Best Actress in 1947
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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).(Black Narcissus)- Actress
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Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. No combination of terms better describes the screen persona of lovely Loretta Young. A&E's Biography (1987) has stated that Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamour and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her dedication to her family, her faith, and her quest to live life with a purpose."
Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 6, 1913, to Gladys (Royal) and John Earle Young. Her parents separated when Loretta was three years old. Her mother moved Loretta and her two older sisters to Southern California, where Mrs. Young ran a boarding house. When Loretta was 10, her mother married one of her boarders, George Belzer. They had a daughter, Georgianna, two years later.
Loretta was appearing on screen as a child extra by the time she was four, joining her elder sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (later better known as Sally Blane), as child players. Mrs. Young's brother-in-law was an assistant director and got young Loretta a small role in the film The Only Way (1914). The role consisted of nothing more than a small, weeping child lying on an operating table. Later that year, she appeared in another small role, in The Primrose Ring (1917). The film starred Mae Murray, who was so taken with little Loretta that she offered to adopt her. Loretta lived with the Murrays for about a year and a half. In 1921, she had a brief scene in The Sheik (1921).
Loretta and her sisters attended parochial schools, after which they helped their mother run the boarding house. In 1927, Loretta returned to films in a small part in Naughty But Nice (1927). Even at the age of fourteen, she was an ambitious actress. Changing her name to Loretta Young, letting her blond hair revert to its natural brown and with her green eyes, satin complexion and exquisite face, she quickly graduated from ingenue to leading lady. Beginning with her role as Denise Laverne in The Magnificent Flirt (1928), she shaped any character she took on with total dedication. In 1928, she received second billing in The Head Man (1928) and continued to toil in many roles throughout the '20s and '30s, making anywhere from six to nine films a year. Her two sisters were also actresses but were not as successful as Loretta, whose natural beauty was her distinct advantage.
The 17-year-old Young made headlines in 1930 when she and Grant Withers, who was previously married and nine years her senior, eloped to Yuma, Arizona. They had both appeared in Warner Bros.' The Second Floor Mystery (1930). The marriage was annulled in 1931, the same year in which the pair would again co-star on screen in a film ironically titled Too Young to Marry (1931). By the mid-'30s, Loretta left First National Studios for rival Fox, where she had previously worked on a loan-out basis, and became one of the premier leading ladies of Hollywood.
In 1935, she made Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable and it was thought they had an affair where Loretta got pregnant thereafter. Because of the strict morality clauses in their contracts - and the fact that Clark Gable was married - they could not tell anybody except Loretta's mother. Loretta and her mother left for Europe after filming on The Crusades finished. They returned in August 1935 to the United States, at which time Gladys Belzer announced Loretta's 'illness' to the press. Filming on Loretta's next film, Ramona, was also cancelled. During this time, Loretta was living in a small house in Venice, California, her mother rented. On November 6, 1935, Loretta delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Judith. It wasn't until the 1990s when she was watching Larry King Live where she first heard the word 'date rape' and upon finding out exactly what it was, professed to her friend and biographer Edward Funk and her daughter-in-law Linda Lewis, that she had gone through the same with Clark Gable. "That's what happened between me and Clark."
In 1938, Loretta starred as Sally Goodwin in Kentucky (1938), an outstanding success. Her co-star Walter Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Peter Goodwin.
In 1940, Loretta married businessman Tom Lewis, and from then on her child was called Judy Lewis, although Tom Lewis never adopted her. Judy was brought up thinking that both parents had adopted her and did not know, until years later, that she was actually the biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable. Four years after her marriage to Tom Lewis, Loretta had a son, Christopher Lewis, and later another son, Peter Charles.
In the 1940s, Loretta was still one of the most beautiful ladies in Hollywood. She reached the pinnacle of her career when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), the tale of a farm girl who rises through the ranks and becomes a congresswoman. It was a smash and today is her best remembered film. The same year, she starred in the delightful fantasy The Bishop's Wife (1947) with David Niven and Cary Grant. It was another box office success and continues to be a TV staple during the holiday season. In 1949, Loretta starred in the well-received film, Mother Is a Freshman (1949) with Van Johnson and Rudy Vallee and Come to the Stable (1949). The latter garnered Loretta her second Oscar nomination, but she lost to Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949). In 1953, Loretta made It Happens Every Thursday (1953), which was to be her final big screen role.
She retired from films in 1953 and began a second, equally successful career as hostess of The Loretta Young Show (1953), a half-hour television drama anthology series which ran on NBC from September 1953 to September 1961. In addition to hosting the series, she frequently starred in episodes. Although she is most remembered for her stunning gowns and swirling entrances, over the broadcast's eight-year run she also showed again that she could act. She won Emmy awards for best actress in a dramatic series in 1954, 1956 and 1958.
After the show ended, she took some time off before returning in 1962 with The New Loretta Young Show (1962), which was not so successful, lasting only one season. For the next 24 years, Loretta did not appear in any entertainment medium. Her final performance was in a made for TV film Lady in the Corner (1989).
By 1960, Loretta was a grandmother. Her daughter Judy Lewis had married about three years before and had a daughter in 1959, whom they named Maria. Loretta and Tom Lewis divorced in the early 1960s. Loretta enjoyed retirement, sleeping late, visiting her son Chris and daughter-in-law Linda, and traveling. She and her friend Josephine Alicia Saenz, ex-wife of John Wayne, traveled to India and saw the Taj Mahal. In 1990, she became a great-grandmother when granddaughter Maria, daughter of Judy Lewis, gave birth to a boy.
Loretta lived a quiet retirement in Palm Springs, California until her death on August 12, 2000 from ovarian cancer at the home of her sister Georgiana and Georgiana's husband, Ricardo Montalban.(The Farmer's Daughter) - Loretta Young won an Oscar for this role.- Actress
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Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was very close to her brother Tom; at 14 she was devastated to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years afterward, she used his November 8 birth date as her own. She became shy around girls her age and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, where she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions.
After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs. Bottle" (1931). She finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932). The inevitable film offers followed; after making a few screen tests, she was cast in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Morning Glory (1933), she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Little Women (1933), was the most successful picture of its day.
But stories were beginning to leak out, of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her, and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams (1935), which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Stage Door (1937); the many flops included Break of Hearts (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), Quality Street (1937), and the now-classic Bringing Up Baby (1938).
With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison". She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938) and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. The Philadelphia Story (1940) was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again. For her next film, Woman of the Year (1942), she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.) Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957).
With The African Queen (1951), Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film. She played more of these types of roles throughout the 1950s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime (1955), The Rainmaker (1956), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 1960s, as she devoted her time to the ailing Tracy. For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), she received her ninth Oscar nomination. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win. The next year, she did The Lion in Winter (1968), which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win.
In the 1970s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), and The Corn Is Green (1979). She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster Cogburn (1975) with John Wayne and On Golden Pond (1981) with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win - the latter still the record.
She made more TV-films in the 1980s and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991. Her last feature film was Love Affair (1994), with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV- film was One Christmas (1994). With her health declining, she retired from public life in the mid-1990s. She died at 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.(Song of Love) and (The Sea of Grass)- Actress
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Celeste Holm was an only child, born into a home where her mother was a painter and her father worked in insurance. She would study acting at the University of Chicago and make her stage debut in 1936. Her Broadway debut came when she was 19 in 'The Time of Your Life'. She appeared in many successful plays, including "The Women", "Oklahoma!" and "Bloomer Girl". It was in the production of "Oklahoma!" that Celeste would sing the showstopper, "I Cain't Say No". She was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1946 and appeared in her first film, Three Little Girls in Blue (1946). With her third film, Gentleman's Agreement (1947), she would win the Supporting Actress Oscar and a Golden Globe. Celeste would be nominated twice more for Academy Awards in the Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950). But, Celeste was a star who loved the stage so she left Hollywood, only to return for two MGM musicals in the 1950s. They were The Tender Trap (1955) and High Society (1956). In addition to her stage career, Celeste appeared on television in her own series, Honestly, Celeste! (1954) and as a panelist on Who Pays? (1959). In 1970, Celeste returned to television series as the chaperone to the president's daughter on Nancy (1970). For the next two decades, she would appear on television in regular series, miniseries and movies. Celeste Holm died at age 95 of a heart attack on July 15, 2012.(Gentleman's Agreement) - Celeste Holm won an Oscar for this role.- Actress
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With blonde hair, big blue eyes and a big smile, Joan Blondell was usually cast as the wisecracking working girl who was the lead's best friend.
Joan was born Rose Blondell in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of Katie and Eddie Blondell, who were vaudeville performers. Her father was a Polish Jewish immigrant, and her mother was of Irish heritage. Joan was on the stage when she was three years old. For years, she toured the circuit with her parents and joined a stock company when she was 17. She made her New York debut with the Ziegfeld Follies and appeared in several Broadway productions.
She was starring with James Cagney on Broadway in "Penny Arcade" (1929) when Warner Brothers decided to film the play as Sinners' Holiday (1930). Both Cagney and Joan were given the leads, and the film was a success. She would be teamed with Cagney again in The Public Enemy (1931) and Blonde Crazy (1931) among others. In The Office Wife (1930), she stole the scene when she was dressing for work. While Warner Brothers made Cagney a star, Joan never rose to that level. In gangster movies or musicals, her performances were good enough for second leads, but not first lead. In the 1930s, she made a career playing gold-diggers and happy-go-lucky girlfriends. She would be paired with Dick Powell in ten musicals during these years, and they were married for ten years. By 1939, Joan had left Warner Brothers to become an independent actress, but by then, the blonde role was being defined by actresses like Veronica Lake. Her work slowed greatly as she went into straight comedy or dramatic roles. Three of her better roles were in Topper Returns (1941), Cry 'Havoc' (1943), and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). By the 50s, Joan would garner an Academy Award nomination for The Blue Veil (1951), but her biggest career successes would be on the stage, including a musical version of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."
In 1957, Joan would again appear on the screen as a drunk in Lizzie (1957) and as mature companion to Jayne Mansfield in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). While she would appear in a number of television shows during the 50s and 60s, she had the regular role of Winifred on The Real McCoys (1957) during the 1963 season. Her role in the drama The Cincinnati Kid (1965) was well received, but most of her remaining films would be comedies such as Waterhole #3 (1967) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). Still in demand for TV, she was cast as Lottie on Here Come the Brides (1968) and as Peggy on Banyon (1971).(Nightmare Alley)- Actress
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A genuine model of sincerity, practicality and dignity in most of the roles she inhabited, actress Dorothy McGuire offered Tinseltown more talent than it probably knew what to do with. A quiet, passive beauty, she had a soothing quality to her open-faced looks and voice. She was a natural when he came to tearjerkers and she certainly had a knack for opening up her film-goer's tear ducts with her arresting performances in sentimental drama. She preferred to rest on her acting laurels than engage in publicity-monging to win roles. As a result, Dorothy was surprisingly ill-served in the awards department during her over five-decade film career, yet left a major imprint on celluloid. Touching, complex, immaculate in poise and style, she is now and forever etched in Hollywood's "Golden Age" annals and in the minds of film lovers everywhere.
Dorothy began inconspicuously enough in Omaha, Nebraska on Wednesday, June 14th, 1916. Her parents encouraged her early interest in acting and she made her debut as a teenager in "A Kiss for Cinderella" at the Omaha Community Playhouse which starred visiting alumni member Henry Fonda. She received her education at Omaha Junior College, Ladywood Convent in Indianapolis, and Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley, Massachusetts before setting her sites on an acting career. Following summer stock she appeared in such 1938 stage productions as "Bachelor Born" and "Stopover" before understudying the role of Emily Gibb in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" on Broadway, which at the time showcased young Martha Scott. Dorothy eventually replaced Scott in the role.
Other experiences came her way on stage with "My Dear Children" starring John Barrymore, "Swingin' the Dream", "Medicine Show", "The Time of Your Life" and "Kind Lady" before she was handed the titular role of "Claudia" in 1941. This gentle comedy became a certifiable Broadway hit and Dorothy simply incandescent as the child-like bride forced to wake up to reality after her sudden marriage. David O. Selznick subsequently signed her to a film contract. Fortunately, 20th Century-Fox, untrue to form, took a chance on the film unknown and allowed her to recreate her stage triumph opposite Robert Young. Claudia (1943) was so beautifully done and warmly received that McGuire and Young went on to recreate their roles three years later with Claudia and David (1946).
Unbelievably, Dorothy topped herself in only her second film role. After a pregnant Gene Tierney became unavailable for the role of Katie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), the part fell to Dorothy. It's now hard to believe anyone else in the role. As the impoverished wife of a charming Irish ne'er-do-well and inebriate, Dorothy showed amazing complexity as the detached wife and mother whose painful but necessary decision-making alienates many around her, especially her daughter who is the apple of her daddy's eye. Directed by Elia Kazan, Dorothy was shamefully overlooked at awards time. Young Peggy Ann Garner was given a "special juvenile Oscar" and errant husband James Dunn picked up the Supporting Actor trophy for his work. Dorothy was not of the mind of tooting her own horn and it may have cost her an Oscar nomination -- better yet, the Oscar -- for she was hands down the better performer than eventual winner Joan Crawford, a popular choice for Mildred Pierce (1945).
Dorothy made it four film hits in a row with the success of both the sentimental fantasy The Enchanted Cottage (1945), in which she reunited with Robert Young to play two of society's castoffs who fall in love, and the expert Hitchcockian thriller The Spiral Staircase (1946) as the mute servant who is terrorized by a serial killer. Preferring rich characterizations over glamour, audiences saw Dorothy dolled up a bit more than usual in Till the End of Time (1946) as a war widow who falls for a younger hunk (Guy Madison). Her 40s filming was capped by a Best Actress nomination in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), an-anti-Semitic tale that boasted a topnotch ensemble cast including Gregory Peck, John Garfield and Celeste Holm, who won a supporting Oscar for this.
With nary a weak film yet on her resume, an unpretentious Dorothy still hadn't achieved top cinematic stardom. Preferring to return to her theater roots, she abandoned films for a couple of years and performed in such vehicles as "Tonight at 8:30" (1947) and "Summer and Smoke" (1950). When she did return it was to a different Hollywood and things would not be the same. Instead forgettable fluff such as Mother Didn't Tell Me (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951) were the slim pickings offered. Although she found a popular hit with Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), the film was more notable for its title song and sumptuous settings than for the quality of acting of the three distaff stars -- McGuire, Maggie McNamara and Jean Peters.
Dorothy graciously moved into pillar-of-strength mother roles as she approached her 40s, making fine impressions as a Quaker matriarch in Friendly Persuasion (1956) and as the resourceful mom in three of Disney's endearing classics, Old Yeller (1957), Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Summer Magic (1963). Her more flawed marital and parenting skills were displayed in the Inge film adaptation of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), and the huge, sudsy teen hit A Summer Place (1959) with Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue as young, star-crossed lovers. McGuire acted as Donahue's mother who rekindles an old love affair with Dee's father (Richard Egan). The 49-year-old McGuire then played the mother of all mothers, the Virgin Mary, in the misguided biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), marred by its overlong narrative and bizarre miscasting, including John Wayne as a Roman centurion. Her last film, the British-made Flight of the Doves (1971) as an Irish granny, had little impact.
In later years Dorothy found rich, rewarding work on TV and received an Emmy nomination for the well-received mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). She also played Marmee in a TV revisitation of Part I (1978), and ended her career in good company with (what else?) a sentimental tearjerker in the mini-movie The Last Best Year (1990) co-starring Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore.
Dorothy's longtime husband was photographer John Swope who died in 1979. Her children by him are Mark Swope, an artist and photographer, and former actress Topo Swope. Dorothy's health declined severely after she fell and broke her leg in 2001. She died of heart failure not long after in a Santa Monica hospital on Friday, September 14th at the age of 85.(Gentleman's Agreement) - Dorothy McGuire was nominated for an Oscar for this role.- Actress
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The middle of seven children, she was named, not for the heroine of "As You Like It" but for the S.S. Rosalind on which her parents had sailed, at the suggestion of her father, a successful lawyer.
After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York, having convinced her mother that she intended to teach acting. In 1934, with some stock company work and a little Broadway experience, she was tested and signed by Universal. Simultaneously, MGM tested her and made her a better offer. When she plead ignorance of Hollywood (while wearing her worst-fitting clothes), Universal released her and she signed with MGM for seven years.
For some time she was used in secondary roles and as a replacement threat to limit Myrna Loy's salary demands. Knowing she was right for comedy, she tested five times for the role of Sylvia Fowler in The Women (1939). George Cukor told her to "play her as a freak". She did and got the part. Her "boss lady" roles began with the part of reporter Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday (1940), through whose male lead, Cary Grant, she met her future husband, Grant's house-guest at the time.
In her forties, she returned to the stage, touring "Bell, Book and Candle" in 1951 and winning a Tony Award for "Wonderful Town" in 1953. Columbia, worried the public would think she had the female lead in Picnic (1955), billed her "co-starring Rosalind Russell as Rosemary." She refused to be placed in the Best Supporting Actress category when Columbia Pictures wanted to promote her for an Academy Award nomination for her role in Picnic (1955). Many felt she would have won had she cooperated. "Auntie Mame" kept her on Broadway for two years followed by the movie version.
Oscar nominations: My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and Auntie Mame (1958). In 1972, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for contributions to charity.(Mourning Becomes Electra) - Rosalind Russell was nominated for an Oscar for this role.- Actress
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Flora Robson knew she was no beauty, but her wise and sympathetic face would become a familiar - indeed, shining - ornament of the 1930s and '40s silver screen. Though not sure of acting as a career in her early years, she first appeared on stage when 5 years old. She was educated at Palmer's Green High School and went on still in her teens to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, winning a Bronze Medal in 1921. Between 1921-23 she performed in London and Oxford, but both uncertainty and the unstable income of acting convinced her to spend the next few years working at a factory welfare officer in east London.
Still, her versatility, even in her youth, as a budding character actress of the first water, was noticed. In 1929 a friend urged her to join the Cambridge Festival Theatre where she remained two years.
By 1931 she was in residence at the Old Vic with as varied roles as Herodias in "Salome" (1931), a drunken prostitute in Bridie's "The Anatomist", Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth in "Macbeth", and Gwendolen in "The Importance of Being Earnest" (both in 1933).
She stayed with the Old Vic until 1934, but she was already turning to the film with her debut in A Gentleman of Paris (1931).
Her dexterity as screen monarchs began shortly thereafter as Russian Empress Elisabeth in The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934). Flora even had a place in television history in the pre-WWII British TV production of Anna Christie (1937).
She was a forceful Livia in Josef von Sternberg's ill-fated and unfinished I, Claudius (1937), but gave a hint of her future potential with her rousing Queen Elizabeth I in Alexander Korda's Fire Over England (1937) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.
The year 1939 was extremely busy for Robson. It marked her first association with British director Michael Powell in his The Lion Has Wings (1939) and Smith (1939) and the unsurprising call from Hollywood.
There she was lauded quickly for 2 roles that year: as the domineering wife of Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone (1939) and opposite fellow British stars Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, and David Niven as narrator and housekeeper Ellen Dean in the haunting Wuthering Heights (1939). Her compelling Elizabeth marked her for a reprise of the role in the Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk (1940) in which she played the role to the hilt.
Among early screen Elizabeth standouts, Florence Eldridge in Mary of Scotland (1936) resembled the historical queen and the more famous Bette Davis displayed the manner and temperament with her usual command (though it is hard not to feel it's Bette playing her - albeit - brilliant self and not Elizabeth) in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), but Robson seemed to best personify the total person and spirit of 'good Queen Bess'.
Flora's film career was marked with a character versatility which had and continued to mark precious time for stage work (as in her murderess Ellen Creed in "Ladies in Retirement" (Broadway, 1950). In 1941, she returned to war-torn London to boldly continue theater performances to a grateful country. After the war, it was a full life of crisscrossing the Atlantic. Though some British critics were not impressed with her return to Hollywood to play the overly protective mulatto servant of Ingrid Bergman in Saratoga Trunk (1945), it was an outstanding tour-de-force character performance honored with an Oscar nomination.
Among other memorable roles in the late 1940s, even her reflective Anglican Sister Philippa in Powell's visually stunning and provocative Black Narcissus (1947) displays her depth as a solid character actress. Another quarter of a century of roles was accented with memorable theatrical performances as Lady Macbeth on Broadway (1949) and as Paulina in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" (1951), production by John Gielgud, to add to a kaleidoscope mix of movies from 1948 to 1981 and a sprinkling of character pieces on British TV, when she retired from the stage in 1969.
The material success of Hollywood played a part in her much deserved honor as Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1952 and her ascension as Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1960. Kenneth Barrow wrote a biography Flora: The Life of Dame Flora Robson (1981). Flora had the further honor of rating 2 portraits in London's National Portrait Gallery for her full and distinguished life.(Black Narcissus)- Actress
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Doubtlessly the most famous Mexican movie star, María Félix created a larger-than-life character: herself. La Doña, as the star was known after the character of her 1943 movie Doña Bárbara, starred in 47 movies, most of them forgettable except for her presence in them. More a star than an actress, she constructed an image of a tough woman, a sort of one-liner she-male that went beyond the traditional role of Latin American women. Her marriage to Agustín Lara the most popular Latin composer from the 30s to the 60s, was a great event itself. Her fame went beyond Mexico to Latin America, Spain, France and Italy. She always refused to learn English, so she never acted in any English language movie. That's the main reason why her fame was related almost exclusively to Latin countries. After her last film, she was linked to a number of film projects, but never came back to the screen. Her last performance was on a Mexican historic soap opera, in 1970.(La diosa arrodillada)- 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.(Dark Passage)