Michael Pate was born in 1920 in Sydney, Australia. He began his career on radio. In World War Two he served in the Australian Army in the South Pacific. At war’s end he resumed his career on radio gradually turining to acting. In 1950 he made “Bitter Springs” with Chips Rafferty. That same year he went to Hollywood where he began a profilic career in U.S. movies. Among his many film credits are “Thunder on the Hill”, “Brainstorm” and “The Singing Nun”. By 1979 he was back in Australia where he directed the young Mel Gibson in “Tim” with Piper Laurie. He died in 2008.
His “Guardian” obituary:
The Australian actor Michael Pate, who has died aged 88, had a successful Hollywood career, appearing in more than 50 films and numerous TV series. Black-haired and thick-set, he was often cast as a Native American in westerns. Later, resuming his career in his homeland, he also ventured behind the camera.
He was born in Drummoyne, a suburb of Sydney, and attended Fort Street high school. Although he had hoped to become a college lecturer, and had begun writing short stories, he left school to become an accountant.
His career in the entertainment industry began when, aged 18, he was selected, “out of the blue”, as he put it, by the Australian Broadcasting Commission to take part in a radio series in which young people interviewed visiting celebrities. Pate spoke to HG Wells, Yehudi Menuhin and Sir Malcolm Sargent. He acted in radio plays and made his stage debut in 1940. During second world war army service in the south Pacific, he continued to act, his colleagues including Tony Hancock’s future sidekick Bill Kerr.
Pate’s film debut was several bit parts in an epic war film, Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940); he played two Arabs and one Sikh. His first significant role was as the eldest son in Sons of Matthew (1949), a family saga. The first of his many police parts was in Bitter Springs (1950), made by Ealing Studios’ Australian unit.
On stage, he had played a servant in Bonaventure, a melodrama set in Britain. On hearing that a film version was being made in Hollywood, he wrote letters asking for the chance to reprise his role, in Thunder on the Hill (1951), directed by Douglas Sirk. His decision to stay in Hollywood may have been influenced by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which viewed him with suspicion and had him closely watched.
He supported John Wayne in Hondo (1953), as an Indian chief, and in McLintock! (1963). The former led to a TV series in 1967 in which Pate reprised his role. Exceptions to the B-movie rule were Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film of Julius Caesar (1953), and Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965). The odd western horror Curse of the Undead (1959) combined his two most prevalent genres.
He was even busier on television, in Maverick, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Rifleman, Gunsmoke and five episodes of Rawhide, one of which he also wrote. Keeping pace as westerns were replaced by spy and fantasy series, he was a henchman in Batman (1966), but in The Man from Uncle (1966) and Mission Impossible (1967), he was cast as an Arab and South American general, respectively.
In 1954, CBS presented the first screen version of Casino Royale, with Barry Nelson as an Americanised James Bond. Reversing the transatlantic process, Bond’s CIA contact Felix Leiter became the British agent Clarence Leiter – Pate, with a plummy accent and tuxedo.
In 1968 he returned to Australia to produce Age of Consent (1969); he had wanted to film Norman Lindsay’s novel for years. He went on to star as a detective in Matlock Police (1971-75), winning a best actor award from the Television Society of Australia in 1972.
For the cinema, Pate wrote and produced The Mango Tree (1977), a nostalgic drama with his son, Christopher, in the lead. Tim (1979), which Pate directed, produced and adapted from Colleen McCullough’s novel, starred a young Mel Gibson. With Christopher, he toured with the play Mass Appeal in the mid-1980s, which concluded at the Sydney Opera House.
In 2000, he was presented with a special award from the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia and retired from acting the following year. However, until he was admitted to hospital, he continued working on a script, which Christopher hopes to complete.
Pate is survived by his wife Felippa and Christopher.
• Michael Pate (Edward John Pate), actor, writer, producer and director, born February 26 1920; died September 1 2008 His “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.
Rock Hudson was one of the most popular movie stars of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. He was born Roy Fitzgerald in 1925 in Illinois. He made his featur film debut in 1948’s military drama “Fighter Squadron”. He came to international fame opposite Jane Wyman in “Magnificent Obsession” in 1954. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1956 for her performance in “Giant” with Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. He made three very popular films with Doris Day including “Pillow Talk” and two with Gina Lollobrigida. In the early seventies, his film career was on the wane and he went into television with the very popular series “McMillan and Wife”. He died in 1985 aged 59. His IMDB biography can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
With his urbane charm, dashing good looks, and virile masculinity, Rock Hudson epitomized Hollywood’s classic matinee idol image – used to great effect in many a romantic comedy in which he was often paired with the equally magnetic Doris Day. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, Hudson’s screen career spanned five decades and was a shining example of Hollywood’s classical “star system”-style career promotion – his early success coming as the result of careful cultivation and nurturing by major movie studios. While generally underappreciated for his skills as an actor, Hudson nevertheless showed unexpected glimmers of brilliance, as he did in George Stevens’ 1956 epic, “Giant” for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Known for his easy-going demeanor off-screen, Hudson was well-liked by colleagues and seemed to enjoy a rich and happy life in the public eye. In truth, however, Hudson endured a deeply troubled private life, living a lie for the sake of his career – including going along with a studio-arranged marriage. Manufactured to be Hollywood’s ultimate ladies man, Rock Hudson was, in reality, a lifelong homosexual. Tragically, he would become a cautionary tale as well. After contracting the HIV virus and dying of AIDS in 1985 – his private life now thrust public for the world to see – Hudson would become the first major Hollywood casualty of the misunderstood and widely feared disease. But he would not die in vain. His death not only opened people’s eyes to the disease itself, it inspired his good friend and onetime co-star Elizabeth Taylor to begin her decades-long role as a prominent AIDS activist, raising millions in the fight against the deadly disease that had robbed her friend of his golden years.
Born Leroy (Roy) Harold Scherer, Jr. on Nov. 17, 1925, in Winnetka, IL, the future movie idol was the son of a hard-drinking auto mechanic, Roy, Sr. and a telephone operator named Katherine Wood. In 1930, at the height of the Great Depression, like many distraught dads of that time, Hudson’s father abandoned the family. Fortunately, a year later, his mother remarried a man by the name of Wallace Fitzgerald, who adopted Roy, Jr. and gave him his last name. A poor student growing up, Hudson narrowly graduated from Winnetka’s New Trier High School – the same alma mater as Ann-Margret and Charlton Heston – in the early 1940’s. Far more enamored of movies than his school work, Hudson got a job as an usher at a local movie theater, where he developed a passion for acting. Eager to get started, Hudson tried out for roles in school plays but was rejected for never knowing his lines.
After a brief tour of duty in the U.S. Navy as an airplane mechanic during World War II, Hudson moved to Los Angeles. Determined as ever to make it in show business, Hudson applied to the University of Southern California’s drama program, but was disqualified due to poor grades. To make ends meet, Hudson found a job as a delivery truck driver, but spent most of his working hours idling outside of studio gates, passing out his headshots. Hardly the way to go about breaking into show biz, to be sure – but in this case, persistence paid off. In 1948, the handsome young Hudson caught the eye of powerful Hollywood talent scout, Henry Willson. The rest, as they say, was history. According to author Robert Barrios’s 2002 best-seller Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall, the openly homosexual Willson almost single-handedly launched Hollywood’s highly profitable “beefcake craze” of the 1950’s, thanks to his knack for discovering and renaming young actors “whose visual appeal transcended any lack of ability.” Among Willson’s other discoveries were such nobodies-turned-Hollywood-golden-boys Arthur Gelien (a.k.a. Tab Hunter), Merle Johnson, Jr. (better known as Troy Donahue), and Bob Mosely (a.k.a. Guy Madison). According to Hollywood folklore, Willson changed Roy Fitzgerald’s name to the more masculine sounding “Rock Hudson” by combining the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River.
In preparation for his first film role in Raoul Walsh’s “Fighter Squadron,” the newly re-christened Hudson got caps put on his teeth and received intensive coaching in acting, singing, dancing, fencing and horseback riding. Still, according to legend, it took no less than 38 takes for Hudson to successfully deliver his one line. Nonetheless, as a contract player for a major Hollywood studio, Hudson enjoyed a degree of job security that would disappear along with the studio system decades later. Cared for and jealously protected as a valuable studio asset, Hudson was literally groomed for leading man status. Studio P.R. flacks used their pull to push magazine publishers into plastering Hudson’s handsome mug across the covers of countless film magazines. At 29, Hudson earned his first professional recognition for his role as a bad boy redeemed in the mawkish romance “Magnificent Obsession” (1954) starring Jane Wyman. Hailed by Modern Screen Magazine as one of the best films of the year, the magazine also named Hudson the year’s “most popular actor.”
As Hudson’s marquee value increased, however, so too did the pressure to hide his homosexuality. In 1955, as a pre-emptive measure, Henry Willson arranged a marriage of convenience between Hudson and his (Willson’s) secretary, Phyllis Gates. Much to his credit, according to Hudson biographer, Sara Davidson, the actor made an earnest go at trying to make the sham marriage work. Unfortunately, the effort failed and the two subsequently divorced in 1958. In the meantime, however, with Hudson’s heterosexuality firmly established in the public eye, his acting career soared to new heights. A year after his highly publicized nuptials, Hudson landed his biggest payday to date – $100,000 to star in “Giant”(1956), director George Steven’s sprawling three and a half hour epic based on Edna Ferber’s novel. Cast opposite two of Hollywood’s other top rising young stars, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, Hudson delivered a powerful performance as Texas rancher, Bick Benedict. As a result of their searing performances, both Hudson and Dean were nominated for Best Actor Oscars at the 1957 Academy Awards.
Hudson closed out the decade with strong performances in a string of merely adequate vehicles. Two notable exceptions were director Richard Brook’s sublime interracial drama, “Something of Value” (1957) and the overly long, but nevertheless effective adaptation of “A Farewell to Arms” (1957), based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. In the late ’50’s,
Hudson’s career took another huge leap forward when he was cast opposite Doris Day in a string of light bedroom comedies – starting with 1958’s “Pillow Talk.” Audiences enjoyed the delightful chemistry between Hudson and Day so much that the pair reunited for two more outings, “Lover Come Back” (1961) and “Send Me No Flowers” (1964) – all big at the box office.
As he approached middle age, Hudson’s career began slowing down. Losing out on choice roles to younger men must have surely been a blow to his ego. Nevertheless, the actor continued churning films out at a steady pace.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Hudson’s best work of the period came in a film where he played a character forcibly confronted with his own mortality and the grim realities of age in John Frankenheimer’s engrossing science-fiction/fantasy thriller, “Seconds” (1966). In it, Hudson gave a first-rate performance as a middle-aged man who is given a younger body, only to discover too late that he has made a Faustian bargain that has robbed him of both his sanity and his trust in humankind.
Still, roles like the one in “Seconds” were increasingly far and few between. Lured by the financial incentives and displeased with the feature scripts he was receiving, Hudson reluctantly agreed to do television. One of TV’s last major matinee holdouts, Hudson still commanded enough clout to at least get first choice of projects. In 1971, Hudson signed on to do a 90-minute made-for-TV movie of the week called “Once Upon a Dead Man” (NBC, 1971). A light mystery in the vein of 1934’s “The Thin Man,” “Once Upon a Dead Man” would eventually serve as a backdoor pilot for the highly successful series “McMillan and Wife” (NBC, 1971-77). Modeled after the comic adventures of husband-and-wife sleuthing team Nick and Nora Charles, “McMillan and Wife” starred Hudson as San Francisco Police Commissioner Stewart McMillan and pretty newcomer Susan Saint James as his flighty (but sporadically helpful) wife, Sally.
Hudson’s career hit a low in the early 1980’s. With his years of heavy smoking and drinking beginning to take its toll on his health, Hudson could no longer play leading man roles. His last high-profile gig was as the star of the short-lived series, “The Devlin Connection” (NBC, 1982), about a reluctant father-and-son detective team. Premiering as a mid-season replacement in the winter of 1982, “The Devlin Connection” started out strong in the ratings; only to have its momentum interrupted when Hudson suffered a massive heart attack during filming. As Hudson recovered from quintuple heart bypass surgery, production on “Devlin” shut down for nearly a year. While Hudson bounced back, the long delay proved fatal to the health of the show. By the time it returned to the airwaves, viewers had lost interest. The show’s final episode aired on Christmas Day, 1982.
Over the next two years, Hudson’s health continued to deteriorate. At first, this was attributed to the star’s lingering heart problems, but before long, other whispers and rumors began to spread. In 1985, Hudson signed on to play his last major role as Daniel Reece, the love interest of Linda Evans’ character, Krystal Carrington, on the hit primetime drama, “Dynasty” (ABC, 1981-89). Although the role of Reece was originally conceived to become a major character, Hudson’s rapidly declining health dictated that the storyline be revised. When producers noticed Hudson looking increasingly frail and steadily losing weight over the course of the season, they began to worry and kept their fingers crossed. The final straw came, though, when Hudson’s speech started to become affected, preventing him from delivering his lines. Left with no other option, the Daniel Reece character was written out after 14 episodes. Though Hudson kept it a secret, in reality, the actor was aware of the severity of his condition, having been diagnosed with AIDS in June of 1984.
After months of seclusion, Hudson resurfaced in July of 1985 to join his old friend and co-star, Doris Day, for the launch of her new cable show, “Doris Day’s Best Friends” (CBN, 1985-86). In his final public appearance, a skeletally gaunt and incoherent Hudson confirmed the awful truth – he was knocking at death’s door. The shocking image of the once robust dreamboat withering away to nothingness was broadcast again all over the national news shows that night and for weeks to come. But at the end of the day, it was Doris Day’s devastated stunned silence that seemed to sum it up best.
No longer able to deny the obvious, Hudson and his doctors released a statement shortly after his appearance, stating that the actor had terminal liver cancer. A week later, however, Hudson came clean and publicly confirmed that he was dying of AIDS.
How the actor contracted the deadly disease was unclear, but Hudson speculated that he may have contracted the HIV virus from infected blood he had received as part of his numerous heart bypass procedures (At the time of his operation, blood was not tested for the then-unknown HIV antibody). Hudson died on Oct. 2, 1985 of complications from AIDS. As per his instructions, he was cremated and his ashes buried at sea.
By this point, the question of whether or not Hudson was secretly gay seemed all but moot; most of his colleagues knew and it had long been an open secret in Hollywood’s gay underground.
Nevertheless, the details of Hudson’s lifestyle became startlingly public following the funeral when Hudson’s longtime partner, Marc Christian, sued the actor’s estate on grounds of “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Although he himself tested negative for the disease, according to Christian, Hudson continued having sex with him for a year after he had been diagnosed. In 1991, Christian reached a settlement with Hudson’s estate.
As the first high-profile Hollywood celebrity to die from AIDS, Hudson’s greatest legacy may have come in death. Casually dismissed for far too long as just a “gay disease” by the public, AIDS research had traditionally held a low priority among the medical establishment. After Hudson put a recognizable face on the disease, however, public awareness of AIDS increased dramatically.
Hudson’s death also galvanized the Hollywood community for the first time to take a stance against the plight, helping to raise money and erase some of the stigma attached with the disease – typified best by his good friend Elizabeth Taylor’s activism, done in honor of her doomed friend. Had it not been for Hudson, it is unknown when, if ever, Hollywood would have come around to embrace this tradition of compassion and awareness regarding AIDS.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Actors Rock Hudson and Juliet Prowse on stage, in the musical ‘I Do, I Do’, at the Phoenix Theatre, London, January 17th 1976. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Lois Smith was born in 1930 in Topeka in Kansas. She made her fim debut iin “East of Eden” with James Dean and then starred in the Western “Strange Lady in Town” with Greer Garson and Dana Andrews. She was excellent in 1970 in “Five Easy Pieces” as the shy, withdrawn classical pianist who is the sister of Jack Nicholson. Other films of note include “How to Make an American Quilt” and “Twister”. Link to her “True Blood” page here.
.TCM Overview:
An esteemed, highly-charged and highly-talented player of stage, TV and film, Lois Smith has not always been regular in the visual media, but she has made the chances count. She made her Broadway debut as a high school student in “Time Out for Ginger” in 1952, and her TV debut in the live production of “The Apple Tree” the next year. Smith made an auspicious film debut as the thwarted barmaid Ann in Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden” (1955). Although she was eclipsed in the public eye by James Dean and Jo Van Fleet, nevertheless, she was rewarded by the critics. Yet it was not until 1970 that Smith again had a showy film role. Her performance as Partita, Jack Nicholson’s sister, in Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces,” won her the National Society of Film Critics’ Award as Best Supporting Actress. In 1976, she was the suicidal Anita in Paul Mazursky’s cinematic memoir, “Next Stop, Greenwich Village” Film roles followed at the rate of about one per year, but rarely did she get to showcase her abilities until 1995 when Smith was the adult Sophie, still thinking of her years as a swimming champion, in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s “How to Make an American Quilt” and Susan Sarandon’s mother in “Dead Man Walking.” In Jan De Bont’s “Twister” (1996), she offered stalwart support as scientist Helen Hunt’s aunt while in “Larger Than Life” (also 1996), Smith was a retired circus performer.
Smith’s TV work in the 70s consisted mostly of daytime dramas, with regular roles on both “Somerset” and “The Doctors.” In the 80s, she began to make episodic guest appearances and was featured in several TV-movies, most notably “Skylark” (CBS, 1993). Two years later, she was Harry Truman’s waspish, nasty, bigoted mother-in-law in “Truman” for HBO.
For all her TV and film roles, Smith has worked most consistently on stage. Her list of credits includes many plays on Broadway and in key American theaters, such as the Long Wharf in New Haven, CT, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, IL. It was with the latter that Smith created the role of the indomitable Ma Joad in the stage version of “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1988. She toured with the role before bringing it to Broadway in 1990 which earned her a Tony nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Smith knocked ’em dead when she performed a key scene on the Tony Awards TV broadcast that year and in 1991, when the production aired on PBS. Her co-star, Gary Sinise, cast her as Halie, the matriarch of another family, his 1995 Chicago production of Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer-winning play “Buried Child.” Again, Smith recreated the role on Broain dway and earned a second Tony nomination. Smith has branched out a bit as a person of the theatre to playwriting and directing. Her “All There Is” was written in 1982 and last performed in a 1985 workshop by the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Smith has also directed at the Juilliard school.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Ramon Novarro was born in 1899 in Durango, Mexico. His family moved to California to escape the Mexican revolution of 1913. He entered silent movies in tiny roles in 1917. He began been promoted as a rival to the Italian Rudolph Valentino. His first major success was “Scaramouche” in 1923. “Ben-Hur” in 1925 was probably his most popular film. After Valentino’s untimely death in 1926, Novarro became the most popular actor in silent film. He made the transition to sound film with relative easre and starred opposite Greta Garbo in “Mata Hari” in 1932. By the late 40’s he had become a reliable character actor and appeard as such in “We Were Strangers” a story about civil unrest in Cuba which starred Jennifer Jones and John Garfield which was made in 1949. Sadly he died in 1968 as a result of a brutal murder by two brothers. Anyone with an interest in silent film, should seek out the movies of Ramon Novarro. A link to “Golden Silents” here.
TCM Overview:
An engaging Latin American vaudevillian and singer who began his film career during the silent era, actor Ramón Novarro took over the role of Hollywoodâ¿¿s top Latin Lover when Rudolph Valentino died in 1926, only to stagnate once talkies came of age. Novarro first came to prominence as a villainous henchman in “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1922), which led to starring roles in popular films like “Scaramouche” (1923) and “The Arab” (1924). He had his greatest success playing wealthy man-turned slave Judah Ben-Hur in “Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ” (1925), a troubled, but successful epic that served as a precursor to William Wylerâ¿¿s 1959 classic. From there, Novarro starred opposite Norma Shearer in “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” (1927) and Joan Crawford in “Across to Singapore” (1928). But once he made the transition to talkies after “Devil May Care” (1929), Novarro saw his popularity plummet. By the end of the decade, he was out of a contract and lucky to find work in bit parts or character roles. Meanwhile, he fell into alcoholism â¿¿ due in part to his lifelong struggle with his homosexuality â¿¿ and his career suffered even more. Novarro did have a bit of a revival with character work on popular TV series like Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66) and “Bonanza” (NBC, 1959-1973), but his murder in 1968 by two prostitute brothers ended his life in a tawdry fashion. Still, Novarro remained a popular figure from the silent era whose contributions to film were undeniable.
Sonja Henie was born in 1912 in Oslo, Norway to a very wealthy family. From an early age she practiced ice skating and she was a competitor in the 1924 Winter Olympics at the age of eleven. She won her third Olympic title at he 1936 Games. After the Games she became a professional ice skater. While performing in Los Angeles she was signed to a contract by 20th Century Fox. Her first film was “One in a Million”. The peak of her cinema career was between 1936 and 1943 and her films included “Thin Ice”, “Happy Landings”, “Sun Valley Serenade”, “Iceland” and “Wintertime”. She was a hugely popular star and made ice skating also popular. Ten years later Esther Williams was to do the same thing with swimming. Sonja Henie concentrated on ice skating revues after her film career waned. She retired from ice skating in 1956. She invested wisely and was a very wealthy woman when she died while en route by place to Oslo in 1969 at the age of 57.
TCM Overview:
Winner of the Olympic Gold medal in figure skating an impressive three times in a row (1928, 1932, 1936), Henie came to Twentieth Century-Fox shortly after her last win and was built up as a popular star. Nearly a dozen light musical comedies offered the blonde and dimpled Henie plenty of opportunities to don her blades and perform in lavish ice ballets while her leading men beamed and a cast of supporting comics clowned around. When her film career petered out in the mid-1940s she turned to performing in live ice shows.
“Vanity Fair” article on Sonja Henie can be accessed here.
Linda Darnell was born in 1923 in Dallas, Texas. She was spotted by a talent scout and brought to Hollywood with her mother at the age of 15. She signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. She was cast opposite Tyrone Power in the 1939 comedy “Day-Time Wife”. In 1940 she was with Power again in the terrific swashbuckler “The Mark of Zorro” and later on she was with him again and Rita Hayworth in the visually stunningly photographed “Blood and Sand”. Among her other film credits are “Fallen Angel”, “Anna and the King of Siam”, “My Darling Clementine” “A Letter to Three Wives”, and “Forever Amber” where she replaced the very young Peggy Cummins. She continued her career through the 1950’s but by the earky 60’s her cinema career was in decline. Linda Darnell died tragically in 1965 at the early age of 41. She was watching one of her films on television when she fell asleep. She had been smoking a cigarette which smouldered on the settee which got fire and she died from massive burns. She was a true beauty with many great films in her portfolio. Linda Darnell website can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
Linda Darnell was touted by Hollywood wags as “the girl with the perfect face”, and for once the description fit. Her cameo-cut china doll face was enough to ensure stardom in glamor-obsessed 1940s Hollywood; surely Darnell could easily fit into the top ten most beautiful women the screen has ever known. And as she matured, her voice deepened into a torchy throb that added intensity to the eventual siren image.
The product of a relentless stage mother, Darnell was a star by age 15 at Fox, where she was a contract player for 14 years. For a while she coasted on her looks alone, playing sweet young things (Selznick chose her to embody the Virgin Mary in 1943’s “Song of Bernadette”), before her career took a more interesting turn. Darnell was hampered by being under contract to Fox, which specialized in escapist fare and wasted her for seven unremarkable years.
United Artists cast Darnell on loan-out for a Chekhov adaptation, “Summer Storm” in 1944. She wasn’t ready, but the publicity–with Darnell lolling about a la Jane Russell, combined with that face–launched a transformation beyond pin-up to apprentice love goddess. The rest of the decade found her often in interesting roles that displayed her as willful, sometimes venal, smouldering trouble. Memorable portraits in the Darnell catalog include the strangled (and left to burn) music-hall trollop in Hangover Square (1945), the floozy waitress of Fallen Angel (also 1945, in which she acted circles around reigning studio queen Alice Faye), the ill-fated concubine in “Anna and the King of Siam” (1946, in which Darnell dies prophetically by fire),A Letter to Three Wives (1948, hilariously stealing the show from Jeanne Crain and Ann Sothern), and a gangster’s moll on the lam with Robert Mitchum in Second Chance (1953).
But Darnell’s big bid for superstardom went awry: taking over the starring role in Kathleen Windsor’s bodice-ripper “Forever Amber” (1947) when Zanuck bounced Peggy Cummins. The movie received monumental publicity but censorship and the heavy hand of Otto Preminger produced dull results. Her scenes during The Great Fire of London produced a paranoia that caused her director to literally drag her before the cameras. Fire was becoming a lifelong fear.
After Letter, the parts Darnell was ready for weren’t offered to her. She received good notices for No Way Out (1950), a race relations drama ahead of its time, but as happened with Rita Hayworth, Hollywood tended to treat mature beauties in nonglamourous roles as if they were finished commercially in the business. The combination of a stormy personal life and alcohol dependence dogged her as she sped through the predictable downward spiral of summer stock, television and cabaret.
In 1965 Darnell was visiting a former secretary in a suburb of Chicago and fell asleep with a lit cigarette after watching a late show of Star Dust (1940), wherein she played a young Hollywood hopeful. Her hostess and her daughter escaped the blaze, but Darnell suffered burns over eighty percent of her body. Some accounts had her escaping the fire only to re-enter the house, thinking her friend’s daughter had not escaped; others alleged she went back to retrieve her mink coat—the last vestige remaining from her glory days. She died two days later, rallying into consciousness only once, when her adopted daughter, Lola, visited her. Linda Darnell, the woman called “almost too beautiful”, left behind an estate of only $10,000, which went to her sixteen-year-old girl. Today Darnell is not remembered as well as many of her less-talented contemporaries, but an examination of her career reveals a gifted beauty whose steamy noir persona made her a tragic, unforgettable entry in Hollywood history.
Rory Calhoun has become a cult name thanks to “The Simpsons”. He was avery popular actor throughout the 1950’s especially in Westerns. He was born in Los Angeles in 1922. He was discovered by Sue Carol an agent who was also the wife of actor Alan Ladd. She managed to secure him a role in the Laurel & Hardy film “The Bullfighters” in 1945. He starred then opposite Rhonda Fleming in “Adventure Island”, “The Red House” with Julie London” and “That Hagen Girl” with Shirley Temple. His career highlights in the 1950’s included “How to Marry A Millionaire” with Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe in 1953, “The River of No Return” with Monroe again and Robert Mitchum and “Way of a Gaucho” with Gene Tierney. His best performance was probably with Susan hayward in “With A Song in My Heart”. His last film in 1992 was the western “Pure Country”. Rory Calhoun died in 1999 aged 76.
Rory Calhoun’s obituary in “The Independent” by Tom Vallance:A RUGGEDLY handsome actor with black hair and piercing blue eyes, Rory Calhoun was a teenage favourite and a veteran of countless low-budget westerns whose modest film career was counterpointed by a frequently scandalous and newsworthy private life. His early years of juvenile delinquency, tempestuous love affairs and controversial divorce, in which his wife named 79 co-respondents (including the famed pin-up girl Betty Grable), gained him the sort of headlines that his journeyman roles in films rarely did.
The Young And The Brave, poster, from top: Rory Calhoun, William Bendix, Richard Jaeckel, Manuel Padilla Jr, Flame (as Lobo the dog), poster art, 1963. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Born Francis Timothy McCown in 1922, in Los Angeles, he was raised by his mother and a step- father named Nathaniel Durgin. The family was extremely poor, and he gravitated to crime at an early age, spending much of his youth in reformatories and prisons for a series of thefts. He later credited a Catholic priest, the Rev Donald Kanally, with changing his life.
“He took me in hand after I had been sent to the Federal Reform School at El Reno, Oklahoma. He put me on the straight and narrow by teaching me to pray and respect myself, and he taught me values that I hadn’t learned as a youngster. Eventually he became a Monsignor – I hope that anyone who needs a helping hand will be as lucky as I was in having Father Kanally.”
Calhoun then worked as a lumberjack, miner and cowboy until, while riding in the Hollywood hills, he met the movie star Alan Ladd, who was impressed with the young man’s physique and invited him home to meet Mrs Ladd, the agent Sue Carol, who got him a contract with 20th Century-Fox. As Frank McCown, he made his screen debut as a soldier in Something for the Boys (1944), followed by minor roles in Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) and the musical Nob Hill (1945).
When Fox dropped him, the producer David O. Selznick’s chief talent scout, Henry Willson, noted for the distinctive noms d’ecran he would give his discoveries (Guy Madison, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue), persuaded Selznick to add the young actor to his contract list, renaming him Rory Calhoun. Though Selznick did not cast the young man in his own productions, he gave him publicity and loaned him to other producers.
Calhoun’s first big break came when he played the boxer Jim Corbett in The Great John L (1945), based on the life of the turn-of-the-century heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan and produced by Bing Crosby. The role of Corbett (whose life had earlier been depicted by Errol Flynn in Gentleman Jim, 1942) gave Calhoun the chance to display his impressive physique and athletic prowess. When MGM wanted the Selznick star Shirley Temple for their film That Hagen Girl (1947), the producer insisted they also take Calhoun for the role of Temple’s young suitor who loses her to Ronald Reagan.
The same year Calhoun made a good impression with his role in Delmer Daves’s moody, rustic film noir The Red House starring Edward G. Robinson. Calhoun was one of four young newcomers in the film, sharing some torrid love scenes with Julie London in his role as a ruthless woodman hired by Robinson to repel trespassers who might discover the secret harboured by a mysterious house in the woods.
In 1947 Calhoun started a stormy relationship with the French actress Corinne Calvet. “Our romance was spontaneous and electric,” wrote Calvet later, but she claimed that Calhoun’s volatile temper cooled their ardour – on one occasion when she had a date with the mogul Harry Cohn, she returned to find that Calhoun had wrecked her apartment. Later, after proposing marriage, he abandoned her to spend the evening with his mentor Henry Willson and, when she demanded an explanation, took a shot at her with a pistol.
Yvonne De Carlo was another actress confused by Calhoun’s relationship with Willson. Writing of a date with the actor planned by her studio, she said, “There was Rory, his agent Henry Willson, Marguerite Chapman and me. Ostensibly I was paired with Rory but it didn’t turn out that way. After photographers stopped snapping pictures, Rory and Henry stood huddled deep in conversation. Marguerite and I weren’t even tossed a dangling participle to chew on. After a while I said to Marguerite, `Can you tell me what the hell is going on?’ `Don’t look now, Yvonne,’ she kidded, `but I think I’m your date tonight.’ “
In 1948 Calhoun married the Mexican singer Lita Baron, whom he met when she was leading an orchestra at the Mocambo night-club and, according to DeCarlo, “settled down to a more stable way of life”. Having received star billing in several B movies for which he was loaned out, often with other Selznick players – Rhonda Fleming in Adventure Island (1947), Guy Madison in Massacre River (1949) – Calhoun returned to Fox with a new contract and for several years was used less as a star than as a reliable leading man to the studio’s female super-stars: Susan Hayward in I’d Climb the Highest Mountain (1951) and With a Song in My Heart (1952), Betty Grable in Meet Me after the Show (1951) and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
His top-billed roles were generally in minor westerns such as Powder River (1953), Four Guns to the Border (1954) and Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955), but he was more interesting when playing roguishly handsome villains – as a gunslinger hired by a stagecoach company to stop the railroad running on time in A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950), and a cowboy who abandons Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum to hostile Indians and teeming rapids in River of No Return (1954).
In 1958 he formed his own company to produce Apache Territory, in which he starred, but it was not a success and later the same year he began a television series, The Texan, which ran for two seasons and cast Calhoun as a quick-on-the-draw cowboy who travelled from town to town vanquishing law- breakers, helping those in need and occasionally finding romance.
He continued to work on television and occasional minor western movies, and in 1969 became a stage producer when he persuaded his old friend and co-star Betty Grable to play the title role in a western musical, Belle Starr, planned for the West End. While the show was playing a pre-London opening in Glasgow, Lita Baron sued Calhoun for divorce, naming Grable as one of the 79 women with whom he had committed adultery. The actor responded, “Heck, she didn’t even include half of them”, though both he and Grable denied that they had been more than friends. That friendship was to end when the show flopped and Calhoun and his partner left town without paying Grable or the chorus members their last week’s salary.
The Calhouns’ acrimonious divorce became final in 1970, after which the actor did not work for some time, telling The New York Times, “I figured the more I worked, the more alimony I had to pay her. So I stayed idle.” In 1971 he married a former newspaperwoman from Australia, Susan Langley, whom he had met when she interviewed him in London, but they were divorced five years later.
His appearance becoming increasingly gaunt, Calhoun was a regular guest on television series, including Alias Smith and Jones and Petrocelli, and made some exploitation movies, including Motel Hell (1980), Angel (1984) and its sequel, Avenging Angel (1985). In his last film, Pure Country (1992), he was once more a cowboy and won praise as the best thing in a dull film, after which he retired to concentrate on his hobby as an amateur painter.
Francis Timothy McCown (Rory Calhoun), actor: born Los Angeles 8 August 1922; married 1948 Lita Baron (three daughters; marriage dissolved 1970), 1971 Susan Langley (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1976); died Burbank, California 28 April 1999.
The “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Madys Christians was born in Vienna, Austria in 1892. She made her first film “The Black Hussar” in Germany in 1932. In Hollywood four years later she starred in “Come and Get It” with Frances Farmer. On Broadway she had an enourmous success with “I Remember Mama” in 1944. On film she had fine roles in 1948 in “All My Sons” and “A Letter to an Unknown Woman” which was directed by Max Ophuls. She was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and died in 1951.
From All Movie Guide: Primarily an actress of the European and American stage, she also appeared in many German and Hollywood films. Christians came to the U.S. in 1912 to appear with her parents in a German-speaking theater they established in New York. After making one film in the States, Audrey (1916), she returned to Germany to study with Max Reinhardt. In the ’20s she starred in numerous German plays and films, plus a few Broadway productions. With the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933, she returned to America for good, shuttling between Hollywood and Broadway. In films she tended to play supporting character parts, while on stage she continued to find lead roles. Late in her career she was blacklisted after being labeled a communist sympathizer during the McCarthy-era “witch trials.” ~ Rovi
Jeanne Crain was a beautiful American actress who was one of the most popular stars from the mid 1940’s until the late 1950’s. She was born in California in 1925. In 1943 she had a small part in the film “The Gangs All Here”. The following year she had great success with the beautifully photographed “Home in Indiana”. She starred in many of the important films of the period including “State Fair”, “Leave Her to Heaven”, “The Fan”, “Pinky”, “A Letter to Three Wives” and “Cheaper by the Dozen”. After her marriage, she put her career on hold to raise her seven children. She resumed acting thereafter. Jeanne Crain died in 2003. She is to my mind a very underappreciated actress and it is well worthwhile seeking out her movies.
TCM Overview:
With her natural beauty and unaffected charm, the young Jeanne Crain was a breath of fresh air in 20th Century-Fox films of the 1940s. Her looks and manner became somewhat brittle as she matured, but she remained a top leading lady at Fox into the early ’50s. The high point of her career was an Oscar® nomination as Best Actress for Pinky(1949), in which she plays a light-skinned black woman who can “pass” for white. Although director Eliza Kazan later wrote that he found her emotionally impassive as an actress, her performance remains a movingone.
She was born Elizabeth Jeanne Crain in Barstow, California on May 25, 1925, and grew up in Los Angeles. She studied drama at UCLA and signed with Fox at the age of 18, making her debut in an uncredited bit in The Gang’s All Here(1943). She first attracted favorable attention as Lon McCallister’s tomboyish love interest in Home in Indiana (1944), a horseracing story that became a big hit. After achieving star billing she had an even bigger success in State Fair(1945), a musical with an original Rodgers and Hammerstein score. Dubbed by Louanne Hogan (who would regularly provide her singing voice in Fox films), Crain performed “It Might as Well Be Spring” and other songs.
She was the “good girl” to Gene Tierney’s evil schemer in another hit, the classic melodrama Leave Her to Heaven(1945), and was dubbed again by Hogan in the Jerome Kern musical Centennial Summer (1946). She gave an especially engaging performance in Apartment for Peggy (1948) as the pregnant bride of an ex-GI played by William Holden. 1949 was a good year for Crain; in addition to Pinky she acted in A Letter to Three Wives, with Oscar®-winning script and direction by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and played Lady Windermere in The Fan, an adaptation of a comedy of manners by Oscar Wilde, with a script co-written by no less than Dorothy Parker.
Among Crain’s 23 films under her Fox contract, other notable entries included the nostalgic comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), in both of which she is the eldest daughter of a very large family; People Will Talk (1951), a thoughtful comedy of manners in which she is again directed by Mankiewicz and sparkles opposite Cary Grant; and The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951), in which she is at her most beautiful and, under the sensitive direction of George Cukor, enjoys charming byplay with outstanding character actress Thelma Ritter. Crain’s final film before leaving the studio was Vicki (1953), a remake of the 1941 mystery I Wake Up Screaming.
Crain’s follow-up films included two Westerns, Universal’s Man Without a Star (1955), opposite Kirk Douglas; and MGM’s The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), opposite Glenn Ford; and a pair of 1955 musicals, the well-received The Second Greatest Sex for Universal and the poorly received Gentlemen Marry Brunettes for United Artists. In the MGM biopicThe Joker Is Wild (1957), she is one of the women in the life of singer/comedian Joe E. Lewis as played by Frank Sinatra. Crain’s final feature film was Skyjacked (1972). She fleshed out her later career on television, landing the choice role of Daisy Buchanan in a Playhouse 90 production of The Great Gatsby before settling in to make appearances in various series. Sprinkled in were a couple of minor film epics made in Europe. Crain was married to Paul Brinkman and they had seven children together. She died a few months after Brinkman’s death in 2003.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
n the glory days of the studio system, movie stars were identified with one particular studio, becoming part of their company’s particular style and aura. From 1943 to 1953, Jeanne Crain, who has died aged 78, was a typical 20th Century Fox girl – charming, youthful and pretty. Fox, which had a smaller roster of stars than the other major studios, kept their contract players busy, and Crain made an average of two films a year, most of them bright and breezy.
Born in California of Irish-Catholic parents, Jeanne (pronounced Jean) Crain won the Miss Long Beach beauty contest in her teens, going on to become Camera Girl of 1942. But she had acting ambitions and, while still at school, took a screen test for Orson Welles for the role of Lucy Morgan in The Magnificent Ambersons. In the event, the slightly older and more experienced Anne Baxter got the part, subsequently pipping her to the post twice more, in All About Eve (1950) and One Desire (1955).
Crain’s problem was that she was mainly perceived at Fox as just a comely juvenile, lacking gravitas, and as a result was also passed over in favour of Susan Hayward in With A Song In My Heart (1952) and of Jean Simmons in The Robe (1953).
Occasionally, however, she did get a chance to reveal her ability, as in Elia Kazan’s Pinky (1949), playing a girl who has passed for white for years until forced to admit her roots. Kazan later commented: “It stirred up all kinds of hell, but it was a phoney picture. If I made it now, I’d never try to make the Fox back-lot look like the south or use Jeanne Crain, the blandest person I ever worked with.” Actually, Crain, who was Oscar nominated, was very affecting, though a black actor should have been cast, if that had been possible at the time.
Crain made her first, albeit brief, appearance on screen posing in a bathing costume in Busby Berkeley’s garish The Gang’s All Here (1943), before being introduced properly to audiences in Home In Indiana (1944), in which she portrayed a horsy girl who rides beautifully but is considered a tomboy.
She played a rather gutsy soldier’s wife in Otto Preminger’s In The Meantime Darling (1944), but became a real star in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical State Fair (1945), giving a delightfully fresh performance as the love-struck daughter of an Iowa farming family. Although her songs were dubbed by Luanne Hogan (who also dubbed her in subsequent musicals), a record of the hit songs, It’s A Grand Night For Singing and It Might As Well Be Spring, was issued under Crain’s name.
Crain’s rise to stardom coincided with her marriage to Paul Brinkman, a businessman and former small-time actor, who went on to become a top executive with an arms manufacturing company. Her mother opposed the marriage, and the two became estranged for some time thereafter. Crain had the first of their seven children, five of whom survive her, in 1947.
Previously, she had appeared in three successful movies. She was jealous Gene Tierney’s sweet foster sister in the lurid Leave Her To Heaven (1945), and Linda Darnell’s love rival sister in Preminger’s Centennial Summer (1946), in which she “sang” Jerome Kern melodies. Best of all was the engaging period musical Margie (1946), which showed Crain at the top of her form as a schoolgirl (though she was actually 21) with a crush on the French teacher and a tendency to lose her bloomers.
She then alternated between playing young wives or teenage daughters in a believable and ingratiating manner. She was married to William Holden in Apartment For Peggy (1948), and to bandleader Dan Dailey in You Were Meant For Me (1948). For Mankiewicz, in the stringent social comedy A Letter To Three Wives (1949), she was a shy newlywed, and, in People Will Talk (1951), she was the pregnant medical student whom gynaecologist Cary Grant marries to prevent her from committing suicide or having an abortion.
In both Cheaper By The Dozen (1950), and its sequel Belles On Their Toes (1952), Crain was the oldest of Myrna Loy’s 12 children, though she did the latter unwillingly after Zanuck refused to loan her out to Paramount for Carrie, opposite Laurence Olivier. There was another disappointment when she had to turn down a lead in Three Coins In The Fountain because her husband refused to let her go on location to Rome – though, in an attempt to compensate, he built his wife a studio in which to enjoy her hobby of painting.
Prior to asking Fox to release her in 1953, she made George Cukor’s enchanting The Model And The Marriage Broker (1952), and she was touching as the poverty-stricken young wife of Farley Granger in The Gift Of The Magi episode from O Henry’s Full House (1952).
Away from Fox, and now in her 30s, Crain made a conscious decision to break with her dewy-eyed juvenile past, dying her hair red and taking on gutsier and sexier roles. Thus she appeared in westerns as bold ranchers, matching Kirk Douglas in Man Without A Star (1955) and Alan Ladd in Guns Of The Timberland (1962), and as sophisticated women, as in The Joker Is Wild (1957), playing nightclub comedian Frank Sinatra’s wife.
As the Hollywood studio system broke up, she followed many other American stars to Italy, to appear in hokum costume epics. She was one of the Roman procurator’s lovers in Pontius Pilate (1961), and a languid Nefertiti in Queen Of The Nile (1962). Meanwhile, her marriage was going through turbulent times, but although Crain, a practising Catholic, sued Brinkman for divorce in 1956, the decree never became final and they got back together again.
Among her last films, when the pickings became slim, were Hots Rods To Hell (1967), in which she and Dana Andrews were parents terrified by young people with souped-up cars; Skyjacked (1972), as a passenger on a plane piloted by Charlton Heston; and The Night God Screamed (1973), playing a court witness hunted by a murderous hooded figure after her testimony had sent other defendants to death row. It was a long way from those well-scrubbed roles in guileless Fox movies of the 1940s.
· Jeanne Crain, actor, born May 25 1925; died December 14 2003
Her “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.
With her natural beauty and unaffected charm, the young Jeanne Crain was a breath of fresh air in 20th Century-Fox films of the 1940s. Her looks and manner became somewhat brittle as she matured, but she remained a top leading lady at Fox into the early ’50s. The high point of her career was an Oscar® nomination as Best Actress for Pinky(1949), in which she plays a light-skinned black woman who can “pass” for white. Although director Eliza Kazan later wrote that he found her emotionally impassive as an actress, her performance remains a movingone.
She was born Elizabeth Jeanne Crain in Barstow, California on May 25, 1925, and grew up in Los Angeles. She studied drama at UCLA and signed with Fox at the age of 18, making her debut in an uncredited bit in The Gang’s All Here(1943). She first attracted favorable attention as Lon McCallister’s tomboyish love interest in Home in Indiana (1944), a horseracing story that became a big hit. After achieving star billing she had an even bigger success in State Fair(1945), a musical with an original Rodgers and Hammerstein score. Dubbed by Louanne Hogan (who would regularly provide her singing voice in Fox films), Crain performed “It Might as Well Be Spring” and other songs.
She was the “good girl” to Gene Tierney’s evil schemer in another hit, the classic melodrama Leave Her to Heaven(1945), and was dubbed again by Hogan in the Jerome Kern musical Centennial Summer (1946). She gave an especially engaging performance in Apartment for Peggy (1948) as the pregnant bride of an ex-GI played by William Holden. 1949 was a good year for Crain; in addition to Pinky she acted in A Letter to Three Wives, with Oscar®-winning script and direction by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and played Lady Windermere in The Fan, an adaptation of a comedy of manners by Oscar Wilde, with a script co-written by no less than Dorothy Parker.
Among Crain’s 23 films under her Fox contract, other notable entries included the nostalgic comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), in both of which she is the eldest daughter of a very large family; People Will Talk (1951), a thoughtful comedy of manners in which she is again directed by Mankiewicz and sparkles opposite Cary Grant; and The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951), in which she is at her most beautiful and, under the sensitive direction of George Cukor, enjoys charming byplay with outstanding character actress Thelma Ritter. Crain’s final film before leaving the studio was Vicki (1953), a remake of the 1941 mystery I Wake Up Screaming.
Crain’s follow-up films included two Westerns, Universal’s Man Without a Star (1955), opposite Kirk Douglas; and MGM’s The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), opposite Glenn Ford; and a pair of 1955 musicals, the well-received The Second Greatest Sex for Universal and the poorly received Gentlemen Marry Brunettes for United Artists. In the MGM biopicThe Joker Is Wild (1957), she is one of the women in the life of singer/comedian Joe E. Lewis as played by Frank Sinatra. Crain’s final feature film was Skyjacked (1972). She fleshed out her later career on television, landing the choice role of Daisy Buchanan in a Playhouse 90 production of The Great Gatsby before settling in to make appearances in various series. Sprinkled in were a couple of minor film epics made in Europe. Crain was married to Paul Brinkman and they had seven children together. She died a few months after Brinkman’s death in 2003.
Jeanne Crain obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
n the glory days of the studio system, movie stars were identified with one particular studio, becoming part of their company’s particular style and aura. From 1943 to 1953, Jeanne Crain, who has died aged 78, was a typical 20th Century Fox girl – charming, youthful and pretty. Fox, which had a smaller roster of stars than the other major studios, kept their contract players busy, and Crain made an average of two films a year, most of them bright and breezy.
Born in California of Irish-Catholic parents, Jeanne (pronounced Jean) Crain won the Miss Long Beach beauty contest in her teens, going on to become Camera Girl of 1942. But she had acting ambitions and, while still at school, took a screen test for Orson Welles for the role of Lucy Morgan in The Magnificent Ambersons. In the event, the slightly older and more experienced Anne Baxter got the part, subsequently pipping her to the post twice more, in All About Eve (1950) and One Desire (1955).
Crain’s problem was that she was mainly perceived at Fox as just a comely juvenile, lacking gravitas, and as a result was also passed over in favour of Susan Hayward in With A Song In My Heart (1952) and of Jean Simmons in The Robe (1953).
Crain’s rise to stardom coincided with her marriage to Paul Brinkman, a businessman and former small-time actor, who went on to become a top executive with an arms manufacturing company. Her mother opposed the marriage, and the two became estranged for some time thereafter. Crain had the first of their seven children, five of whom survive her, in 1947.
MAN WITHOUT A STAR, top left, Kirk Douglas; bottom from left, Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Crain, 1955
Occasionally, however, she did get a chance to reveal her ability, as in Elia Kazan’s Pinky (1949), playing a girl who has passed for white for years until forced to admit her roots. Kazan later commented: “It stirred up all kinds of hell, but it was a phoney picture. If I made it now, I’d never try to make the Fox back-lot look like the south or use Jeanne Crain, the blandest person I ever worked with.” Actually, Crain, who was Oscar nominated, was very affecting, though a black actor should have been cast, if that had been possible at the time.
Crain made her first, albeit brief, appearance on screen posing in a bathing costume in Busby Berkeley’s garish The Gang’s All Here (1943), before being introduced properly to audiences in Home In Indiana (1944), in which she portrayed a horsy girl who rides beautifully but is considered a tomboy.
She played a rather gutsy soldier’s wife in Otto Preminger’s In The Meantime Darling (1944), but became a real star in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical State Fair (1945), giving a delightfully fresh performance as the love-struck daughter of an Iowa farming family. Although her songs were dubbed by Luanne Hogan (who also dubbed her in subsequent musicals), a record of the hit songs, It’s A Grand Night For Singing and It Might As Well Be Spring, was issued under Crain’s name.
Previously, she had appeared in three successful movies. She was jealous Gene Tierney’s sweet foster sister in the lurid Leave Her To Heaven (1945), and Linda Darnell’s love rival sister in Preminger’s Centennial Summer (1946), in which she “sang” Jerome Kern melodies. Best of all was the engaging period musical Margie (1946), which showed Crain at the top of her form as a schoolgirl (though she was actually 21) with a crush on the French teacher and a tendency to lose her bloomers.
She then alternated between playing young wives or teenage daughters in a believable and ingratiating manner. She was married to William Holden in Apartment For Peggy (1948), and to bandleader Dan Dailey in You Were Meant For Me (1948). For Mankiewicz, in the stringent social comedy A Letter To Three Wives (1949), she was a shy newlywed, and, in People Will Talk (1951), she was the pregnant medical student whom gynaecologist Cary Grant marries to prevent her from committing suicide or having an abortion.
In both Cheaper By The Dozen (1950), and its sequel Belles On Their Toes (1952), Crain was the oldest of Myrna Loy’s 12 children, though she did the latter unwillingly after Zanuck refused to loan her out to Paramount for Carrie, opposite Laurence Olivier. There was another disappointment when she had to turn down a lead in Three Coins In The Fountain because her husband refused to let her go on location to Rome – though, in an attempt to compensate, he built his wife a studio in which to enjoy her hobby of painting.
Prior to asking Fox to release her in 1953, she made George Cukor’s enchanting The Model And The Marriage Broker (1952), and she was touching as the poverty-stricken young wife of Farley Granger in The Gift Of The Magi episode from O Henry’s Full House (1952).
Away from Fox, and now in her 30s, Crain made a conscious decision to break with her dewy-eyed juvenile past, dying her hair red and taking on gutsier and sexier roles. Thus she appeared in westerns as bold ranchers, matching Kirk Douglas in Man Without A Star (1955) and Alan Ladd in Guns Of The Timberland (1962), and as sophisticated women, as in The Joker Is Wild (1957), playing nightclub comedian Frank Sinatra’s wife.
As the Hollywood studio system broke up, she followed many other American stars to Italy, to appear in hokum costume epics. She was one of the Roman procurator’s lovers in Pontius Pilate (1961), and a languid Nefertiti in Queen Of The Nile (1962). Meanwhile, her marriage was going through turbulent times, but although Crain, a practising Catholic, sued Brinkman for divorce in 1956, the decree never became final and they got back together again.
Among her last films, when the pickings became slim, were Hots Rods To Hell (1967), in which she and Dana Andrews were parents terrified by young people with souped-up cars; Skyjacked (1972), as a passenger on a plane piloted by Charlton Heston; and The Night God Screamed (1973), playing a court witness hunted by a murderous hooded figure after her testimony had sent other defendants to death row. It was a long way from those well-scrubbed roles in guileless Fox movies of the 1940s.
· Jeanne Crain, actor, born May 25 1925; died December 14 2003
Her “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.
