20 (basically) Forgotten Actresses Who Are Terrific
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This marvelous screen comedienne's best asset was only muffled during her seven years' stint in silent films. That asset? It was, of course, her squeaky, frog-like voice, which silent-era cinema audiences had simply no way of perceiving, much less appreciating. Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna Greene in upstate New York, 20 miles south of the Canadian border, has had her year of birth cited variously as 1900, 1905 and 1908. Her place of birth has often been cited as New York City! (Herein we shall rely for those particulars on Miss Arthur's obituary as given in the authoritative and reliable New York Times. The date and place indicated above shall be deemed correct.) Following her screen debut in a bit part in John Ford's Cameo Kirby (1923), she spent several years playing unremarkable roles as ingénue or leading lady in comedy shorts and cheapie westerns. With the arrival of sound she was able to appear in films whose quality was but slightly improved over that of her past silents. She had to contend, for example, with the consummately evil likes of Dr. Fu Manchu (played by future "Charlie Chan" Warner Oland). Her career bloomed with her appearance in Ford's The Whole Town's Talking (1935), in which she played opposite Edward G. Robinson, the latter in a dual role as a notorious gangster and his lookalike, a befuddled, well-meaning clerk. Here is where her wholesomeness and flair for farcical comedy began making themselves plain. The turning point in her career came when she was chosen by Frank Capra to star with Gary Cooper in the classic social comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Here she rescues the hero - thus herself becoming heroine! - from rapacious human vultures who are scheming to separate him from his wealth. In Capra's masterpiece Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), she again rescues a besieged hero (James Stewart), protecting him from a band of manipulative and cynical politicians and their cronies and again she ends up as a heroine of sorts. For her performance in George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1943), in which she starred with Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn, she received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, but the award went to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943) (Coburn, incidentally, won for Best Supporting Actor). Her career began waning toward the end of the 1940s. She starred with Marlene Dietrich and John Lund in Billy Wilder's fluff about post-World War II Berlin, A Foreign Affair (1948). Thereafter, the actress would return to the screen but once, again for George Stevens but not in comedy. She starred with Alan Ladd and Van Heflin in Stevens' western Shane (1953), playing the wife of a besieged settler (Heflin) who accepts help from a nomadic gunman (Ladd) in the settler's effort to protect his farm. It was her silver-screen swansong. She would provide one more opportunity for a mass audience to appreciate her craft. In 1966 she starred as a witty and sophisticated lawyer, Patricia Marshall, a widow, in the TV series The Jean Arthur Show (1966). Her time was apparently past, however; the show ran for only 11 weeks.She has finally got her own movie collection from TCM.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Anne Marie Blythe was born of Irish stock to Harry and Annie (nee Lynch) Blythe on August 16, 1928 in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and elder sister, Dorothy, moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan's Professional Children's School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York's Children's Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut in 1941 at age 13 as the daughter of the characters played by Paul Lukas and Mady Christians in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama "Watch on the Rhine", billed as Anne (with an extra "e") Blyth. She stayed with the show for two years.
While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on at age 16 as Ann (without the "e") Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film, Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other "B" tune-fests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn't until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford's life pure hell as the malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the film classic Mildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character's mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.
Although Blyth lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, she suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).
Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Blyth played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with a much-older film star, Robert Montgomery, in Once More, My Darling (1949).
At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Blyth transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1950). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952). MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Blyth, who was given rather stilted vehicles.
Catching Howard Keel's roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelming Rose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King's Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Blyth came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956. She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O'Connor in The Buster Keaton Story (1957). Blyth ended her film career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. She had a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for her personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.
Through with films, Blyth's main concentration (after her family) were musical theatre and television. Over the years a number of classic songs were tailored to suit her glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. "The Sound of Music", "The King and I", "Carnival", "Bittersweet", "South Pacific", "Show Boat" and "A Little Night Music" are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Blyth appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade. She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) and Murder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-1980s.
Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five, Blyth continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.She is wonderful opposite Tyrone Power in I'll Never Forget You. The movie is also known as The House in the Square. It's a time travel movie with a twist ending. It is available in a double DVD set with Luck of the Irish.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Brooklyn-native actress Ina Balin (née Rosenberg) was born on November 12, 1937, into a Jewish family of entertainers. Her parents were Betty (nee Friedman) and Sam Rosenberg, who divorced when she was 9 years old. Her father was a dancer/singer/comedian who worked the Borscht Belt. He later quit show business to join his family's furrier business. Her mother was a Hungarian-born professional dancer who escaped a troubled family life by marrying at age 15. Sam was her third husband at age 21. They divorced when Ina and her brother, Richard Balin, were still quite young and the children were placed in boarding schools (she at the Montessori Children's Village in Bucks County, Pennsylvania) until their mother married a fourth time to wealthy shoe magnate Harold Balin, who later adopted Betty's two children, who took his surname.
Ina always wanted to be an actress and her mother encouraged her to take ballet lessons while young. Her first big break occurred in NewvYork at age 15 when she appeared on Perry Como's 1950s TV show. She went on to attend New York University majoring in theater and also studied with Actors Studio exponents Lonny Chapman and Curt Conway while gathering additional experience on the summer stock stage. She made an auspicious Broadway debut in a female lead with "Compulsion" in 1957. Two years later, the dark-haired, olive-skinned beauty won a Theatre World Award for her outstanding performance in the Broadway comedy, "A Majority of One", starring Gertrude Berg. Producer Carlo Ponti saw her Broadway performance in "Compulsion" and requested her for a prime role in his film The Black Orchid (1958).
Starring Ponti's wife, Sophia Loren, and Anthony Quinn, Ina received impressive notices as Quinn's sensitive, grown daughter. Considered one of 20th Century Fox's most promising new talents, she received a special "International Star of Tomorrow" Golden Globe for this early work. A major career disappointment occurred when the film version of Compulsion (1959) was made and Ina's ethnic role of "Ruth Goldenberg" was transformed into a non-ethnic part (Ruth Evans) that wound up starring Diane Varsi. Ina was given an unbilled part in the movie. The sting of that studio transgression was somewhat softened when she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for "Best Supporting Actress" for her intensive performance in the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward soaper, From the Terrace (1960), as Newman's love interest. She found herself typecast by the studio and eventually felt compelled to leave.
A soft, slender, but intent-looking actress who could play various types of ethnicities (Jewish, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, Greek, et al.), she had a lovely, quiet glow but could easily display the fiery temperament of an Anna Magnani when called upon. In the 1960s, however, she was overshadowed by a number of her leading men in their respective showcases. She appeared in many Westerns, often as the girlfriend or love interest of the hero. There was little room for any actor to generate interest upon themselves when playing opposite the likes of an Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis and/or John Wayne. In other situations, her roles were merely decorative, less showy, or proved less integral to the main plot, such as her secondary role as "Martha" in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). While Ina maintained a fine balance of TV roles ranging from the dramatic (Bonanza (1959), Mannix (1967), Quincy M.E. (1976), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964)) to the humorous (The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Get Smart (1965)), the one big acting role which could have set her apart from the others never materialized.
Subsequent pictures such as the cult film The Projectionist (1970) and The Don Is Dead (1973) and her assorted appearances in several TV-movies failed to advance her status in Hollywood. And then her life changed...dramatically. As the first woman to ever participate in a handshake tour of a South Vietnam military hospital in the late 1960s, Ina toured Vietnam with the USO in 1970 and was greatly affected by the entire experience. It also triggered a series of trips back to the war-torn region. As a Board Member of the An Lac orphanage in Saigon, she courageously took part in the full-scale evacuation of nearly 400 orphans in 1975 during the fall of the city to the Communists. She eventually adopted three of the 219 children who managed to be flown out of the country. In 1980, the dramatic rescue was replayed via a TV film in which Balin portrayed herself. The well-received The Children of an Lac (1980) also starred Shirley Jones (as fellow rescuer "Betty Tisdale") and Beulah Quo (as the concerned Vietnamese woman who ran the orphanage).
From this point on, Ina's professional career took a back seat to the raising of her children and her ongoing interest in foreign relief. She appeared throughout the 1980s with a sprinkling of guest shots on TV's Battlestar Galactica (1978), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and As the World Turns (1956), among others. As for film, her last movies (The Comeback Trail (1982), Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter (1986) and That's Adequate (1989)) were unworthy of her talents.
Ina never managed to fulfill her promising, Golden Globe-winning potential for she was diagnosed and eventually succumbed, at the age of 52 from pulmonary hypertension. A single parent, she was survived by her three children.She co-stars with Paul Newman in From the Terrace.- Joanna Barnes was an American actress and novelist and journalist. Barnes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She moved to Los Angeles, California soon after finishing her education, and took up a contract with Columbia Pictures. She had roles in more than twenty films and made guest appearances on many television shows, including the ABC/Warner Brothers programs, 77 Sunset Strip (1958) and Maverick (1957), CBS's Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), and the David Janssen crime drama, Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1956). Her books included "The Deceivers" (1970), "Pastora" (1980) and "Silverwood" (1985), and were published in Italy, France, England, Sweden, Portugal and Brazil. Her syndicated column, "Touching Home," was for many years carried by The Chicago Tribune and New York News Syndicate.She was on the seminal western TV series Maverick 5 times. She also played in both of the Parent Trap movies. Also a distinguished author and journalist.
- Radiant to a tee, well-coiffed and well-dressed Barbara Britton looked like she stepped out of a magazine when she entered into our homes daily as the 'Revlon Girl' on 50s and 60s TV. She sparkled with the best of them and managed to capture that "perfect wife/perfect mother" image with, well, perfect poise and perfect grace. Co-starring opposite some of Hollywood's most durable leading men, including Randolph Scott (multiple times), Joel McCrea, Gene Autry, Jeff Chandler and John Hodiak, it's rather a shame Barbara was rather obtusely used in Hollywood films, but thankfully her beauty and glamour, if not her obvious talent, would save the day and put the finishing touches on a well-rounded career.
It all began for sunny, hazel-eyed blonde Barbara Maureen Brantingham in equally sunny Long Beach, California on September 26, 1920 (1919 is incorrect, according to her son and several other sources). Attending Polytechnic High School, Barbara eventually taught Sunday school and majored in speech at Long Beach City College with designs of becoming a speech and drama teacher. Her interest in acting, however, quickly took hold and she decided, against the wishes of her ultra-conservative parents, to pursue the local stage. Barbara's own personal 'Hollywood' story unfolded when, as a Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade representative of Long Beach, she was seen on the front pages of the newspaper, scouted out and signed by Paramount movie agents.
The surname Britton was a cherished family name and Barbara picked it as her stage moniker when Paramount complained that Brantingham was "too long to fit on a marquee." She made her film debut with Secret of the Wastelands (1941), a Hopalong Cassidy western, and continued in bit parts for a time before finding modest but showier roles in such fare as Louisiana Purchase (1941), So Proudly We Hail! (1943) and Till We Meet Again (1944). She eventually earned higher visibility as a lead and second femme lead but was underserved for most of her film career, confined as a pretty, altruistic, genteel young thing in such durable but male-oriented films as The Great John L. (1945), The Virginian (1946), The Return of Monte Cristo (1946), Albuquerque (1948), and Champagne for Caesar (1950).
Barbara wisely turned to the stage and TV in the 1950s, making her TV debut on an episode of "Robert Montgomery Presents" in 1950 and her Broadway debut co-starring in the short-lived Peggy Wood comedy "Getting Married" the following year.
After co-starring a couple of seasons with Richard Denning on the TV program Mr. & Mrs. North (1952), Barbara earned major attention as Revlon's lovely pitchwoman and remained on view in that capacity for 12 years. She appeared in Revlon commercials live for a number of programs, including "The $64,000 Question," "The $64,000 Challenge," "Revlon's Big Party" and "The Ed Sullivan Show." In between Barbara graced several of the top dramatic shows of the day, and co-starred intermittently in such "B" films as Bandit Queen (1950), The Raiders (1952), Bwana Devil (1952), Dragonfly Squadron (1953) and Night Freight (1955) before ending her movie run with The Spoilers (1955) opposite Jeff Chandler and Rory Calhoun.
Various Broadway shows included "Wake Up, Darling (1956), "How to Make a Man" (1961), and "Me and Thee" (1965). Other stage credits on the dinner theatre and summer stock circuits include "Last of the Red Hot Lovers", "Mary, Mary," "Barefoot in the Park" and "No, No, Nanette." As time passed, more and more would be devoted to raising her family. Only occasionally seen in the 1970, Barbara sometimes appeared with her two children in such regional shows as "Best of Friends," "Forty Carats" and "A Roomful of Roses".
Married in 1945 to Eugene Czukor, a naturopathic physician at the time, he later became a psychiatrist when the family moved to New York City (Manhattan) in 1957. The couple raised two children -- son Theodore (Ted or Theo) who appeared on the Canadian Shakespearean stage and later became a yoga instructor, and daughter Christina who grew up to become a model, actress, opera singer, music therapist and romance novelist. Both used the surname Britton in their respective performance careers. Sadly, two other children born to Barbara and husband Eugene, a girl and a boy, died at the hospital shortly after birth.
One of Barbara's last roles was as a regular on the daytime soap One Life to Live (1968) in 1979. Her enjoyment on this show was short-lived as the vivacious actress was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer not long after. She died in January of 1980 at age 60.She packed two lifetimes into her 60 years. She was beautiful but not threatening. She was in the sparkling and zany comedy The Fabulous Suzanne and later became well known for live Revlon commercials on The 64,000 Question. Her beauty and lustrous personality never dimmed. - Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Independent, outspoken Constance Bennett, the first of the Bennett sisters to enter films, appeared in New York-produced silents before a chance meeting with Samuel Goldwyn led to her Hollywood debut in Cytherea (1924). She abandoned a burgeoning career in silents for marriage to Philip Plant in 1925; after they divorced, she achieved stardom in talkies from 1929. The hit Common Clay (1930) launched her in a series of loose lady and unwed mother roles, but she really excelled in such sophisticated comedies as The Affairs of Cellini (1934), Ladies in Love (1936), Topper (1937) and Merrily We Live (1938). Her classy blonde looks, husky voice and unerring fashion sense gave her a distinctive style. In the 1940s she made fewer films, working in radio and theatre; shrewd in business, she invested wisely and started businesses marketing women's wear and cosmetics. Loving conflict, she feuded with the press and enjoyed lawsuits. Her last marriage, to a U.S. Air Force colonel, was happy and gave her a key role coordinating shows flown to Europe for occupying troops (1946-48) and the Berlin Airlift (1948-49), winning her military honors. Still young-looking, she died suddenly at age 60 shortly after completing the last of her 57 films.She was terrific opposite Cary Grant in Topper. She also scheduled shows for GI's at the end of World War II and participated in The Berlin Airlift (1948-49). She was known for controversy. Sister of Joan Bennett.- Actress
This Universal-International player had the beauty, brains and talent to go the distance, only to surprise herself by choosing marriage and family over her career. Now remembered more for her charitable work than her Hollywood roles, pretty and wholesome blonde Peggy Dow was christened Peggy Josephine Varnadow on March 18, 1928, in Columbia, Mississippi. She has clarified that Peggy is not a derivative of Margaret or any other forename. Her father, a businessman, moved about quite a bit but the family subsequently settled in Louisiana, where she attended college (both Louisiana State and Northwestern State University), majoring in drama and appearing in several college plays.
After brief modeling and radio experience, she was spotted by a talent agent and cast in a TV show in February 1949. Shortly after that exposure, Universal offered her a seven-year contract. Bypassing the starlet bit-part route, she made an auspicious film debut co-starring with Scott Brady in the thriller Undertow (1949), in which she played a vacationing schoolteacher who accidentally gets involved in a murder. Her second film (which she actually made first but was released later), Woman in Hiding (1950), was also a crime thriller, co-starring Ida Lupino and Stephen McNally. Showing clearly that she was up to the task of playing love interests with depth and range, Peggy's star began to ascend with these two modest efforts. She hit her peak when she co-starred as the lovely nurse in the classic James Stewart farce Harvey (1950) and appeared opposite Arthur Kennedy in the touching war drama Bright Victory (1951), the story of a soldier who is blinded and must learn to readjust to civilian life. These two different roles showed Hollywood that Peggy could handle comedy and drama with equal finesse.
Following a couple of more "B" pictures, Peggy suddenly retired after only three years in the business to marry Walter Helmerich in 1951. A non-professional whose career was in oil drilling, Helmerich and Peggy relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they raised five sons in the process.A supremely gifted actress, she entered movies at a low ebb in the late 1940's and acted until the early 50's. She was on her way to real stardom when she got tired of having to bring her own clothes to the studio to wear in films. She met an oilman from Oklahoma, married him and became noted for her philanthropic works in Tulsa.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Missouri-born Ellen Drew was born Esther Loretta Ray in 1914, the daughter of an Irish-born barber. After her parents separated when she was 15 years old, she worked various jobs (accountant, salesgirl) to support her mother and younger brother. At one time she worked at Marshall Field's Department Store. She then went to Kansas City as an elevator operator at the Aladdin Hotel, earning $14 a week. After rejoining her family in Englewood, Illinois, she found yet another job at the Grant store. The manager liked her fresh-faced good looks and high-wattage smile and entered her in a beauty pageant sponsored by the Kiwanis, which she ended up winning. Encouraged to try her luck in tinseltown, she got a job at Brown's Confectionary on Hollywood Boulevard for $11.50 a week before she was discovered in somewhat typical Lana Turner fashion. While working at an ice cream parlor, customer William Demarest took notice of her and was instrumental in having her put under a $50 a week contract at Paramount Studios in 1936, aged 21.
Initially billed as Terry Ray, she was groomed in starlet bits for two years until finally given a role she could sink her teeth into in the Bing Crosby musical Sing, You Sinners (1938). Her hair was changed from brunette to auburn (sometimes blonde) and her moniker changed from Terry Ray to Ellen Drew, after briefly being known as Erin Drew. Brighter roles came her way with If I Were King (1938) (which clinched her celebrity), Women Without Names (1940) and Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), but she never quite managed to distinguish herself among the bevy of Hollywood beauties on display and so remained on the outer fringes for most her career. Despite fine roles in fine movies, notably the Preston Sturges classic, Christmas in July (1940), and the Dick Powell starrer, Johnny O'Clock (1947), her film career went into decline. In the 1950s she transferred her talents to television before retiring the following decade. Married four times, including to writer/producer Sy Bartlett, she was survived by her son and five grandchildren when she passed away in 2003, aged 89, in Palm Desert, California.She was sparkling onscreen and was in some A-list movies. Somehow she ended up in mostly "B" movies. But, no matter what role she played she commanded the screen.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Anne Francis got into show business quite early in life. She was born on September 16, 1930 in Ossining, New York (which is near Sing Sing prison), the only child of Phillip Ward Francis, a businessman/salesman, and the former Edith Albertson. A natural little beauty, she became a John Robert Powers model at age 6(!) and swiftly moved into radio soap work and television in New York. By age 11, she was making her stage debut on Broadway playing the child version of Gertrude Lawrence in the star's 1941 hit vehicle "Lady in the Dark". During this productive time, she attended New York's Professional Children's School.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put the lovely, blue-eyed, wavy-blonde hopeful under contract during the post-war World War II years. While Anne appeared in a couple of obscure bobbysoxer bits, nothing much came of it. Frustrated at the standard cheesecake treatment she was receiving in Hollywood, the serious-minded actress trekked back to New York where she appeared to good notice on television's "Golden Age" drama and found some summer stock work on the sly ("My Sister Eileen").
Discovered and signed by 20th Century-Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck after playing a seductive, child-bearing juvenile delinquent in the low budget film So Young, So Bad (1950), Anne soon starred in a number of promising ingénue roles, including Elopement (1951), Lydia Bailey (1952), and Dreamboat (1952) but she still could not seem to rise above the starlet typecast. At MGM, she found promising leading lady work in a few noteworthy 1950s classics: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955); Blackboard Jungle (1955); and the science fiction cult classic Forbidden Planet (1956). While co-starring with Hollywood's hunkiest best, including Paul Newman, Dale Robertson, Glenn Ford and Cornel Wilde, her roles still emphasized more her glam appeal than her acting capabilities. In the 1960s, Anne began refocusing strongly on the smaller screen, finding a comfortable niche on television series. She found a most appreciative audience in two classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes and then as a self-sufficient, Emma Peel-like detective in Aaron Spelling's short-lived cult series Honey West (1965), where she combined glamour and a sexy veneer with judo throws, karate chops and trendy fashions. The role earned her a Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award nomination.
The actress returned to films only on occasion, the most controversial being Funny Girl (1968), in which her co-starring role as Barbra Streisand's pal was heartlessly reduced to a glorified cameo. Her gratuitous co-star parts opposite some of filmdom's top comics' in their lesser vehicles -- Jerry Lewis' Hook, Line and Sinker (1969) and Don Knotts' The Love God? (1969) -- did little to show off her talents or upgrade her career. For the next couple of decades, Anne remained a welcome and steadfast presence in a slew of television movies (The Intruders (1970), Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), Little Mo (1978), A Masterpiece of Murder (1986)), usually providing colorful, wisecracking support. She billed herself as Anne Lloyd Francis on occasion in later years.
For such a promising start and with such amazing stamina and longevity, the girl with the sexy beauty mark probably deserved better. Yet in reflection, her output, especially in her character years, has been strong and varied, and her realistic take on the whole Hollywood industry quite balanced. Twice divorced with one daughter from her second marriage, Anne adopted (as a single mother) a girl back in 1970 in California. She has long been involved with a metaphysical-based church, channeling her own thoughts and feelings into the inspirational 1982 book "Voices from Home: An Inner Journey". Later, she has spent more time off-camera and involved in such charitable programs as "Direct Relief", "Angel View" and the "Desert AIDS Project", among others. Her health declined sharply in the final years. Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007, the actress died on January 2, 2011, from complications of pancreatic cancer in a Santa Barbara (California) retirement home.An extremely beautiful and capable actress. Why she never became a top star is unknown. She had her own popular TV series called "Honey West" in the mid-60's and was memorable with her sometimes sly and coy delivery of dialogue.- Diana Hyland, a striking, knowing beauty with a confident air about her, was born Joan Diane (or Joan Diana) Gentner on January 25, 1936, in Ohio and appeared on stage in summer stock, as a teen, before graduating from Cleveland Heights High School.
Moving to New York in 1955, aged 19, to test her acting mettle, the slim-faced, honey-blonde actress began to find TV roles almost immediately (one of her first being a Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) episode) in-between supplementing her income as a switchboard operator. Initially billed as Diane Gentner, she changed it to Diana Hyland.
Following a tour of the play, "Look Back in Anger", she broke through quite impressively on the Broadway boards as the damaged (by a long-ago tryst with the lead male character) ingénue of a dangerously powerful Southern politician in the acclaimed 1959 Tennessee Williams production of "Sweet Bird of Youth", starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Her role of "Heavenly Finley" could have made her a film star, had she been allowed to take it to the big screen, but Shirley Knight was given the role in the somewhat sanitized film version.
In the early 1960s, she focused on the small screen with strong, emotional roles on such soaps as Young Dr. Malone (1958) and Peyton Place (1964) (in a particularly showy role as a minister's alcoholic wife). She also scored well in a series of guest parts, notably The Twilight Zone (1959), The Fugitive (1963), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) and Alcoa Premiere (1961), the last for which she received an Emmy nomination. She was a particularly sought-after presence on medical shows, as well, spicing up such popular tearjerkers as Ben Casey (1961), Dr. Kildare (1961), The Doctors (1963),The Doctors and the Nurses (1962), Medical Center (1969) and Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969).
She made noticeably few films during her career, her best showcase being that of the unconventional minister's wife opposite Don Murray's Rev. Norman Vincent Peale in One Man's Way (1964). In addition to a small, downbeat supporting turn in The Chase (1966) starring Marlon Brando, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, she also co-starred with Fess Parker in the routine western yarn, Smoky (1966). Remaining focused on television, she continued to brightened up that medium into the 1970s, the last decade of her too-short life, with an emphasis on crime dramas (Kojak (1973), Harry O (1973), Cannon (1971), Mannix (1967), etc.).
In 1969, Hyland married actor Joseph Goodson. The couple had one son, Zachary Goodson (born 1973). The couple eventually split. A highly independent, intelligent and outspoken woman in real-life, she subsequently began a May-December affair with a much younger actor, John Travolta, in 1976. Travolta, who was 18 years Diana's junior, had just come into his own with the sitcom, Welcome Back, Kotter (1975). The two met while appearing together in the TV-movie, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). John played the special-needs title role and Diana, along with Robert Reed, were cast as his parents. Interestingly, around that time, Diana was cast as a sophisticated wealthy woman who has designs on the much younger "Fonz" in the early 1977 Happy Days (1974) episode, Fonzie's Old Lady (1977).
Around that time, she won the regular role of Dick Van Patten's wife, "Joan Bradford", mother to a large brood, in the upcoming family series, Eight Is Enough (1977). Career-wise, things couldn't have looked more promising for the actress. Sadly, it would be a short-lived celebration. A couple of years earlier, Diana had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite undergoing a mastectomy, the cancer returned around Christmas time of 1976 and the disease spread rapidly. The 41-year-old actress died a few months later, on March 27, 1977, having shot just four episodes of her new series. The rest of the episodes during that first season explained her as being "away". When the series returned that fall, it was revealed that her Joan character had also died. The second season was then devoted to having Dick Van Patten's widower character return to the dating scene and eventually remarrying.
With her terribly untimely death, Hollywood lost a truly superb actress. In a most fitting tribute, the actress was awarded a posthumous Emmy for her touching supporting performance in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). John Travolta accepted on her behalf at the awards ceremony.She seemed to guest in all the top TV shows. She was very attractive, but did not look like a typical star. She met John Travolta on the set of Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Though she was older Travolta fell deeply in love with her. She passed away with Travolta by her side. It is said he never got over her death. - Actress
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Poised and lovely Marjorie Lord started her long and varied career on the Broadway stage and in "B" films as a sweet-natured ingénue. Born Marjorie F. Wollenberg, of German and Czech heritage, on July 26, 1918 in San Francisco, California, her family transported themselves to New York City when she was 15. Here she enrolled in both acting and ballet at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Chaliff School of Dance, respectively.
Marjorie's first job (billed as Marjorie Lord) was as a 17-year-old replacement on Broadway in "The Old Maid" starring Judith Anderson in 1935. Film parts from recently-signed RKO Studio started coming her way in 1937 with the Harry Carey western Border Cafe (1937); the murder mystery Forty Naughty Girls (1937); the Wheeler & Woolsey musical comedy High Flyers (1937); and a top role in the family drama The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939).
She met actor John Archer after they appeared together in the stage production of "The Male Animal" and married at the end of 1941, they settled in Hollywood after playing Los Angeles in a stage tour of "Springtime for Henry" with Edward Everett Horton in 1942. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1953. Son Gregg avoided show business and became an airline pilot while daughter Anne Archer followed in her parents' footsteps as an actress.
Marjorie earned a Universal contract in the process and throughout the 1940s and 1950s and would alternate between theater and film assignments. She returned to Broadway with the plays "Signature" in 1945 and "Little Brown Jug" a year later, returning a decade later as a replacement in the popular Moss Hart comedy "Anniversary Waltz" in the mid-1950s. Most of Marjorie's films were inconsequential and set her up as a pretty diversion -- Escape from Hong Kong (1942), Moonlight in Havana (1942) and The Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943). Some of her better films of that period included a loan-out, Johnny Come Lately (1943), with James Cagney, and Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) starring the irrepressible sleuthing team of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.
Freelancing from the late 1940s on, Marjorie was the co-star or second lead in such films as the jazzy musical drama New Orleans (1947) for Hal Roach Studios; the Universal crimers The Strange Mrs. Crane (1948) and The Argyle Secrets (1948) as a femme fatale; the Columbia action adventure Air Hostess (1949); the Tim Holt RKO western Masked Raiders (1949) in an interesting shady role; Monogram's Bomba the Jungle Boy offering The Lost Volcano (1950); the Columbia action drama Chain Gang (1950); and the amusing crime comedy Stop That Cab (1951).
Moving more into the new 1950s medium of TV, Marjorie had guest parts on such shows as "Racket Squad," "The Adventures of Kit Carson," "China Smith," "Ramar of the Jungle," "Hopalong Cassidy," "The Loretta Young Show" and "Wagon Train," along with the anthology series "Four Star Playhouse," "Schlitz Playhouse," "Fireside Theatre," and "'Cavalcade of America." Marjorie greatest exposure, however, came in 1957 when she was cast as the second wife of widower/entertainer Danny Thomas in the long-established comedy hit The Danny Thomas Show (1953). She lucked into the role when Danny's "first wife" (played by actress Jean Hagen, best known for her classic role as screechy "Lina Lamont" in Singin' in the Rain (1952)) asked to leave the series and the writer had her character "die." Marjorie proved an able sparring partner for the comedian for seven more seasons, but was unsparingly typecast as the wholesome wife thereafter.
Following this Marjorie appeared in a number of dinner theater productions for work, but would indelibly remain Kathy ("Clancy") Williams in the public eye and appeared very sparsely on TV ("Love, American Style") and film (fifth billed as the wife of Bob Hope in the comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)). As a result, she graciously returned to Danny Thomas and her famous TV wife role in the sequel series Make Room for Granddaddy (1970).
Marjorie gently phased her career out for the most part after her third marriage in 1977, but could be seen from time to time in such programs as "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat." In 1987, she returned for a short-lived run on the domestic sitcom Sweet Surrender (1987) starring Dana Delany and Mark Blum, as the latter's mother. Her last camera appearance was a featured part in the "grumpy old men"-styled TV movie Side by Side (1988) starring Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and her TV husband Danny Thomas.
Made a widow by her second and third husbands, Marjorie published her memoir, "A Dance and a Hug," in 2005. She died on November 28, 2015, age 97, in Beverly Hills, California, of natural causes.Early in the 1940's she was a bubbly and lovely ingenue. Later she became more well known as Danny Thomas's wife in his TV comedy Make Room for Daddy aka The Danny Thomas Show. As of today, Miss Lord is now 94 years old.- Signed on as a Warner Brothers starlet, bouncy, blonde-coiffed Diane McBain would develop a burgeoning career as lively '60s "bad girl" and "spoiled rich girl" types on film and TV. Born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 18, 1941, the family moved to California while still young and she started things off as a "sweet 16" model in print and commercial ads. Eventually TV got more than just a glimpse of this diverting beauty after a WB talent agent spotted her in a Los Angeles play and signed her on during her senior year at Glendale High School.
After busily apprenticing on various TV projects, Diane made her first big splash in 1960 (age 19) with a prominent role in Ice Palace (1960) co-starring Richard Burton, Carolyn Jones and Martha Hyer. Brimming with style and confidence, Diane was quickly ushered into other films as Warner's answer to Carroll Baker, winning parts in two consecutive soapers. The first was Parrish (1961) with beef-cake film star Troy Donahue and screen legend Claudette Colbert; the other was the title role in Claudelle Inglish (1961) opposite up-and-comers Chad Everett and Robert Logan. Neither the tawdry scripts nor the box office receipts were anything to write home about unfortunately, and her leading lady career in films started to flounder with such fodder as The Caretakers (1963) with Joan Crawford, A Distant Trumpet (1964), yet again with Donahue, and Spinout (1966). The last was one of Elvis Presley' later vehicles that signified an inevitable fadeout was on the horizon. Significantly better was her dizzy good time girl and socialite "Daphne Dutton" on the hip Warner Bros. series Surfside 6 (1960) alongside Van Williams (later TV's "Green Hornet") and Donohue. The show ran for two seasons.
Diane proved popular with the teen set with her devilish débutantes and snobby sophisticates, even accompanying Bob Hope on one of his USO tours of South Vietnam in 1966/67. On the cult series Batman (1966), she played "Pinky Pinkston" (with pink hair, pink outfits and a pink dog). By the late 1960s, however, her career began drifting into exploitation with terrible titles like I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew (1969), Maryjane (1968) and The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968) (miscast as a biker chick) representative of what she was being handed.
Diane instead lay low for a time focusing instead on her child, Evan Burke, more or less splitting from the Hollywood scene. A few plays (Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie") and low budget films came her way, and in the 1980s she was seen a bit more on daytime soaps. The still young-looking and ever-elegant Diane was out and about in the 1990s as well, playing good-looking grandmas on such shows as Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996). The victim of a rape attack in 1982, Diane chose to rise above her traumatic circumstances and help others as a rape counselor.One of the most beautiful actresses of the early 1960's she came along at a time when movies wanted actresses who looked more like ordinary women. The same for actors. Had she arrived in the 1940's she would have been a star or if she had arrived in 2012 she would have been cast in A-list movies. Timing is everything, unfortunately. - Actress
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Woefully misused while in her prime screen years at Paramount during the late '30s and '40s, Patricia Morison, lovely and exotic with Rapunzel-like long, dark hair, nevertheless became a star in her own right -- as a supremely talented diva on the singing stage.
Born on March 19, 1915, in New York City, her father, William Morison, was a playwright and occasional actor who billed himself under the name Norman Rainey. Patricia's mother worked for British Intelligence during WWI. Graduating from Washington Irving High School in New York, Patricia studied at the Art Students League and proceeded to take acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse while also studying dance with the renowned Martha Graham. She earned a steady check at the time as a dress shop designer.
At age 19 Patricia made her Broadway debut in the short-lived play "Growing Pains" and proceeded to understudy the legendary Helen Hayes in her classic role of "Victoria Regina". She never went on. In 1938, shortly after opening in the musical "The Two Bouquets" opposite musical star Alfred Drake, Paramount talent scouts, looking for exotic, dark-haired glamour types then to rein in their star commodity, Dorothy Lamour, scoped Patricia out and tested her. The blue-eyed beauty who indeed resembled Lamour was signed and made her film debut the following year, showing bright promise in the "B" film Persons in Hiding (1939).
Patricia's stock did not improve, however, despite such promise, and she was relegated to such second-string westerns as I'm from Missouri (1939), Rangers of Fortune (1940), Romance of the Rio Grande (1940), and The Round Up (1941). When things didn't improve with such stilted fare as Night in New Orleans (1942), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942), and Are Husbands Necessary? (1942), she left Paramount. She freelanced in 'other woman' roles which included the Tracy/Hepburn vehicle Without Love (1945) and The Fallen Sparrow (1943), and played Empress Eugenie in The Song of Bernadette (1943), but the focus was seldom on her. Overlooked when cast in top leads at 'poverty row' programmers, her best chance at film stardom came as Victor Mature's despairing wife who takes her own life (which was to have been shown on screen) in Kiss of Death (1947), but her juicy role was excised from the film by producers (or, more likely, the Breen Commission) who felt audiences weren't ready for such shocking displays.
During the war years, Patricia had trained her voice and performed in USO tours. Cole Porter heard her sing in Hollywood one evening and decided she had the right tenacity, feistiness and vocal expertise to play the female lead in his new show. In 1948, over the objections of both the producer and director, stardom was clenched in the form of Porter's classic musical-within-a-musical "Kiss Me Kate." As the sweeping, vixenish Lilli Vanessi, a severe-looking stage diva whose own volatile personality coincided with that of her onstage role (Kate from "The Taming of the Shrew"), Patricia found THE role of her career, giving over 1,000 performances in all. Playing again alongside her former Broadway co-star Alfred Drake, Patricia basked in the multitude of glowing reviews, and such songs as "I Hate Men," "Wunderbar" and "So In Love" rightfully became signature songs. Following this triumph, film work never became a top priority again.
Patricia continued on successfully in the London version of "Kate" and went on to conquer other classic leads in the musicals "The King and I," "Kismet," "The Merry Widow," "Song of Norway" and Pal Joey," among others. Her last movie role was a cameo part as writer George Sand in the mildly received biopic Song Without End (1960) starring Dirk Bogarde as composer Franz Liszt.
On TV Patricia recreated her Kate role with Mr. Drake and made a few scattered but lively appearances over the years. One of her later guest shots was on a 1989 episode of "Cheers" and a 1991 episode of "Gabriel's Fire." In later years the never-married actress devoted herself to painting (an early passion) and enjoyed many showings in the Los Angeles area. The lovely lady with the trademark long hair died in L.A. at the age of 103, on May 20, 2018.The beautiful and talented singer is said to have been wasted at Paramount. She did freelance acting. She is the woman around whom Dressed to Kill revolves. She plays a sultry baddie in the film. But her fame came when she was discovered by Cole Porter at a party where she sang (she was a guest). Immediately Cole Porter knew he had the star for his new Broadway play Kiss Me Kate. She went on to Broadway stardom in the role. As of today she is 98 years old.- Actress
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Of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was born on May 17, 1911 in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland. Her father was Charles Joseph O'Sullivan, an officer in the Connaught Rangers, and his wife, the former Mary Fraser (or Frazer). She was educated at Catholic schools in Dublin, Paris, and London (Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, where a fellow student was fellow future actress Vivien Leigh). Even as a schoolgirl, Maureen desired an acting career, despite her father's initial opposition. She studied hard and read widely. When the opportunity to be an actress came along, it almost dropped in her lap. American film director Frank Borzage was in Dublin in 1929, filming Song o' My Heart (1930), when the 18 year old met him. He suggested a screen test, which she took. The results were more than favorable and she won the substantial role of Eileen O'Brien, then went to Hollywood to complete filming.
Once in sunny California, Maureen wasted no time landing roles in other films such as Just Imagine (1930), The Princess and the Plumber (1930), and So This Is London (1930). She was perhaps MGM's most popular ingenue throughout the 1930s in a number of non-Tarzan vehicles. In 1932, she teamed up with Olympic medal winner Johnny Weissmuller for the first time in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), as Jane Parker. Five other Tarzan films followed, the last being Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942). The Tarzan epics rank as one of the most memorable series ever made. Most people agree that those movies would not have been as successful as they were, had it not been for the talent, grace, and radiant beauty of O'Sullivan. But she was more than Jane Parker. She went on to roles in such films as The Flame Within (1935), David Copperfield (1935), and Anna Karenina (1935). She turned in another fine performance in Pride and Prejudice (1940). After the 1940s, however, she made fewer films, primarily for personal reasons, i.e. caring for her large family.
It isn't always easy to walk away from a lucrative career, but O'Sullivan did because she wanted to devote more time to her husband, John Farrow, an Australian-American writer, and their seven children: Michael, Patrick, Maria (a.k.a. Mia Farrow), John, Prudence, Theresa (a.k.a. Tisa Farrow), and Stephanie Farrow. The couple were married from 1936 until his death in 1963. After her last Tarzan venture she asked for release from her contract to care for her husband who had just left the U.S. Navy with typhoid. She did not retire completely and still found time to make occasional movies and television programs, as well as operate a bridal consulting service (Wediquette International).
O'Sullivan made her Broadway debut opposite Paul Ford in "Never Too Late" (November 27, 1962-April 24, 1965), a great success. She would appear on Broadway again in various vehicles through 1981, and later also co-produced two Broadway productions. Later movie patrons remember her as Elizabeth Alvorg in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) (playing opposite fellow silver screen film veteran Leon Ames). Her final celluloid role was in The River Pirates (1988). Some made-for-television movies followed and she retired completely in 1996, two years before her death in Scottsdale, Arizona on June 23, 1998 during heart surgery. She was 87 years old.She was in A-list movies like The Thin Man (1934) all the way to Hannah and Her Sisters(1986).She was the wife of Director John Farrow and is the mother of Mia Farrow. She is probably best remembered as Tarzan's Jane. An unprepossessing woman off-screen, she nevertheless was a talented actress and played many memorable roles.- Actress
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Bright, vivacious Marjorie Reynolds (née Goodspeed) was born in Idaho on August 12, 1917 to a homemaker and a doctor and raised in Los Angeles. She made her film debut at age 6, then "retired" after only a few years to pursue a regular education.
She returned in the mid-1930s as a teenager and began the typical assembly-line route of extra and bit roles for various mega-studios, billed this time as Marjorie Moore. Her first speaking role was in Columbia Studio's Murder in Greenwich Village (1937), this time billed as Marjorie Reynolds; her first husband's last name, this was the moniker she maintained for the duration of her career.
The blonde (originally brunette) actress then went through a rather non-challenging prairie-flower phase opposite Hollywood's top western stars such as Tex Ritter, Buck Jones, Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt. It all paid off, however, when she won the top female role opposite Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in the seasonal film classic Holiday Inn (1942), a role originally designed for Mary Martin. It remains Marjorie's most popular and cherished role on film, but it did not help her make a permanent transition into 'A' quality fare.
Marjorie continued as a dependable "B" co-lead in such films as Up in Mabel's Room (1944), Meet Me on Broadway (1946), and Heaven Only Knows (1947), with an exciting movie offer such as Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear (1944) coming her way on a rare occasion.
Along with maturity and a new entertainment medium (television) in the 1950s came a return to her natural hair color. As William Bendix's patient, resourceful brunette wife on the comedy TV series The Life of Riley (1953), Marjorie became a semi-household name. Her career took a steep decline following its demise five years later and she was only sporadically seen in films, commercials, and TV guest spots after that.
She was married twice. Her first husband was Jack Reynolds, an Assistant Casting Director for Samuel Goldwyn. They had one daughter, Linda, before divorcing in 1952 after 16 years. Her second husband, film editor John Whitney, worked for a time in the 1940s as an actor. They were married for 32 years until his death in 1985.
Long retired, Marjorie died in 1997 of congestive heart failure after collapsing while walking her dog. Though she didn't fully live up to her potential as a serious, formidable actress, her gentle charm and obvious beauty certainly spruced up the 60+ films in which she appeared.A very sweet and appealing actress, she is the female lead in the classic Holiday Inn. But not a great deal happened for her until she became Peg Riley, the calm and capable wife, opposite William Bendix on the classic TV show "The Life of Riley."- The epitome of poise, charm, style and grace, beautiful brunette Barbara Rush was born in Denver, Colorado in 1927 and enrolled at the University of California before working with the University Players and taking acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. It didn't take long for talent scouts to spot her and, following a play performance, Paramount quickly signed her up in 1950, making her debut with The Goldbergs (1950).
Just prior to this, she had met fellow actor Jeffrey Hunter, a handsome newcomer who would later become a "beefcake" bobbysoxer idol over at Fox. The two fell in love and married in December 1950. Soon, they were on their way to becoming one of Hollywood's most beautiful and photogenic young couples. Their son Christopher was born in 1952.
While at Paramount, she was decorative in such assembly-line fare as When Worlds Collide (1951), Quebec (1951) and Flaming Feather (1952). She later co-starred opposite some of Hollywood's top leading males: James Mason, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Dean Martin, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and Kirk Douglas. In most cases, she played brittle wives, conniving "other women" or socialite girlfriend types.
Despite the "A" list movies Barbara was piling up, the one single role that could put her over the top never showed its face. By the early 1960s, her film career started to decline. She married publicist Warren Cowan in 1959 and bore a second child, Claudia Cowan, in 1964. TV became a viable source of income for her, appearing in scores of guest parts on the more popular shows of the time while co-starring in standard mini-movie dramas.
She even had a bit of fun playing a "guest villainess" on the Batman (1966) series as temptress "Nora Clavicle". The stage also became a strong focus for Barbara, earning the Sarah Siddons Award for her starring role in "Forty Carats". She made her Broadway debut in the one-woman showcase "A Woman of Independent Means", which also subsequently earned her the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award during its tour. Other showcases included "Private Lives", "Same Time, Next Year", "The Night of the Iguana" and "Steel Magnolias". Rush continued to occasionally appear onscreen, most recently in a recurring role on TV's 7th Heaven (1996). She died on March 31, 2024, aged 97.An appealing personality onscreen as well as being a beauty and having a distinctive way of delivering lines. She was capable of crying on cue; considered an asset to directors. She played in a number of science fiction movies of the 1950's and then spent many years doing good roles in TV series and made-for-TV movies. - 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.She was a dark-skinned, beautiful young brunette when she debuted in the now-classic movie The Uninvited(1944). The movie is on many people's favorites list. She had a wistful, almost "golly-gee" way of delivering lines but could approach intensity at times. Her eyes were hauntingly beautiful. She was painfully shy and this led her to alcoholism. She died of the disease at a rather young age.- 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.A very fine actress who appeared in some intense roles. Later, she appeared to have a slight disfigurement to her face which made her even more interesting.- This lovely, long-haired, fresh-faced and most promising product of the late 1950s was born Diane Marie Antonia Varsi in San Mateo, California, on February 23, 1938, the elder of two daughters of Russell Varsi, a florist, and wife Beatrice DeMerchant. A troubling childhood led to her dropping out of high school, toiling instead in a number of nowhere jobs -- waitress, dress shop model, fruit picker, candle dipper, etc.
An intended spiritual sojourn in the mid-1950s from San Francisco to Mexico ended when she got as far as Los Angeles. A sensitive soul, Diane settled there and became interested in the fine arts, including folk singing, dancing, acting, writing poetry and music. She enrolled in actor Jeff Corey's acting classes and debuted in a community theater production of "Gigi." After a brief marriage that was annulled, Diane met and married producer James Dickson, who became her manager. A son Shawn Michael was born.
Through her contact with actor Corey, Diane was given the chance to audition for director Mark Robson for a part in the film version of the best-selling novel Peyton Place (1957). Despite the studio's objections, she was chosen by Robson over hundreds of others, despite her lack of experience, and made an auspicious debut in the coveted role of Allison MacKenzie. A critical hit as well as a box-office smash, Diane was nominated for an Academy Award ("Supporting Actress") along with fellow Peyton performers Lana Turner, Arthur Kennedy, Hope Lange and Russ Tamblyn, not to mention director Robson. Included in its nine nominations total was a "Best Picture" nod. She also shared a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" with actresses Sandra Dee and Carolyn Jones. Despite the movie's shut-out at the Academy Awards ceremony, Diane was deemed a new and exciting star while columnist Louella Parsons went on to call her "Hollywood's Female Brando." A rebel and non-conformist by nature who had a difficult time with celebrity, she was compared to the late James Dean in her tendency to withdraw and avoid publicity.
After Peyton Place, Diane appeared in three more high-profile Twentieth Century-Fox productions -- From Hell to Texas (1958), a western directed by Henry Hathaway and co-starring Don Murray; Ten North Frederick (1958), featuring her as Gary Cooper daughter; and the lead female role in Compulsion (1959) based on the Leopold-Loeb murder case. All of these placed Diane in the top ranks of young new actresses, but she found it harder and harder to cope with the pressures of the studio system. She eventually suffered a nervous collapse. Unable to readjust to the pressures, she started to habitually turn down roles in important movie scripts. Eventually Fox suspended her.
In March of 1959, Diane abandoned Hollywood, divorcing her husband in the process, and moved with her son to Vermont, away from the limelight. Returning to her Bohemian lifestyle of poetry and solitude, she was still recognized. Within a couple of years Diane moved back to California. Marrying producer named Michael Hausman, she had with him a second child, daughter Willo, who later had a minor acting career under the name Willo Hausman.
Still barred from working at any studio by Fox, her contract finally expired in late 1964, and she became available again. The work was hardly in the same caliber as her earlier feats. Former co-star Don Murray helped her get a role in his low-budget film entitled Sweet Love, Bitter (1967), and a role in a Swedish film entitled Roseanna (1967), but it all led to nowhere.
In 1968 Diane Varsi began an association with American International Pictures and filmed the cult flick Wild in the Streets (1968) with the equally rebellious Christopher Jones playing a drugged-out politico. She also co-starred in a third-rate Bonnie and Clyde tale called Killers Three (1968). In 1969, she was featured with Robert De Niro and Bruce Dern in Roger Corman's Bloody Mama (1970) with Diane playing a hooker and a deranged Shelley Winters reenacting murderous Ma Barker. She also played roles that spoke to her, such as the nurse in the anti-war film Johnny Got His Gun (1971) and her part in the TV-movie The People (1972), about peaceful aliens invading the earth. A sprinkling of other TV assignments also came her way.
The writing was on the wall, however, for Diane. The dust had settled on what was the remnants of a once glorious career. After turning in a small role as an overweight mental patient in the excellent film I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), Diane again dropped out of sight--this time for good. Little was heard although it was said she had returned to her poetry and took up photography. The newspapers reported her death on November 19, 1992, in Los Angeles at age 54, from respiratory problems due to complications from Lyme disease, which she had contracted back in 1977.Because of her enormous ability to act, she was almost an immediate star. But, she voiced her disenchantment with life in Hollywood and summarily picked up and moved to Vermont. Big mistake. Later she tried to come back to Hollywood but pretty much got the cold shoulder and never again approached stardom. - Actress
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The daughter of a noted surgeon, Dana Wynter was born Dagmar Winter in Berlin, Germany, and grew up in England. When she was 16 her father went to Morocco, reportedly to operate on a woman who wouldn't allow anyone else to attend her; he visited friends in Southern Rhodesia, fell in love with it and brought his daughter and her stepmother to live with him there. Wynter later enrolled as a pre-med student at Rhodes University (the only girl in a class of 150 boys) and also dabbled in theatrics, playing the blind girl in a school production of "Through a Glass Darkly", in which she says she was "terrible."
After a year-plus of studies, she returned to England and shifted gears, dropping her medical studies and turning to an acting career. She was appearing in a play in Hammersmith when an American agent told her he wanted to represent her. She left for New York on November 5, 1953, "Guy Fawkes Day," a holiday commemorating a 1605 attempt to blow up the Parliament building. "There were all sorts of fireworks going off," she later told an interviewer, "and I couldn't help thinking it was a fitting send-off for my departure to the New World."
Wynter had more success in New York than in London, acting on TV (Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), Suspense (1949), Studio One (1948), among others) and the stage before "going Hollywood" a short time later. The willowy, dark-eyed actress appeared in over a dozen films, worked in "Golden Age" television (such as Playhouse 90 (1956)) and even co-starred in her own short-lived TV series, the globe-trotting The Man Who Never Was (1966). Married and divorced from well-known Hollywood lawyer Greg Bautzer, Wynter, once called Hollywood's "oasis of elegance", divided her time between homes in California and County Wicklow, Ireland until her death.As you can see in her photo she was a perfectly beautiful young Englishwoman. Besides the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, she also was extremely good as a Wren Officer in D-Day the Sixth of June. But, her most touching role was as an innocent who had gotten caught up in World War II in Germany and had lost everything. Her character struggles greatly. As a native of Germany, this role, no doubt, was important to her.