Catherine McLeod(1921-1997)

Of Scottish descent, Catherine McLeod was a self-confessed movie fan as a child of the Depression. Born on July 2, 1921, in Santa Monica, California, she was a convent trained. She became a theater cashier in Dallas for a time before returning to Los Angeles and studying at an acting school. A talent scout discovered her in a play and signed her to an MGM contract in 1944.

She was typically cultivated in small bit roles which culminated in the finest showcase of her career. In the sudsy romancer, I've Always Loved You (1946), which was set to classical music, Catherine has to grow from a naive 18-year-old girl to an embittered 45-year-old woman. In comparison, most of her co-starring "B" roles were not only loanouts but less demanding in scope. She played Elizabeth Taylor older sister in Courage of Lassie (1946); Don Ameche's love interest in the weepie That's My Man (1947); the female lead in a pair of Bill Elliott's western vehicles, The Fabulous Texan (1947) and Old Los Angeles (1948); a nurse opposite psychiatrist Paul Henreid in So Young So Bad (1950); the second lead in the Anne Baxter starrer My Wife's Best Friend (1952); Robert Clarke's damsel in distress in the swashbuckling adventure Sword of Venus (1953); and another second lead (behind Jean Peters) in the film noir A Blueprint for Murder (1953).

Finding her film career non-fulfilling, she settled into plays and television anthologies ("Lux Theatre," "Schlitz Playhouse," "Alcoa Theatre"), crime programs ("Richard Diamond," "Perry Mason," "77 Sunset Strip") and westerns ("Bronco," "Colt .45," "Maverick") in the mid-1950s and 60's. She also focused more strongly on her second marriage (to actor Don Keefer in 1950, and their three sons, Don (born 1953), John (born 1955) and Tom (born 1962). John and Tom would find work behind the scenes in later years.

Catherine gravitated toward soap operas into the next decade and was seen on such daytime programs as Search for Tomorrow (1951), General Hospital (1963) and Days of Our Lives (1965). In commercials, she is best remembered for her aching headache plug for Anacin in which she is cooking and loses patience over the stove, saying, "Mother, please! I'd rather do it myself!" Her last appearance on film was a bit part in the sordid thriller Lipstick (1976). She died on May 21, 1997, aged 75.