Anissa Jones). Aunt Fran appeared once a year in the sitcom's episodes until 1968.
Latham made her second film appearance in the Western film "Firecreek" (1968). Its plot features cowardly townspeople refusing to assist a peace officer in a confrontation with outlaws. The film was primarily noted for featuring popular actors James Stewart and Henry Fonda as its co-stars. Despite being close friends in real life, the two actors rarely appeared together in films. Latham also appeared in the Vietnam War-themed war film "Hail, Hero!" (1969), which is primarily remembered as the feature film debut for actor Michael Douglas.
Latham had a supporting role in the drama film "Adam at 6 A.M." (1970), as part of the family of female lead Jerri Jo Hopper (played by Lee Purcell). The film focuses on a bored college professor, who finds a new love interest and new friends during his summer vacation in Missouri. He then has the dilemma of whether to return to his old job at summer's end, or to permanently settle in Missouri. The film was the first produced by a fledgling production company, Solar Productions. The company's owner was veteran actor Steve McQueen (1930-1980).
Latham had a more important supporting role as Mrs. Wilson in the comedy-drama film "Making It" (1971), where the cast mostly included then-popular character actors. The film's main character is an amorous 17-year-old boy, whose hobby is seducing girls and adult women. He eventually learns that his actions come with unintended consequences. Early in the film, the boy spikes the food of his virginal classmate Debbie (played by Sherry Miles) with marijuana. He then deflowers her while she is under the influence. Latham played Debbie's mother. Following a pregnancy scare for Debbie, she tries to have the boy married to her daughter. The boy instead convinces Mrs. Wilson that abortion is a more prudent option, but he has to pay for it out of his own pocket.
Latham's next film role was a supporting part in the action comedy "White Lightning" (1973). Its plot revolves around a sympathetic moonshiner who tries to expose the crimes of a corrupt sheriff, in retaliation for his brother's murder by the sheriff. The film earned about 6.5 million dollars at the box office. It was considered a "breakthrough" in the action genre for combining fast-paced action with comedic elements. It reportedly inspired the production of more action comedies, and popularized car chases and car crushes in American action films.
Latham also appeared in the crime drama film "The Sugarland Express" (1974), which focuses on a police officer taken hostage by a husband-and-wife crime duo. The plot was based on the 1969 kidnapping of police officer J. Kenneth Crone by the married couple of Robert "Bobby" Dent and Ila Fae Holiday. The film earned 12 million dollars at the box office, and won the award for Best Screenplay at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. The film is remembered for being the theatrical feature directorial debut of Steven Spielberg, who had previously only directed television films.
Latham next had a minor role in the drama film "92 in the Shade" (1975), which was both a box office-flop and a critical failure. The film features the business rivalry between a fishing guide and a sea captain in Florida, which quickly escalates to an arson case and violent retaliation. Two different versions of the film were released, one with a happy ending (where the rivals befriend each other), and one with a dramatic ending (where one of the rivals murders the other one). Neither was a hit with audiences and critics. The film was one of the first efforts of director Thomas McGuane, who had previously mainly worked as a novelist. Critics found that the film was plagued by amateur mistakes.
At about that time, Latham had the recurring role of Martha Higgins (the main character's landlady) in the short-lived Western television series "Sara" (1976). The series focused on the efforts of schoolteacher Sara Yarnell (played by Brenda Vaccaro) to introduce progressive values to a conservative town in 1870s Colorado. She regularly clashed with her landlady Martha. The series only lasted for 12 regular episodes and one television film, as it consistently received low ratings. Vaccaro received critical praise for her role and was nominated for an Emmy Award, but the ratings never improved.
In 1977, Latham was cast in the recurring role of Katherine Mitchell in the comedy-drama television series "Eight Is Enough" (1977-1981). Her character was the mother of the female leading character Sandra Sue "Abby" Mitchell, the mother-in-law of Abby's second husband Thomas "Tom" Bradford, and the step-grandmother of Tom's eight children from a previous marriage. Katherine Mitchell's last appearance in the series dealt with the character's upcoming divorce.
In the early 1980s, Latham had few television roles, despite having regularly appeared on television for decades by that time. She had a substantial supporting role in the time-travel-themed science fiction film "The Philadelphia Experiment" (1984). She played Pamela Parker, the wife of time traveler Jim Parker (played by Bobby Di Cicco). The film's plot features two sailors who accidentally time travel from the year 1943 to 1984. While Jim mysteriously disappears, his elderly wife Pamela recognizes the other time traveler and offers some explanations of what happened 40 years before. The film only earned 8. 1 million dollars at the box office, but its cast received nominations for Saturn Awards.
Also in 1984, Latham had a supporting role in the religious-themed drama film "Mass Appeal" (1984). The film primarily concerns the relationship between an aging Catholic priest and his youthful deacon. The priest is a conservative who has made a career out of charming people, telling them white lies, narrating inane jokes, and avoiding any controversial issues. The deacon is a liberal firebrand who wants the Church to make great reforms, and who is surprisingly sincere about his own bisexuality. The film grossed only 1.9 million dollars at the box office, though it was warmly received by critics. The film was one of several 1980s box-office flops for leading actor Jack Lemmon, whose career declined considerably during this period.
In the late 1980s, Latham appeared frequently in television films and resumed having guest appearances in television series. She was part of the cast in the television miniseries "Dress Gray" (1986). The series focused on the mystery of who raped and murdered cadet David Hand (played by Patrick Cassidy) within the grounds of a prestigious military academy. The series was nominated for three Emmy Awards.
Latham had a substantial role in the comedy miniseries "Fresno" (1986), which parodied prime time soap operas. She played Ethel Duke, owner of a private lake which served as the main water source for two rival ranches. Duke refuses all offers to sell her water rights. When she is accidentally killed by a ricocheting bullet, her death triggers both a murder trial and a struggle between two powerful families over who gets to bribe Duke's heir. The miniseries was nominated for five Emmy Awards.
In 1988, Latham was part of the main cast in the short-lived medical drama series "Hothouse". The series focused on the owners and staff of a psychiatric clinic. It only lasted for 7 episodes, canceled due to low ratings. The series was considered a rare failure for successful screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (1922-2006), who was the series' creator.
In 1991, Latham had a minor role in the drama film "Paradise". The film mainly focused on a 10-year-old boy's inability to deal with the end of his parents' failed marriage, and with his surrogate family's inability to deal with their own son's death in the near past. The film earned about 18.6 million dollars at the box office, though it received overwhelmingly negative reviews by critics.
In 1992, Latham had her last role in a feature film. She played in the interracial romance-themed drama "Love Field". Her role was that of Mrs. Enright, mother of the main character's boss. The film depicted Texan housewife Lurene Hallett (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) falling in love with African-American single father Paul Cater (played by Dennis Haysbert), after she wrongly accuses him of having kidnapped his own daughter. The film was a box-office flop, but was critically praised. Pfeiffer won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for this film, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Latham's last appearances in television miniseries were in two true-crime dramas. She appeared in both "Cruel Doubt" (1992) and "In Cold Blood" (1996). The first series dramatized the 1988 murder of wealthy businessman Lieth Von Stein by his stepson Christopher Wayne Pritchard, who aspired to inherit the family fortune. The second series dramatized the 1959 Clutter family murders, when four members of the same family were killed by two ex-convicts.
Latham had her last known television role in a 2000 episode of the science-fiction series "The X-Files" (1993-2002). She played Marjorie Butters (Louise Latham), a 118-year-old gardener whose life was being prolonged by an alien implant in her body. The episode featured the mysterious villain Cigarette Smoking Man (played by William B. Davis), who is claiming that he could cure and other human diseases with such alien technology. The episode has the villainous man intentionally spare the life of heroine Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson), while leaving it unclear whether he cares for her or views her as a useful pawn. The episode received critical praise, and it was the only contribution by actor William B. Davis to the series' scripts.
At age 78, Latham retired from acting. She spend her last years at Casa Dorinda, a retirement community located in Montecito, California. In 2018, Latham died there of natural causes. She was 95-years-old, and had no known family members at the time of her death. Her obituaries noted that she was still fondly remembered for various supporting roles, and for her versatility in portraying characters which were distinct in background and behavior. - Actress
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Ella Raines was born in Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, in 1920. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the University of Washington as a drama student and participated in many plays. Following graduation, she traveled to New York and the lights of Broadway. She was eventually signed by Howard Hawks and played in Corvette K-225 (1943) as the love interest of Randolph Scott. She appeared in many A pictures very quickly, including Tall in the Saddle (1944) opposite John Wayne. She co-starred in many other films opposite such stars as Vincent Price, William Powell and Brian Donlevy (turning in a good performance as a spunky garage owner in director Arthur Lubin's underrated Impact (1949)). In the early 1950s she had her own TV series, Janet Dean, Registered Nurse (1954), and also had a short-lived recording career during that period. She died in 1988.- Actress
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Best known for her role as Aunt Esther Anderson on "Sanford And Son", she appeared in many films including "Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood" (1996), "Friday" (1995), "The Legend of Dolemite" (1994), "West From North Goes South" (1993), "The Meteor Man" (1993), "CB4" (1993), "Shakes The Clown" (1991), "My Blue Heaven" (1990), "Mausoleum" (1983), "Goodbye Cruel World" (1982), "Zapped!" (1982) and "Stonestreet: Who Killed The Centerfold Maid" (1977). Page also appeared in many television series' in her career, "Redd Foxx, The E! True Hollywood Story," "Biography," "The Parent Hood," "The Sinbad Show," "Martin," "Family Matters," "Amen," "227," "Starsky And Hutch," "Different Strokes," "The Love Boat," "Redd Foxx," "B.A.D. Cats," and "Sanford And Son."- Actress
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Rose Marie was a legend of show business, with a career stretching 90 years, since her debut as her self in a Vitaphone musical short that appeared on the bill with The Jazz Singer (1927) at its premiere in 1927. According to Rose Marie, when she approached Al Jolson at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on the night of the premiere that made movie history and told him, "You were wonderful, Mr. Jolson!", his reply was, "Get away, you little brat!"
"He didn't like kids," Rose Marie explained. Her first credited appearance was in another musical short, Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder (1929) in 1929.
The legendary performer was born Rose Marie Mazetta on August 15, 1923 in New York City, the daughter of an Italian-American father, Frank Mazetta (known as Frank Curley), and Polish-American mother, Stella (Gluszcak). Blessed with a remarkable singing voice for a child that allowed her to belt out jazz songs in the "coon shouter" style of the 1920s (as exemplified by Sophie Tucker), she began performing when she was three years old as "Baby Rose Marie." By the time she was five, she had her own radio show on NBC, appearing after 'Amos and Andy' (1949)_, the most popular show in the country. Many people could not believe the voice they were hearing actually belonged to a child.
Baby Rose Marie made many appearances in films in the 1930s, most famously in International House (1933), a movie about television, the medium in which Rose Marie would win her everlasting fame. In addition to her film performances, Baby Rose Marie also appeared on records and performed in vaudeville as a headliner. One of the acts she appeared with was Edgar Bergen before his Charlie McCarthy ventriloquism act, when he was still a small-timer. A half century later, when she appeared on Murphy Brown (1988), she told star Candice Bergen, "I worked with your father in vaudeville when he was doing a doctor sketch."
When Bergen replied that she couldn't have played the nurse in the act as she was too young, Rose Marie told her that she was the headliner and he was her opening act. "She didn't care for that too much," Rose Marie remembered.
She also appeared in vaudeville with Dick Powell, Rudy Vallee and Jimmy Durante, who mentored her. She also entertained at the White House three separate times at the request of three presidents. They were Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
She transitioned to becoming a nightclub chanteuse as a teenager, playing all the big night clubs and hotels in New York, Chicago, Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Miami, Florida, usually in Mob-controlled venues. (Prominent mobsters, who called her "The Kid", liked her and protected her.) A young Milton Berle, whom she had known since she was a child, wrote some of her material, as did Morey Amsterdam, her future "Dick Van Dyke" co-star whom she knew since she was nine years old.
After the war she married trumpeter Bobby Guy of the Kay Kyser Orchestra, in 1946. She made her Broadway debut in 1951, co-starring with Phil Silvers in the hit show Top Banana (1954) (she also appeared in the 1954 film adaptation). Rose Marie also appeared on radio on "The Phil Harris - Alice Faye Show", playing the sister of Sheldon Leonard, who would later hire her for The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) in his capacity as executive producer.
Rose Marie had a career resurgence as an actress in the 1960s, starring in three sitcoms during the decade: First, My Sister Eileen (1960) in the 1960-1961 season. Second: as comedy writer "Sally Rogers" on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) from 1961 to 1966, and on The Doris Day Show (1968) from 1969 to 1971. She also appeared frequently on The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965). She was the center square at least once, and had a recurring role on Murphy Brown (1988) and Wings (1990). She appeared in a Remington Steele episode "Steele in the Spotlight (1986).
She also kept her singing career going, touring as part of the musical revue "4 Girls 4" from 1977 to 1981 with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting. In her latter years, she continued to make occasional appearances.
She died on December 28, 2017 in Van Nuys, California, at 94 years old.- Producer
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Daughter of Bernard Granville, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family. It's not surprising that she herself became a child actor, first on the stage and, at the age of 9, debuting in movies in Westward Passage (1932). She was regularly cast as a naughty little girl, as in These Three (1936) where she played Mary, an obnoxious girl spreading lies about her teachers. Her performance left an impression on the audience, and she was nominated for a best supporting actress award. In 1938-39 came the movies she is now best remembered for -- playing the bright and feisty detective/reporter Nancy Drew in the Nancy Drew series. She also appeared with Mickey Rooney in a few Andy Hardy movies. She never really had a movie breakthrough, and after marrying oil millionaire & later producer Jack Wrather, she retired from acting in the middle of the 1950s, although she went on to produce the Lassie (1954) TV series.- Actress
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Betsy Drake was born on 11 September 1923 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. She was an actress and writer, known for Every Girl Should Be Married (1948), Room for One More (1952) and The Second Woman (1950). She was married to Cary Grant. She died on 27 October 2015 in London, England, UK.- Actress
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Actress Carole Cook showed a knack for comic timing from early on, so much so that the legendary Lucille Ball took her on as a protégée. Cook would make many appearances on Ball's TV shows The Lucy Show (1962) and Here's Lucy (1968), as well as other shows like Magnum, P.I. (1980), Dynasty (1981), and Grey's Anatomy (2005). She would also appear in several movies, like Sixteen Candles (1984) and Home on the Range (2004), while maintaining an active stage career and supporting many AIDS charities.- Actress
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The girl who one day would be known as "Winnipeg's Sweetheart" was born at Grace Hospital on December 4, 1921, as Edna Mae Durbin. In her early childhood there were no obvious signs that one day she would be a bigger box office attraction than Shirley Temple. Renamed Deanna Durbin for show business purposes, by age 21 she was the most highly paid female star in the world. Her major motion pictures were Three Smart Girls (1936), Mad About Music (1938) and That Certain Age (1938). By the time she was 18 her income was $250,000 a year. Her voice was often described as "natural and beautiful" and her version of "One Fine Day" from Madame Butterfly, became a classic. Deanna was a Hollywood star in every way. There were Deanna Durbin dolls and dresses. An engineering firm named its so-called dream home in her honor. Her first screen kiss was described in a headline story across the continent. What makes Deanna Durbin's story different is that she was never comfortable with adulation. When she was at the top of her career as Hollywood's leading actress and singer, she turned her back on that world for a life of seclusion. Her first two marriages had failed, and before she married her third husband, director Charles David, she set one condition: he had to promise that she could have what she yearned for - "the life of nobody". Her seclusion is incomplete. She lives in the French village of Neauphlé-le-Château, and for over 35 years has resisted every approach from film companies. Her husband has told journalists that "Mario Lanza pleaded with her for years to make a film with him. But she will never go back to that life." She granted only one interview since 1949 to film historian David Shipman in 1983.- Actress
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She was born Adelaide Delgado on August 28, 1923 (some references list 1925) to Spanish-speaking parents. The future Adela Mara began dances lesson at age 6 and was discovered as a young teenager by the legendary Xavier Cugat. Singing and dancing with his in the Detroit area, Cugat took the beautiful, brown-eyed brunette to New York where she performed in his shows at such esteemed clubs as the Copacabana.
While touring as a singer/dancer, she was spotted in Florida by a Columbia talent scout and signed to a Hollywood contract in 1942 at age 19. Starting off in bit exotic roles in such films as Honolulu Lu (1941), she quickly grew to alluring co-starring status opposite top banana Glynis Ahearn in Shut My Big Mouth (1942). There continued playing brisk leading ladies in a series of standard, uneventful "B" films including Vengeance of the West (1942) with Tex Ritter and Alias Boston Blackie (1942) starring Chester Morris.
A couple of years later she was transformed into a sexy platinum blonde pin-up after signing with Republic Studios and kept herself quite busy predominantly cast as senorita-types opposite cowboy stars Roy Rogers in Bells of Rosarita (1945) and Gene Autry in Twilight on the Rio Grande (1947). She was also fetching fodder in crime dramas including Blackmail (1947) and Web of Danger (1947) and a pleasant diversion in adventure pictures such as Wake of the Red Witch (1948) with John Wayne and The Avengers (1950).
Arguably Adele's best parts would come with Angel in Exile (1948) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), the latter again starring Duke Wayne. Seldom was she given the chance to capitalize on her acting talents, however, and her film career waned in the mid 1950s. Her last screen appearance would be in The Big Circus (1959) with Victor Mature. Adele subsequently moved into TV and was featured in a number of guest spots, primarily in westerns. She eventually abandoned her career and settled down to raise her three sons from her 1952 marriage to TV mogul Roy Huggins who produced many hit shows including 77 Sunset Strip (1958) and Maverick (1957). On a rare occasion, she would appear as a guest in one of his efforts, including an episode of the TV series Cool Million (1972).
Huggins died in 2002 and Adele passed away eight years later of natural causes in Los Angeles on May 7, 2010. The 87-year-old actress was interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery.- Patricia received her first break into acting very soon after she graduated from Stephens College in the mid 1940s. Almost immediately after graduating, she received a contract from Columbia Pictures. They recognized that she had the rare combination of beauty, grace and intelligence that would serve her well throughout her long and well-respected career. When she first signed with Columbia Pictures, she was known as Patricia White. A few years later, in the late 1940s, she met Philip Barry Jr., who was to become her husband. Philip was a television producer-director and the son and namesake of the well-known playwright Philip Barry. By 1950, Patricia began using her married name, Barry. Patricia and Philip shared a long and happy marriage that only ended upon his death on May 16, 1998. During their marriage, they collaborated on several projects. Her husband Philip wrote and she acted in episodes of Matinee Theatre (1955) in the late 1950s. Her husband also produced several television programs that she acted in. They include: The Alcoa Hour (1955), a major dramatic TV series than ran from 1955 to 1957, a well-known TV horror film called Crowhaven Farm (1970), and two made-for-TV biographies, First, You Cry (1978), and Bogie (1980). Patricia Barry may well have been one of the hardest working actresses of her time, having performed over 130 movie and television roles. She died of age-related causes on October 12, 2016, at age 93.
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Joan Greenwood, of the plummy feline voice, was born in the well-to-do London district of Chelsea, the daughter of renowned portrait painter Sydney Earnshaw Greenwood (1887-1949). Dancing from the age of eight, she took ballet lessons and later enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Graduating at age 18, Joan made her theatrical debut in Molière's "Malade Imaginaire" at the Apollo Theatre. Performing some time later in Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women", she was noticed by Leslie Howard, who cast the diminutive lass as his leading lady in his wartime flag waver The Gentle Sex (1943). From this time onward, Joan began to alternate between stage and screen, comedy and drama. She worked during the London Blitz and toured with the Entertainment National Service Association (ENSA).
The theatre saw her in classical plays with the Donald Wolfit Company, ranging from George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House" to William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (as Ophelia), and Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler". On screen she gave a strong, sensitive performance in Eric Ambler's psychological thriller The October Man (1947). She was also effectively cast opposite Stewart Granger as the fragile, conflicted Sophie Dorothea, imprisoned in a loveless marriage, in Basil Dearden's period romance Saraband (1948). Above all, she is fondly remembered for a trio of classic Ealing comedies, conveying a measure of eroticism while remaining quintessentially "correct" and "properly British". She purred her way through Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) (as the beguiling, but manipulative Sibella) and as Scottish Peggy Macroon she taunted straight-laced Basil Radford in Whisky Galore! (1949). She was Lady Caroline Lamb in The Bad Lord Byron (1949) and she dutifully undermined idealistic, naive inventor Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) in The Man in the White Suit (1951).
In between her two other major screen roles--Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and lascivious Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones (1963)--Joan had a brief spell in Hollywood, paired again with Stewart Granger for Fritz Lang's gothic period melodrama Moonfleet (1955). She did not enjoy the experience. Eschewing the trimmings of Hollywood stardom, she opted instead for the uncomplicated life at Ealing, where actors "washed their hair in buckets" and lived on "toasted sandwiches, chocolates and soup".
Joan Greenwood died following a period of ill health on February 28, 1987, less than a week before her 66th birthday.- Linda Christian was born Blanca Rosa Welter, to a Dutch father, Gerardus Jacob Welter, and a Mexican-born mother, Blanca Rosa Vorhauer. Her Father was an executive with Royal Dutch Shell and Christian traveled extensively as a result living in South Africa, Romania, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, and Palestine at various times during her childhood This was beneficial in that the little girl - a very good pupil at school - eventually was able to speak seven languages. She also turned into a shapely young lady who won a beauty contest. She started studying medicine in Palestine but had to be repatriated to the USA due to the international situation. She landed in Los Angeles and naturally considered a movie career there. She studied drama but got only minor parts for years. She really became famous when she married Tyrone Power, and her career somewhat improved. But it is scandal more than her film roles that long made her a favorite of the celebrity press rather than of specialized movie magazines.
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Audrey Meadows was born in New York City as Audrey Cotter, the youngest of four children. After she was born, her family returned to Wu'chang, China, where they worked as missionaries. Her family returned to the US and settled in New England when Audrey was age 6, and she and sister Jayne Meadows attended an all-girls boarding school. After high school, Jayne went to NYC with the goal of becoming an actress and finally convinced her little sister to join her in show business, but as a singer instead of an actress. Audrey spent months working on the Broadway show "Top Banana" and then got a job on The Bob & Ray Show (1951). She then replaced Pert Kelton as the most famous and best-loved "Alice Kramden" of The Honeymooners (1955). After "The Honeymooners" ended, she went on to do films, such as Take Her, She's Mine (1963) and That Touch of Mink (1962), and even portrayed Ted Knight's mother-in-law in the 1980s sitcom Too Close for Comfort (1980). But her heart--and ours--will forever remain in that two-burner-stove Chauncey Street kitchen.- Actress
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Shirley Yamaguchi was born to Japanese parents in Manchuria in 1920. She used the Chinese name Li Xianglan (Ri Koran in Japanese) and made pro-Japanese films in Japanese-occupied areas in China. She also was a popular singer and some of her hits, including "fragrance of the night" (Ye Lai Xiang), remain popular even today. After the Japanese surrendered she escaped treason and possible execution by revealing her Japanese heritage.- Jean Willes is best known for her roles in a number of B-movies in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as on the small screen. Lovely and curvaceous, she usually played hard-boiled gold-diggers, party girls, gun molls, and saloon girls. She came off as a wily, smarter version of Barbara Nichols or Iris Adrian, and although she was versatile, she never rose to the first tier of stardom; in retrospect, she seems to have been capable of much more than she was given during her three-decade-plus career.
Born in Los Angeles on April 15, 1923, she was raised in Utah and in Seattle. Interested in an acting career, she returned to the town of her birth and in 1942 started showing up in comedy film shorts for Columbia under her birth name. She was a smart and sexy foil to, among others, such enjoyable comics as Harry Langdon, Andy Clyde, Eddie Foy Jr., Joe DeRita, Sterling Holloway, and Hugh Herbert. After bit parts in such feature-length films as So Proudly We Hail! (1943), Here Come the Waves (1944), and Salty O'Rourke (1945), she began earning co-star status in such post-war feature-length programs as Revenue Agent (1950) opposite Douglas Kennedy, in A Yank in Indo-China (1952), and in one of Johnny Weissmuller's "Jungle Jim" outings.
Willes became a cheesecake fixture in Hollywood, and film and TV work was steady. But when she was lucky enough to score a role in an "A" film, she was barely glimpsed, as in the Bob Hope comedy Son of Paleface (1952) and the "Best Picture" war epic From Here to Eternity (1953). She had the most screen time in an "A" film as Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy)'s beautiful nurse and, reading between the lines, former paramour, in the sci-fi cult classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). (SPOILER: She succumbs to the aliens, like everyone else aside from Bennell, in the fictional California town of Santa Mira.) She was one of the four women vying for an aging Clark Gable's attentions in The King and Four Queens (1956), one of his lesser efforts. Guest spots on TV gave her greater visibility, and she frequently was seen in westerns (The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), Maverick (1957)) and crime dramas (Perry Mason (1957)), usually playing unsympathetic women although occasionally playing more agreeable or respectable characters. Her last feature films roles were in McHale's Navy (1964), The Cheyenne Social Club (1970), and Bite the Bullet (1975). After a few more TV roles, she retired in 1976.
Willes died of liver cancer on January 3, 1989 at the age of 65. Her second husband, NFL football player Gerard Cowhig, died at their Van Nuys, California, home in 1995. They had one son, Gerry. - Actress
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The ever-lovely, poised and vivacious blonde Anne Jeffreys was born Annie Jeffreys Carmichael in 1923 in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Firmly managed by her mother, she trained in voice at a fairly early age and received her first break in the entertainment field after signing with the John Robert Powers agency in New York as a junior model. In the interim, she prepared herself for an operatic career and made her debut in a production of "La Boheme" in 1940. The following year, however, Anne won a role in the musical review, "Fun for the Money", that was to be staged in Hollywood. This, in turn, led to her first movie role in the tuneful Rodgers & Hart adaptation of I Married an Angel (1942), starring her singing idols, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, in their last cinematic pairing.
Put under contract respectively by Republic then RKO studios, Anne was utilized as a plucky heroine in a flux of 40s "B" westerns and crimers, opposite such stalwarts as Robert Mitchum and Randolph Scott. Also among her roles was the part of "Tess Trueheart" in the "Dick Tracy" series with Morgan Conway as the steel-jawed hero, and a co-star role opposite Frank Sinatra in the war-era musical, Step Lively (1944). None of these, however, were able to propel her into the "A" ranks and her film career quickly dissipated by the end of the 40s. In the meantime, Anne continued to prod her vocal skills with symphonic and stage appearances, including "Tosca" at the Brooklyn Opera House, Kurt Weill's "Street Scene" and the Broadway musical, "My Romance".
After her first marriage was annulled in 1949, Anne met handsome actor Robert Sterling during an extended run (887 performances) of "Kiss Me Kate" on Broadway. She and Sterling married in 1951 and had three sons. In an attempt to revive their flagging careers, the singing couple toured nighteries and hotels in the early 1950s with a highly successful club act. This led to them being cast as sly, engagingly cavalier spirits in the classic Topper (1953) sitcom. Anne played "Marion Kirby" ("the ghostess with the mostest"), alongside Sterling's dapper husband, George Kirby. Successfully, undertaking the ectoplasmic roles originated on film by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant, the two were an absolute hit as the party-hearty ghosts who reclaim their home, to the dismay of current owner Leo G. Carroll.
Anne and Robert weren't able to recreate that same kind of magic when they subsequently co-starred in the short-lived series, Love That Jill (1958). In the 1960s, Anne semi-retired to raise her family, but occasionally took on musical leads ("Camelot", "The King and I") both on Broadway and in regional productions. She later returned full-time to TV and became known for her chic, gregarious, sometimes double-dealing matrons on soap operas (Bright Promise (1969) and General Hospital (1972)). She was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her supporting work in The Delphi Bureau (1972) adventure series, and appeared, occasionally, as the mother of David Hasselhoff on Baywatch (1989). Unlike her husband, who retired decades ago (he died in 2006), Anne remained a tireless performer past age 80. She was recognized over the years for her civic and humanitarian efforts and remained a vibrant presence of "Golden Age" Hollywood society until her death at age 94 on September 27, 2017 in Los Angeles.- Katy Jurado was born María Cristina Estela Jurado García into a wealthy family on January 16, 1924. Her early years were spent amid luxury until her family's lands were confiscated by the federal government for redistribution to the landless peasantry. Despite the loss of property, the matriarch of the family, her grandmother, continued to live by her aristocratic ideals. When movie star Emilio Fernandez discovered Katy at the age of 16 and wanted to cast her in one of his films, Jurado's grandmother objected to her wish to become a movie actress. To get around the ban, Katy slipped from the grasp of her family's control by marrying actor Víctor Velázquez.
Jurado eventually made her debut in No matarás (1943) during the what has been called "The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema". Blessed with stunning beauty and an assertive personality, Jurado specialized in playing determined women in a wide variety of films in Mexico and the United States. Her looks were evocative of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, and she used what she called her "distinguished and sensuous look" to carve a niche for herself in Mexican cinema. Indian features were unusual for a film star in Mexico--despite the success of Fernandez, the fabled "El Indio"--and her ethnic look meant she typically was cast as a dangerous seductress, a popular type in Mexican movies. The Mexican media reported that an American movie director at one of her first Hollywood auditions laughed at her derisively because she spoke English so poorly, and an outraged Jurado promptly stormed out of the audition room, cursing in Spanish. As it turned out, that kind of brazen behavior was exactly the type of personality that the director was looking for.
In addition to acting, Jurado worked as a movie columnist and radio reporter to support her family. She also worked as a bullfight critic, and it was at a bullfight that Jurado was spotted by John Wayne and director Budd Boetticher. Boetticher, who was also a professional bullfighter, cast Jurado in his autobiographical film Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), which he shot in Mexico. She was cast in her part despite having very limited English-language skills and had to speak her lines phonetically. Luis Buñuel cast her in his Mexican melodrama The Brute (1953), and then she made her big breakthrough in American films in the role of Gary Cooper's former mistress, saloon owner Helen Ramirez, in High Noon (1952). The role necessitated her moving to Hollywood. She received two Golden Globe nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for that part, for Most Promising Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress, winning the latter. "She planted the Mexican flag in the U.S. film industry, and made her country proud", said National Actors Association official Mauricio Hernandez. Her "High Noon" performance historically proved to be an important acting watershed for Latino women in American movies. Jurado's portrayal undermined the Hollywood stereotype of the flaming, passionate Mexican "spitfire." Previously, Mexican and Latino women in Hollywood films were characterized by an unbridled sexuality, as exemplified by such diverse actresses as Lupe Velez, Dolores Del Río (who came to loathe Hollywood and returned to Mexico in the 1940s), and Rita Hayworth, nee Margarita Cansino. Although Jurado's character was forced to kow-tow to the stereotype in "High Noon", delivering such lines as, "It takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man," the actress' great dignity in her role as a moral arbiter among the competing factions of the marshal and his fiancée, the townspeople and the gunmen out to kill the marshal showed her Helen Ramirez to be in control and controlled by nothing, not even her former love for the marshal. Her restrained performance, delivered with a great deal of conviction, emphasized the shortcomings of the rest of the other characters. Her moral integrity is the reason she, like the marshal, must abandon the town.
With her superb performance, Jurado proved that Latino women could be more than just sexpots in the American cinema. Importantly, working against the tropes of a racist cinema, she used her talent to introduce into the American cinema the model of the un-stereotyped Mexican woman who is identifiably Mexican. One of the best examples of this can be seen at the end of the middle of her career, when Jurado played sheriff Slim Pickens' wife and partner in Sam Peckinpah's elegiac Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Determined and tough as nails, Jurado's character was clearly her screen husband's equal, and she had a very moving scene with Pickens as his character faced death. Jurado was blessed with extraordinary eyes, which were both beautiful and expressive, their beauty and strength never fading with age. Two years after "High Noon", Jurado received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Spencer Tracy's Indian wife in Edward Dmytryk's Broken Lance (1954), making her the first Mexican actress thus honored.
She refused to sign a contract with a major Hollywood studio in order to be able to return to Mexico between her American roles to star in Mexican films. She +remained in Los Angeles for 10 years, marrying Ernest Borgnine, her co-star in The Badlanders (1958), in 1959. During their tempestuous relationship, Jurado and Borgnine separated and reconciled before finally separating for good in 1961. The tabloids reported that Borgnine had abused her, and their separation proved rocky as well, as they fought over alimony. Their divorce became final in 1964. Borgnine summed up his ex-wife as "beautiful, but a tiger", a bon mot that described her on-screen persona as well (she had two children with former husband Victor Velasquez, a daughter and a son, who tragically was killed in an automobile accident in 1981).
Jurado played the wife of Marlon Brando's nemesis Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando's sole directorial effort. In her role she also was the mother of a young woman who was Brando's love interest, thus marking a career transition point as she assumed the role of a mature woman. As Jurado aged, she appeared in fewer films, but notable among them included Arrowhead (1953) with Charlton Heston, Trapeze (1956) in support of Burt Lancaster and Man from Del Rio (1956) with her fellow Mexican national Anthony Quinn who, unlike Jurado, had become an American citizen. She also appeared with Quinn in _Barabbas (1962)_and The Children of Sanchez (1978).
She appeared on the Western-themed American TV shows Death Valley Days (1952), The Rifleman (1958), The Westerner (1960) and The Virginian (1962). Her career in the US began to wind down, and she was reduced to appearing in "B" pictures like Smoky (1966) with Fess Parker and the Elvis Presley movie Stay Away, Joe (1968). She attempted to commit suicide in 1968, and then moved back home to Mexico permanently, though she continued to appear in American films as a character actress. Her last American film appearance was in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country (1998), capping a half-century-long American movie career that continued due to her talent and remarkable presence, long after her extraordinary good looks had faded.
Aside from acting in films in the US and Europe, she continued to act in Mexican films. Her most memorable role in Mexican movies was in Nosotros los pobres (1948) (aka "We the Poor") opposite superstar Pedro Infante. Though in the latter part of her career she appeared occasionally in American films shot in Mexico (including an appearance with her former mentor, Emilio Fernandez, in "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" and John Huston's Under the Volcano (1984)), she appeared mostly in Mexican movies in the last decades of her career, becoming a prominent and highly respected character actress. She played the leader of a religious cult in the Bunuel-like satire Divine (1998). Jurado won three Ariel awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar, a Best Supporting Actress award in 1954 for Bunuel's The Brute (1953) a Best Actress Award in 1974 for Fe, esperanza y caridad (1974) and a Best Supporting Actress award in 1999 for "El evangelio de las Maravillas". She also was awarded a Special Golden Ariel for Lifetime Achievment in 1997. In the north, she was honored with a Golden Boot Award by the Motion Picture & Television Fund in 1992 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jurado was an avid promoter of her home state of Morelos as a location for filmmakers.
Towards the end of her life, she suffered from heart and lung ailments. Katy Jurado died on July 5, 2002, at the age of 78 at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was survived by her daughter. - Actress
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Esther Jane Williams was born on August 8, 1921 in Inglewood, California. Her youth was spent as a teenage swimming champion and she won three United States National championships. She eventually was spotted by a MGM talent scout while working in a Los Angeles department store. She made her film debut with MGM in an "Andy Hardy" picture called Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942). She became Mickey Rooney's love interest in the movie, and her character was called Sheila Brooks. Following this movie, stardom was not far away. MGM created a special sub-genre for her known as "Aqua Musicals". Her first swimming role was in Bathing Beauty (1944). This was a simple movie compared to her later big splashes such as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), co-starring Victor Mature and Walter Pidgeon. Esther Williams was often called "America's Mermaid", as it appeared that she could stay underwater forever!
Following the decline of the once lucrative MGM aqua musical, she attempted dramatic roles. The Unguarded Moment (1956), is one example of this new found dramatic confidence. It co-starred George Nader and John Saxon. Also, The Big Show (1961), co-starring Cliff Robertson and Robert Vaughn was another dramatic role. Overall, Esther's acting skills were limited and, as a musical star in the audience's eyes, she was unsuccessful. She retired from the movie industry in the 1960s, returning as a star guest in That's Entertainment! III (1994) discussing her appearance in MGM films. She certainly is recognized today for bringing enjoyment, escapism and entertainment on the big screen and has also a highly successful business in swimwear. Occasional television work discussing her contribution to the film industry is a treat for her fans from time to time.
Esther Williams died at age 91 in her sleep on June 6, 2013 in her home in Los Angeles, California.- The face of Simone Signoret on the Paris Metro movie posters in March 1982 looked even older than her 61 years. She was still a box-office draw, but the film L'étoile du Nord (1982) would be her last theatrical release; she played the landlady. Signoret had a long film apprenticeship during World War II, mostly as an extra and occasionally getting to speak a single line. She worked without an official permit during the Nazi occupation of France because her father, who had fled to England, was Jewish. Working almost all the time, she made enough as an extra to support her mother and three younger brothers. Her breakthrough to international stardom came when she was 38 with the British film Room at the Top (1958). Her Alice Aisgill, an unhappily-married woman who hopes she has found true love, radiated real warmth in all of her scenes--not just the bedroom scenes. She was the same woman as Dedee, a prostitute who finds true love in Dédée d'Anvers (1948), a film directed by Signoret's first husband, Yves Allégret, a decade earlier. Hollywood beckoned throughout the 1950s, but both Signoret and her second husband, Yves Montand, were refused visas to enter the United States; their progressive political activities did not sit well with the ultra-conservative McCarthy-era mentality that gripped the US at the time. They got visas in 1960 so Montand, a singer, could perform in New York and San Francisco. They were in Los Angeles in March 1960 when Signoret received the Oscar for best actress and stayed on so Montand could play opposite Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love (1960). The Signoret film that is shown most often on TV and got a theatrical re-release in 1995, four decades after it was made is the French thriller Diabolique (1955). The chilly character Signoret plays is proof of her acting ability. More typical of her person is the countess in Ship of Fools (1965), a film that also starred Vivien Leigh ,which more than doubled its chances of being in a video-store or library film collection.
- Though character actress Priscilla Pointer may be better known as the mother of Amy Irving, she has enjoyed a major stage, film and TV career herself for over four decades. The New York-born performer was trained on the stage and appeared in several tours and Broadway shows, including "A Streetcar Named Desire", "The Country Wife" and "The Condemned of Altona". Many of these were under the direction of husband Jules Irving, a former actor, whom she married in 1947. Together, they co-founded the San Francisco Actor's Workshop along with Herbert Blau and Beatrice Manley. Forsaking her career for a time to raise her children, Pointer returned full time and, at the age of 40+, decided to set her sights on film and TV. She seemed to be everywhere in the 1970s and 1980s as somebody's mom, both brittle and resilient. She also proved to be dependable as a stern, no-nonsense teacher, doctor or judge. She played the mother of daughter Amy Irving in the cult shocker Carrie (1976), Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Sean Penn in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) and Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986). On the nighttime soap hit Dallas (1978), she played mom to Victoria Principal's character. In 1979, her husband Jules passed away and, two years later, she married actor Robert Symonds. They have appeared together quite frequently on stage, including the plays "Voices" and "The Road to Mecca".
- Virginia has a long career as a character actress on the screen, but she will always be best remembered as the Swedish "Mrs. Olsen", who somehow knew everything about making coffee, and we somehow always found her in the kitchen of some hapless young housewife who just couldn't seem to make good coffee. Mrs. Olsen taught these women how to do so, as long as it involved using "Mountain Grown" Folger's brand Coffee. For some reason only Mrs. Olsen knew, no other kind of coffee you could buy was any good. And if you believe her, I have some land you'll be interested in!
Virginia was born in the small Iowa town of Stanton, which later converted its water tower to resemble a coffee pot in honor of its most famous citizen. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Virginia worked in radio while attending the University of California, Los Angeles. She was trained for a theatrical career by actor/director Fritz Feld, whom she married in 1940. In 1942, she signed a contract with Warner Bros. and started appearing in various films. Her first film was, Edge of Darkness (1943), in which she played a Norwegian peasant girl called "Miss Olson". Over the years, she appeared in prestigious films such as High Noon (1952) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) - to horror in The Mummy's Curse (1944) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). She was a favorite of Stanley Kramer, appearing in a number of his films. But her greatest fame came in the 1960's when she started her 21-year stint as the matronly "Mrs. Olsen", who always had comforting words for young married couples while pouring Folger's Coffee in the TV ads. - Actress
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Betty Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg on February 26, 1921, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Two years later, Betty's father decided that the family way of life wasn't for him, so he left (he committed suicide 16 years later). Having to fend for themselves, Mrs. Thornburg moved the family to Detroit to find work in the numerous auto factories there, but times were hard and she decided to take advantage of Prohibition and opened a small tavern, at the time called a speakeasy. The police were always looking for those types of operation, both big and small, and when they detected one, they swooped in and closed it down. Mrs. Thornburg was no different from the other owners, they simply moved elsewhere. Poverty was a constant companion. In addition to that, Mrs. Thornburg was an alcoholic.
At nine years old, Betty began singing publicly for the first time in a school production. Realizing the voice Betty had, her mother took her around Detroit to have her sing to any group that would listen. This was a small way of getting some money for the poor family. When she was 13, Betty got a few singing jobs with local bands in the area. Thinking she was good enough to make the big time, she left for New York two years later to try a professional career. Unfortunately, it didn't work out and Betty headed back to Detroit.
In 1937, Betty was hired by Vincent Lopez who had a popular band that appeared on the local radio. Later, she would return to New York and it was here that her career took off. Betty found herself on Broadway in 1940, and it was only a matter of time before her career took off to bigger heights. The following year, she left New York for Hollywood, where she was to find new life in films. She was signed by Paramount Pictures and made her debut, at 21, in The Fleet's In (1942), along with Eddie Bracken, William Holden and Dorothy Lamour. Reviews were better than expected, with critics looking favorably upon her work. She had previously appeared in a few musical shorts, which no doubt helped her in her first feature film. She made one more musical in 1942 and two more in 1943.
In 1944, she tried to break away from musicals and try her hand in a screwball comedy, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943). She proved - to herself, the public and the critics - that she was marketable outside musicals. In subsequent films, Betty was able to show her comedic side as well as her singing. In 1948, she appeared in her first big box-office bomb, Dream Girl (1948), which was ripped to shreds by critics, as was Betty's acting, and the movie flopped at the box office. It wasn't long before Betty became unhappy with her career. In truth, she had the acting talent, but the parts she got weren't the types to showcase that. Though she did appear in three well-received films later, Red, Hot and Blue (1949), Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), her career was winding down.
Later, after filming Somebody Loves Me (1952), Betty was all but finished. She had married Charles O'Curran that year and he wanted to direct her in an upcoming film. Paramount didn't like the idea and the temper tantrum-prone Betty walked out of her contract and movies. She did concentrate on the relatively new medium of television and the stage, but she never recovered her previous form. Her final film was a minor one, Spring Reunion (1956). Her TV series, The Betty Hutton Show (1959), didn't fare too well at all. Betty lived in quiet retirement in Palm Springs, California until her death on March 11, 2007. She was 86 years old.- Marge Redmond was born on 14 December 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), The Flying Nun (1967) and Family Plot (1976). She was married to Jack Weston (I). She died on 10 February 2020 in the USA.
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Kathryn Grayson was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, NC, on February 9, 1922. This pretty, petite brunette with a heart-shaped face was discovered by MGM talent scouts while singing on the radio. The studio quickly signed her to a contract, and she was given acting lessons along and had to pose for countless publicity photos. Kathryn, a coloratura soprano, made her first film in 1941, a "B" picture called Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941). She soon was cast opposite some of MGM's top musical stars of the 1940s, such as Gene Kelly and Mario Lanza. She was paired with Lanza a few times, but the two never got along due mostly to Lanza's hot temper and alcohol abuse. The pairing of Lanza and Grayson would never match the success of lyrical soprano Jeanette MacDonald and baritone Nelson Eddy, although Kathryn and MacDonald did become great friends. Jeanette became a mentor and an older sister figure for Kathryn.
Grayson's most memorable roles came in the early 1950s. They were Show Boat (1951), where she played "Magnolia", opposite Ava Gardner and Howard Keel; Kiss Me Kate (1953), playing actress "Lilli Vanessi", who portrayed "Katherine" in the movie's "show within a show", a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew". In 1953 she exited MGM, then made only one more film, The Vagabond King (1956), at Paramount. She later worked in nightclubs and on stage.- Actress
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Madeleine Lebeau was born on 10 June 1923 in Antony, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. She was an actress, known for Casablanca (1942), 8½ (1963) and Gentleman Jim (1942). She was married to Tullio Pinelli and Marcel Dalio. She died on 1 May 2016 in Estepona, Malaga, Spain.- Actress
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The less famous, but still undeniably talented, of the "Marilyn" sex symbols of the 1940s/'50s was born Marvel Marilyn Maxwell in Clarinda, Iowa on August 3, 1920 (she later began using her middle name professionally at the suggestion of Louis B. Mayer). As a teenager, she worked as an usher at the Rialto Theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and later as a radio singer.
In 1942, Maxwell signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, appearing on such radio shows as "The Abbott and Costello Show", "Beat the Band", and "Stars Over Hollywood". That same year, she made her movie debut in the star-studded World War II propaganda film Stand by for Action (1942). She went on to star in such popular movies of the 1940s/50s as Thousands Cheer (1943), Lost in a Harem (1944), Champion (1949), Key to the City (1950), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) (in which she introduced the carol "Silver Bells"), and Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). Throughout World War II, and later the Korean War, she accompanied three-time co-star (and off-screen lover) Bob Hope on USO tours to entertain troops.
Throughout the 1950s, Maxwell directed her focus to television, with guest appearances on such series as The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), General Electric Theater (1953), The Red Skelton Hour (1951), The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (1956), and Playhouse 90 (1956). This continued into the '60s, as Maxwell appeared on Wagon Train (1957), The Danny Thomas Show (1953), Burke's Law (1963), The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), and The Bob Hope Show (1950), and even game shows such as I've Got a Secret (1952) and Stump the Stars (1947). Her most prominent part in this period was that of diner owner Grace Sherwood on Bus Stop (1961), a series she left after one season after becoming bored of "doing nothing but pour a second cup of coffee and point the way to the men's room".
Maxwell was married three times - to actor John Conte, restaurateur Anders Nylund McIntyre, and producer Jerry Davis - each marriage ending in divorce. She had one son with Davis, Matthew (b. 1956). On March 20, 1972, 15 year-old Matthew returned home from school, only to find his mother dead from an apparent heart attack. Maxwell was 51 at the time of her death.- Actress
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A sparkling, entertaining, highly energetic presence ever since her early days (from age 4) as a singing and tap dancing child vaudevillian, Nanette Fabray was once billed as "Baby Nanette".
She was born in Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada, then moved to the United States, to Louisiana-born parents, Lily Agnes (McGovern) and Raoul Bernard Fabares, a train conductor whose own father was from France. She worked with the top headliners of the era, notably Ben Turpin, in the Los Angeles area. She also sang on radio. It was widely rumored that she appeared in the "Our Gang" ("Little Rascal") film shorts of the late 1920s; however, this was not true. Later the young hopeful received a scholarship to the Max Reinhardt School of the Theatre and appeared in the school's productions of "The Miracle", "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and "A Servant with Two Masters", all in 1939.
The musical comedy stage, however, would be Nanette's forte. Appearing in such hit New York productions as "Meet the People" (1940), "Let's Face It" (1941), "By Jupiter" (1943) and "Bloomer Girl" (1945), she capped this period of great productivity earning awards for her Broadway work in "High Button Shoes" (1947 - Donaldson Award), and "Love Life" (1948 - Tony and Donaldson Awards).
Strangely, Nanette never obtained a strong foothold when it came to film. Aside from secondary roles in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, and the melodrama A Child Is Born (1939), her one claim to movie fame would be her vital participation in the blockbuster MGM musical The Band Wagon (1953) in which she memorably performed the songs "That's Entertainment" and "Louisiana Hayride," and joined Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan in the standout "Triplets" number.
Into the 1950s, Nanette started checking out what television could do as a possible medium for her. It did a lot. She managed a fine feat by winning two consecutive Emmy awards as Sid Caesar's partner on the now-called Caesar's Hour (1954) following the departure of the seemingly irreplaceable Imogene Coca earlier. This led to Nanette eventually starring in her own sitcom, the short-lived Westinghouse Playhouse (1961) (aka "Yes, Yes, Nanette"), in the role of a Broadway star who becomes a makeshift mom after marrying a widower (Wendell Corey) with two children.
Broadway musicals continued to flourish with parts in "Arms and the Girl" (1950) and "Make a Wish" (1951). Nanette later copped another Tony nomination starring as a fictional "First Lady" opposition "President" Robert Ryan in the musical "Mr. President" (1962). Other tailor-made stage vehicles for her came in the form of "Plaza Suite", "Wonderful Town", "Never Too Late", "Last of the Red Hot Lovers" and "Cactus Flower", among others.
On the TV front, Nanette adjusted well into a lively and graceful support player. She served up a number of delightfully daffy moms, wisecracking friends and intrusive relatives in guest appearances -- sometimes alongside her own niece, actress Shelley Fabares, as was in the case of their regular roles on One Day at a Time (1975). Nanette was also a popular game show personality during the '60s and '70s, appearing on The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965), The New High Rollers (1974), Password (1961) and The Match Game (1962), among others. The singer-comedienne could be counted on for TV musical variety appearances courtesy of headliners Dinah Shore, Andy Williams, Dean Martin and Carol Burnett.
Most importantly, Nanette's humanitarian efforts over the years were long recognized. A positive force as a hearing-impaired performer, she gave much time and effort in achieving equality for all types of handicapped and disabled people, including actors. Nanette was the widow (since 1973) of writer and sometime director/producer Ranald MacDougall, appearing in a few of his credited works, including the film The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County (1970), the TV pilot Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966) and the TV-movie Magic Carpet (1972). She and MacDougall have one child. Still as lively as ever, Nanette appeared in a 2007 L.A. musical revue, "The Damsel Dialogues".
Nanette died on February 22, 2018, in Palos Verdes, California. She was 97.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Florida-born Peggy O'Rourke's parents divorced when she was very young. Peggy's mother eventually married a wealthy attorney named Stewart, and Peggy took his name. She grew up in Atlanta (where she developed the athletic skills she would later demonstrate in her many westerns for Republic Pictures). On a family vacation to Los Angeles to visit her grandmother, Peggy, as a lark, attended classes at a dramatic school, but the acting bug hit her hard and when it was time to return to Atlanta, Peggy talked her mother into letting her staying with her grandmother. As luck would have it, a resident of the apartment building they lived in was character actor Henry O'Neill, who took a liking to Peggy and got her cast in her first film, Wells Fargo (1937). She picked up a few more small roles, and acquitted herself so well the parts started getting bigger and she was working more often. She married actor Don 'Red' Barry in 1940, and was eventually signed by Republic Pictures, Barry's studio, to make westerns and serials. In three years, Peggy did almost 30 films at Republic, most of them westerns. She appeared in two of the studio's more successful serials, but when Republic assigned her to another one, she protested. She didn't particularly like working in serials, preferring the feature westerns, which didn't take as long to film. Eventually, the struggle with Republic got to the point where Peggy asked for her release, and she got it. Although she wanted to start doing films other than westerns, she had made so many at Republic that she found herself basically unable to find work in any other genre. She freelanced for Monogram, Allied Artists, PRC and other small studios until she was picked up by Columbia--which immediately put her into serials. She eventually decided to leave the film business, and did so in 1953. She did do some television work (mostly westerns!) while raising her family, and also performed in the Los Angeles theatrical community. She kept her hand in the film business, making occasional appearances in some lower-budget westerns, made-for-TV movies and inexpensive horror pictures.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Melina Mercouri was born in Athens, Greece on October 18, 1920. An early woman activist, she was elected to the Greek Parliament in 1977. Later Miss Mercouri was to become the first woman to hold a Senior cabinet post "Minister of Culture" in the Greek government. In 1971 she wrote her autobiography titled "I Was Born Greek." Melina wed actor Jules Dassin in 1966 and remained married to him until her death in 1994. Melina Mercouri died of lung cancer in New York City, on March 6, 1994.