Classic Hollywood Beauties

Estelle Merle Thompson was born in India on February 19, 1911 of Welsh and Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) descent. She was educated in that country until the age of 17, when she left for London. She began her career in British films with mostly forgettable roles or bit parts. She appeared in an uncredited role in Alf's Button (1930), a pattern that would unfortunately repeat itself regularly over the next three years.

However, movie moguls eventually saw an untapped talent in their midst and began grooming Oberon for something bigger. Finally she landed a part with substance: the role of Ysobel d'Aunay in Men of Tomorrow (1932). That was quickly followed by The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). After her portrayal of Lady Marguerite Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Hollywood beckoned and she left to try her hand in US films. American movie executives already had some idea of her talent due to her role in Vagabond Violinist (1934) (originally titled "The Broken Melody") was a success in that country. With her nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress as Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel (1935), Oberon became a star in both the UK and the USA.

Her work in that film resulted in offers for more quality pictures, and she appeared in several well received films, such as These Three (1936), Over the Moon (1939) and The Divorce of Lady X (1938). Her most critically acclaimed performance--hailed by some critics as "masterful" -- was as Cathy Linton in Wuthering Heights (1939). The 1940s proved to be a very busy decade for her, as she appeared in no less than 15 films. After her role in Berlin Express (1948) she would not be seen on the screen again until four years later, as Elizabeth Rockwell in Pardon My French (1951). She was off the screen again for more than a year, returning in Désirée (1954).

Unfortunately, Oberon began appearing in fewer and fewer films over the ensuing years. There were no films for her in 1955, only one in 1956 and then none until Of Love and Desire (1963). In between she did appear on television to host Assignment Foreign Legion (1956). Her final film was Interval (1973). After her career finally ended she lived in quiet retirement until her death of a massive stroke on November 23, 1979, in Malibu, California. Oberon was 68 and had kept her beauty to the end.

Hedy Lamarr, the woman many critics and fans alike regard as the most beautiful ever to appear in films, was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Gertrud (Lichtwitz), from Budapest, and Emil Kiesler, a banker from Lemberg (now known as Lviv). Her parents were both from Jewish families. Hedwig had a calm childhood, but it was cinema that fascinated her. By the time she was a teenager, she decided to drop out of school and seek fame as an actress, and was a student of theater director Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Her first role was a bit part in the German film Geld auf der Straße (1930) (aka "Money on the Street") in 1930. She was attractive and talented enough to be in three more German productions in 1931, but it would be her fifth film that catapulted her to worldwide fame. In 1932 she appeared in a Czech film called Ekstase (US title: "Ecstasy") and had made the gutsy move to appear nude. It's the story of a young girl who is married to a gentleman much older than she, but she winds up falling in love with a young soldier. The film's nude scenes created a sensation all over the world. The scenes, very tame by today's standards, caused the film to be banned by the U.S. government at the time.

Hedy soon married Fritz Mandl, a munitions manufacturer and a prominent Austrofascist. He attempted to buy up all the prints of "Ecstasy" he could lay his hands on (Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, had a copy but refused to sell it to Mandl), but to no avail (there are prints floating around the world today). The notoriety of the film brought Hollywood to her door. She was brought to the attention of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to a contract (a notorious prude when it came to his studio's films, Mayer signed her against his better judgment, but the money he knew her notoriety would bring in to the studio overrode any moral concerns he may have had). However, he insisted she change her name and make good, wholesome films.

Hedy starred in a series of exotic adventure epics. She made her American film debut as Gaby in Algiers (1938). This was followed a year later by Lady of the Tropics (1939). In 1942, she played the plum role of Tondelayo in the classic White Cargo (1942). After World War II, her career began to decline, and MGM decided it would be in the interest of all concerned if her contract were not renewed. Unfortunately for Hedy, she turned down the leads in both Gaslight (1940) and Casablanca (1942), both of which would have cemented her standing in the minds of the American public. In 1949, she starred as Delilah opposite Victor Mature's Samson in Cecil B. DeMille's epic Samson and Delilah (1949). This proved to be Paramount Pictures' then most profitable movie to date, bringing in $12 million in rental from theaters. The film's success led to more parts, but it was not enough to ease her financial crunch. She made only six more films between 1949 and 1957, the last being The Female Animal (1958).

Hedy retired to Florida. She died there, in the city of Casselberry, on January 19, 2000.

Ann Sheridan won the "Search for Beauty" contest which carried with it a Paramount screen test. Signed to a contract at 18, she was put into a number of small roles under her real name of Clara Lou Sheridan. As she got better, her name was changed to Ann. In 1936, after two dozen films, she went to Warner Brothers, which billed her as the "Oomph Girl," a name she despised -- although she certainly looked the part. She was allowed to mature into a leading star who could be the girl next door or the tough-as-nails dame. She was in a lot of comedies and a number of forgettable movies, but the public liked her, and her career flourished. She also gave great performances such as the singer in Torrid Zone (1940) and the waitress in They Drive by Night (1940). In 1948, she was dropped by Warner Bros., but came back in Howard Hawks' comedy I Was a Male War Bride (1949) with Cary Grant. She continued to make films into the 1950s but retired before the end of the decade. She starred in the soap opera Another World (1964) and the western series Pistols 'n' Petticoats (1966). Unfortunately, just as her career was reviving with this series, she died of cancer.

Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born on December 18, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Lillian Rose (Hofmann) and John Conn Grable, a stockbroker. She had German, English, Irish, and Dutch ancestry. Her mother was a stubborn and materialistic woman determined to make her daughter a star. Elizabeth, who later became Betty, was enrolled in Clark's Dancing School at the age of three. With her mother's guidance, Betty studied ballet and tap dancing.

Betty and her mother set out for California with the hopes of stardom. She attended the Hollywood Professional school but Lillian lied about her daughter's age and Betty (real age 13), landed several minor parts as a chorus girl in early musicals (Whoopee! (1930), New Movietone Follies of 1930 (1930), Happy Days (1929) and Let's Go Places (1930)), initially billed as 'Frances Dean'. In 1932 (real age 15), she signed with RKO Radio Pictures and began to use the moniker 'Betty Grable'. The bit parts continued for the next three years. Betty finally landed a substantial part in By Your Leave (1934). One of her big roles was in College Swing (1938). Unfortunately, the public did not seem to take notice.

The following year, she married former child star Jackie Coogan. They briefly toured on vaudeville and his success boosted hers, but they divorced in 1940. When she landed the role of Glenda Crawford in Down Argentine Way (1940), the public finally took notice of this shining bright star. Stardom came in such comedies as Coney Island (1943) and Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943).

The public was enchanted with Betty. Her famous pin-up pose during World War II adorned barracks all around the world. With that pin-up and as the star of lavish musicals, Betty became the highest-paid star in Hollywood. After the war, her star continued to rise. In 1947, the United States Treasury Department noted that she was the highest paid star in America, earning about $300,000 a year - a phenomenal sum even by today's standards. Later, 20th Century-Fox, who had her under contract, insured her legs with Lloyds of London for a million dollars. She continued to be popular until the mid-1950s, when musicals went into a decline. Her last film was How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955).

She then concentrated on Broadway and nightclubs. In 1965, she divorced band leader Harry James, whom she had wed in 1943. Her life was an active one, devoid of the scandals that plagued many stars in one way or another. She cared more for her family than stardom.

Betty Grable died at age 56 of lung cancer on July 2, 1973 in Santa Monica, California, five days before Veronica Lake's death. She was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.

Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.

A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.

In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.

She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).

In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.

Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.

Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of dancers. Her father, Eduardo Cansino Reina, was a dancer as was his father before him. He emigrated from Spain in 1913. Rita's American mother, Volga Margaret (Hayworth), who was of mostly Irish descent, met Eduardo in 1916 and were married the following year. Rita, herself, studied as a dancer in order to follow in her family's footsteps. She joined her family on stage when she was eight years old when her family was filmed in a movie called La Fiesta (1926). It was her first film appearance, albeit an uncredited one. Sotted by Fox studio head Winfield R. Sheehan, she signed her first studio contract, and make her film debut at age sixteen, in Dante's Inferno (1935), followed by Cruz Diablo (1934). She continued to play small bit parts in several films under the name of "Rita Cansino". Fox dropped her after five small roles, but expert, exploitative promotion by her first husband Edward Judson soon brought Rita a new contract at Columbia Pictures, where studio head Harry Cohn changed her surname to Hayworth and approved raising her hairline by electrolysis. She played the second female lead, Judy McPherson, in Only Angels Have Wings (1939). After thirteen minor roles, Columbia lent her to Warner Bros. for her first big success, The Strawberry Blonde (1941); her splendid dancing with Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich (1941) made her a star. This was the film that exuded the warmth and seductive vitality that was to make her famous. Her natural, raw beauty was showcased later that year in Blood and Sand (1941), filmed in Technicolor.

Rita was probably the second most popular actress after Betty Grable. In You'll Never Get Rich (1941) with Fred Astaire, was probably the film that moviegoers felt close to Rita. Her dancing, for which she had studied all her life, was astounding. After the hit Gilda (1946) (her dancing had made the film and it had made her), her career was on the skids. Although she was still making movies, they never approached her earlier success. The drought began between The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Champagne Safari (1954). Then after Salome (1953), she was not seen again until Pal Joey (1957). Part of the reasons for the downward spiral was television, but also Rita had been replaced by a new star at Columbia, Kim Novak.

Rita, herself, said, "Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me". In person, Rita was shy, quiet and unassuming; only when the cameras rolled did she turn on the explosive sexual charisma that in Gilda (1946) made her a superstar. To Rita, though, domestic bliss was a more important, if elusive, goal, and in 1949 she interrupted her career for marriage - unfortunately an unhappy one almost from the start - to the playboy Prince Aly Khan. Her films after her divorce from Khan include perhaps her best straight acting performances, Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) and They Came to Cordura (1959).

After a few, rather forgettable films in the 1960s, her career was essentially over. Her final film was The Wrath of God (1972). Her career was really never the same after Gilda (1946). Perhaps Gene Ringgold said it best when he remarked, "Rita Hayworth is not an actress of great depth. She was a dancer, a glamorous personality, and a sex symbol. These qualities are such that they can carry her no further professionally." Perhaps he was right but Hayworth fans would vehemently disagree with him.

Beginning in 1960 (age 42), early onset of Alzheimer's disease (undiagnosed until 1980) limited Rita's ability. The last few roles in her 60-film career were increasingly small. With 20 years of symptoms, Rita was cared for by her daughter, Yasmin Khan, until Rita's death at age 68 on May 14, 1987, in New York City.

Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), a soldier. Her older siblings were Magda Gabor, an actress, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, an actress and socialite. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She went to Hollywood, California, to act in the 1930s. Her mother escaped from Nazi-occupied Budapest in the 1940s, also settling in the U.S.

Eva appeared both in films and on Broadway in the 1950s, as well as in several "A"-movies, including The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), starring Elizabeth Taylor, and Artists and Models (1955), which featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

In 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show (1953). Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, she appeared on television and in movies. She appeared on one episode of the mystery series Justice (1954), and was on the game show What's My Line? (1950) as the "mystery challenger". Her film appearances during this period include a remake of My Man Godfrey (1957), Gigi (1958) and It Started with a Kiss (1959).

However, she is best remembered as Lisa Douglas, the socialite turned farm wife on Green Acres (1965) with co-star Eddie Albert playing her attorney husband Oliver Wendell Douglas. Eva Gabor died at age 76 from respiratory failure and pneumonia on July 4, 1995 in Los Angeles, California.

France's major sex siren of the early 50s, this lesser-remembered post-war French dish pre-dated bombshell Brigitte Bardot by a few years. Martine was born Marie-Louise (Maryse) Jeanne Nicholle Mourer on May 16, 1920, but little is known of her childhood. A chance meeting with comedian André Luguet steered her towards a career in the theatre. Trained by René Simon, she made her 1940 stage debut with "Phedre" billed as Maryse Arley.

In unbilled film parts from 1941, she subsequently caught the eye of Henri-Georges Clouzot who hired her for an upcoming film with the working title of "The Cat," based on the novel by Colette, but the project was scrapped. Nevertheless, she did attract attention in the movie La ferme aux loups (1943) (Wolf Farm), which takes advantage of her photogenic beauty and ease in front of the camera despite a limited acting ability.

A pin-up goddess and support actress throughout the 40s, Martine also appeared on the stage of the Theater of the Renaissance. A torrid affair with actor Georges Marchal, who was married to actress Dany Robin at the time, ended disastrously and she attempted suicide by taking an alcohol/drug overdose and throwing herself into the Seine River. She was saved by a taxi driver who accompanied her there. Ironically, the unhappy details surrounding her suicide attempt renewed the fascination audiences had with Martine up until that time. In 1949, she married her first husband, former American actor-turned-restaurateur Stephen Crane, who was once married to Lana Turner.

Continuing on with post-war French filming, she co-starred in such movies as Bifur 3 (1945), L'extravagante mission (1945), Trente et quarante (1946), Voyage surprise (1947), Sextette (1948), I Love Only You (1949), Une nuit de noces (1950), the title role in Dear Caroline (1951) and Adorable Creatures (1952). She scored her first box office blockbuster hit with the French Revolution epic Caroline Cherie (1953). Without a doubt, the success was prompted by her semi-nude scenes and taunting, kittenish sexuality.

From there she was off and running. Her film romps were done tastefully with an erotic twinge of innocence and gentle sexuality plus an occasional bubble bath thrown in as male bait. Her array of costumed teasers included the title role in Lucrèce Borgia (1953), as Lysistrata Daughters of Destiny (1954), Riviera (1954), the title role in Madame du Barry (1954), the title role in Nana (1955), The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955), the title role in Lola Montès (1955) and Defend My Love (1956). Several of the above-mentioned films were guided and directed by her second husband Christian-Jaque, her husband from 1954 to 1959. They later divorced due to professional conflicts and long separations.

A true feast for the eyes and one of the most beautiful actresses of her time, Martine tried to branch out internationally in films in the late 1950s. Unfortunately, Bardot had already taken over the top French sex goddess pedestal and Martine's fan base diminished. She co-starred with Van Johnson in the crime drama Action of the Tiger (1957), but it was met with indifference. She immediately returned to French/Italian films The Foxiest Girl in Paris (1957), The Stowaway (1958), La prima notte (1959), Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) and Atomic Agent (1959).

Problems with substance abuse and a severe accident severely curtailed her career in the 1960's. She continued with such films as The Battle of Austerlitz (1960) (as Empress Josephine), plus Un soir sur la plage (1961), The Counterfeiters of Paris (1961) and Beach Casanova (1962). She made her last film in 1963, which was released four years later as Hell Is Empty (1967).

Depressed, Martine turned alarmingly reclusive as a third marriage to French doctor Andre Rouveix also soured by 1962. One last marriage to fourth husband Mike Eland, an English businessman and friend of first hubby Steve Crane, seemed hopeful, but on February 6, 1967, Martine died of cardiac arrest at age 46 in the bathroom of a hotel in Monaco. Her husband discovered her. Newspapers hinted at a possible drug overdose but nothing was ever proven. She was buried in the cemetery of Cannes.

Helen Walker was a beautiful and bright actress whose career never reached its full potential, in spite of her evident talent. She was a successful actress on Broadway, and in 1942 her performance in the play "Jason" was so impressive that she was signed up to act in films. She immediately earned good notice and received star billing in her film debut, Lucky Jordan (1942), starring Alan Ladd. During the mid-1940s she had continued success with strong performances in offbeat but entertaining and successful films like The Man in Half Moon Street (1944), the satirical Brewster's Millions (1945), and the murder spoof Murder, He Says (1945), which starred Fred MacMurray. Achieving both artistic and box office success, she was clearly on the brink of major stardom. She won the starring role in the prestigious film Heaven Only Knows (1947). But all that changed on New Year's Eve of 1946 when she picked up three hitchhiking World War II veterans while driving to Los Angeles from Palm Springs, where she had been vacationing. She had a terrible accident, hitting a divider and wrecking the car, which flipped several times. One of the soldiers died and the other two were severely injured. Walker herself was seriously injured, including a broken pelvis. But her career suffered even greater and longer-lasting damage. The survivors of the accident accused her of driving drunk and speeding, and she was brought to trial. She suffered bad press and faced a public that was grateful to World War II veterans for having won the war, and was replaced in Heaven Only Knows (1947). Although she was acquitted of criminal charges, many fans turned against her and major studios were hesitant to hire her. She tried to adapt by portraying ruthless and manipulative women in dark murder mysteries, in which she again showed great talent. She performed with great aplomb in Nightmare Alley (1947), the gritty urban police drama Call Northside 777 (1948), and Impact (1949), an unconventional murder drama that featured a fatal automobile accident her character helped cause. But she could not overcome the stigma of the veteran's death. By the 1950s, she was reduced to low-budget films that received little notice. After winning a minor role in the Cornel Wilde police drama The Big Combo (1955), her film career ended and she only appeared in a few television shows. In 1960, she made her last television appearance, and that same year her house burned down. Some remaining friends from show business helped her, with some fellow actresses staging a benefit for her, which touched her deeply. She faded from the public view and during the 1960s she experienced health problems. In 1968, she died of cancer. She was 47 years old.

In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made her entrance into this caring haven on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh (a suburb of Dublin), Ireland. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team "The Shamrock Rovers." Maureen was the second of six FitzSimons children - Peggy, Florrie, Charles B. Fitzsimons, Margot Fitzsimons and James O'Hara completed this beautiful family.

Maureen loved playing rough athletic games as a child and excelled in sports. She combined this interest with an equally natural gift for performing. This was demonstrated by her winning pretty much every Feis award for drama and theatrical performing her country offered. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. This course was to be altered, however, when Charles Laughton, after seeing a screen test of Maureen, became mesmerized by her hauntingly beautiful eyes. Before casting her to star in Jamaica Inn (1939), Laughton and his partner, Erich Pommer, changed her name from Maureen FitzSimons to "Maureen O'Hara" - a bit shorter last name for the marquee.

Under contract to Laughton, Maureen's next picture was to be filmed in America (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)) at RKO Pictures. The epic film was an extraordinary success and Maureen's contract was eventually bought from Laughton by RKO. At 19, Maureen had already starred in two major motion pictures with Laughton. Unlike most stars of her era, she started at the top, and remained there - with her skills and talents only getting better and better with the passing years.

Maureen has an enviable string of all-time classics to her credit that include the aforementioned "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Sitting Pretty (1948), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Parent Trap (1961). Add to this the distinction of being voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world and you have a film star who was as gorgeous as she was talented.

Although at times early in her career Hollywood didn't seem to notice, there was much more to Maureen O'Hara than her dynamic beauty. She not only had a wonderful lyric soprano voice, but she could use her inherent athletic ability to perform physical feats that most actresses couldn't begin to attempt, from fencing to fisticuffs. She was a natural athlete.

In her career Maureen starred with some of Hollywood's most dashing leading men, including Tyrone Power, John Payne, Rex Harrison, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Brian Keith, Sir Alec Guinness and, of course, her famed pairings with "The Duke" himself, John Wayne. She starred in five films with Wayne, the most beloved being The Quiet Man (1952).

In addition to famed director John Ford, Maureen was also fortunate to have worked for some other great directors in the business: Alfred Hitchcock, William Dieterle, Henry Hathaway, Henry King, Jean Renoir, John M. Stahl, William A. Wellman, Frank Borzage, Walter Lang, George Seaton, George Sherman, Carol Reed, Delmer Daves, David Swift, Andrew V. McLaglen and Chris Columbus.

In 1968 Maureen found much deserved personal happiness when she married Charles Blair. Gen. Blair was a famous aviator whom she had known as a friend of her family for many years. A new career began for Maureen, that of a full-time wife. Her marriage to Blair, however, was again far from typical. Blair was the real-life version of what John Wayne had been on the screen. He had been a Brigadier General in the Air Force, a Senior Pilot with Pan American, and held many incredible record-breaking aeronautic achievements. Maureen happily retired from films in 1973 after making the TV movie The Red Pony (1973) (which won the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence) with Henry Fonda. With Blair, Maureen managed Antilles Airboats, a commuter sea plane service in the Caribbean. She not only made trips around the world with her pilot husband, but owned and published a magazine, "The Virgin Islander," writing a monthly column called "Maureen O'Hara Says."

Tragically, Charles Blair died in a plane crash in 1978. Though completely devastated, Maureen pulled herself together and, with memories of ten of the happiest years of her life, continued on. She was elected President and CEO of Antilles Airboats, which brought her the distinction of being the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the United States.

Fortunately, she was coaxed out of retirement several times - once in 1991 to star with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991) and again, in 1995, in a made-for-TV movie, The Christmas Box (1995) on CBS. In the spring of 1998, Maureen accepted the second of what would be three projects for Polson Productions and CBS: Cab to Canada (1998) - and, in October, 2000, The Last Dance (2000).

On St. Patrick's Day in 2004, she published her New York Times bestselling memoir, 'Tis Herself, co-authored with her longtime biographer and manager Johnny Nicoletti.

On November 4, 2014 Maureen was honored by a long overdue Oscar for "Lifetime Achievement" at the annual Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governors Awards.

Maureen O'Hara was absolutely stunning, with that trademark red hair, dazzling smile and those huge, expressive eyes. She has fans from all over the world of all ages who are utterly devoted to her legacy of films and her persona as a strong, courageous and intelligent woman.

Born into a prominent Mormon family in Utah, Laraine Day's acting career began after her parents moved to Long Beach, California, where she joined the Long Beach Players. She appeared in her first film in 1937 in a bit part, then did leads in several George O'Brien westerns. Signing a contract with MGM, she achieved popularity playing the part of Nurse Lamont in that studio's "Dr. Kildare" series. An attractive, engaging performer, she had leads in several medium-budget films for various studios, but never achieved major stardom. She was married for 13 years to baseball manager Leo Durocher, and took such an active interest in his career and the sport of baseball in general that she became known as "The First Lady of Baseball".

With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting performances were few in the 1950s as she battled a troubled emotional life that included hospitalization and shock treatment for depression.

Gene Eliza Tierney was born on November 19, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, to well-to-do parents, Belle Lavinia (Taylor) and Howard Sherwood Tierney. Her father was a successful insurance broker and her mother was a former teacher. Her childhood was lavish indeed. She also lived, at times, with her equally successful grandparents in Connecticut and New York. She was educated in the finest schools on the East Coast and at a finishing school in Switzerland.

After two years in Europe, Gene returned to the US where she completed her education. By 1938 she was performing on Broadway in What a Life! and understudied for the Primrose Path (1938) at the same time. Her wealthy father set up a corporation that was only to promote her theatrical pursuits. Her first role consisted of carrying a bucket of water across the stage, prompting one critic to announce that "Miss Tierney is, without a doubt, the most beautiful water carrier I have ever seen!" Her subsequent roles Mrs O'Brian Entertains (1939) and RingTwo (1939) were meatier and received praise from the tough New York critics. Critic Richard Watts wrote "I see no reason why Miss Tierney should not have a long and interesting theatrical career, that is if the cinema does not kidnap her away."

After being spotted by the legendary Darryl F. Zanuck during a stage performance of the hit show The Male Animal (1940), Gene was signed to a contract with 20th Century-Fox. Her first role as Barbara Hall in Hudson's Bay (1940) would be the send-off vehicle for her career. Later that year she appeared in The Return of Frank James (1940). The next year would prove to be a very busy one for Gene, as she appeared in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Sundown (1941), Tobacco Road (1941) and Belle Starr (1941). She tried her hand at screwball comedy in Rings on Her Fingers (1942), which was a great success. Her performances in each of these productions were masterful. In 1945 she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Ellen Brent in Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Though she didn't win, it solidified her position in Hollywood society. She followed up with another great performance as Isabel Bradley in the hit The Razor's Edge (1946).

In 1944, she played what is probably her best-known role (and, most critics agree, her most outstanding performance) in Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), in which she played murder victim named Laura Hunt. In 1947 Gene played Lucy Muir in the acclaimed The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). By this time Gene was the hottest player around, and the 1950s saw no letup as she appeared in a number of good films, among them Night and the City (1950), The Mating Season (1951), Close to My Heart (1951), Plymouth Adventure (1952), Personal Affair (1953) and The Left Hand of God (1955). The latter was to be her last performance for seven years. The pressures of a failed marriage to Oleg Cassini, the birth of a daughter with learning disabilities in 1943, and several unhappy love affairs resulted in Gene being hospitalized for depression. When she returned to the the screen in Advise & Consent (1962), her acting was as good as ever but there was no longer a big demand for her services.

Her last feature film was The Pleasure Seekers (1964), and her final appearance in the film industry was in a TV miniseries, Scruples (1980). Gene died of emphysema in Houston, Texas, on November 6, 1991, just two weeks shy of her 71st birthday.

Virginia Clara Jones was born on November 30, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. The family had a rich heritage in the St. Louis area: her great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution and later founded the city of East Saint Louis, Illinois, located right across the Mississippi River from its namesake. Virginia was interested in show business from an early age. Her aunt operated a dance studio and Virginia began taking lessons at the age of six. After graduating from high school in 1937, she became a member of the St. Louis Municipal Opera before she was signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn after being spotted by an MGM talent scout during a Broadway revue. David O. Selznick gave her a screen test, but decided she wouldn't fit into films. Goldwyn, however, believed that her talent as an actress was there and cast her in a small role in 1943's Jack London (1943). She later had a walk-on part in Follies Girl (1943) that same year. Believing there was more to her than her obvious ravishing beauty, producers thought it was time to give her bigger and better roles. In 1944 she was cast as Princess Margaret in The Princess and the Pirate (1944), with Bob Hope and a year later appeared as Ellen Shavley in Wonder Man (1945). Her popularity increasing with every appearance, Virginia was cast in two more films in 1946, The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), with Danny Kaye, and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), with Dana Andrews, and received good notices as Andrews' avaricious, unfaithful wife. Her roles may have been coming in slow, but with each one her popularity with audiences rose. She finally struck paydirt in 1947 with a plum assignment in the well-received The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) as Rosalind van Hoorn. That same year she married Michael O'Shea and would remain with him until his death in 1973 (the union produced a daughter, Mary Catherine, in 1953). She got some of the best reviews of her career in James Cagney's return to the gangster genre, White Heat (1949), as Verna, the scheming, cheating wife of homicidal killer Cody Jarrett (Cagney). The striking beauty had still more plum roles in the 1950s. Parts in Backfire (1950), She's Working Her Way Through College (1952) and South Sea Woman (1953) all showed she was still a force to be reckoned with. As the decade ended, Virginia's career began to slow down. She had four roles in the 1960s and four more in the following decade. Her last role was as Lucia in 1997's The Man Next Door. She died on January 17, 2005.

Lana Turner had an acting ability that belied the "Sweater Girl" image MGM thrust upon her, and even many of her directors admitted that they knew she was capable of greatness (check out The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)). Unfortunately, her private life sometimes overshadowed her professional accomplishments.

Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Mildred Francis Turner in Wallace, Idaho. There is some discrepancy as to whether her birth date is February 8, 1920 or 1921. Lana herself said in her autobiography that she was one year younger (1921) than the records showed, but then this was a time where women, especially actresses, tended to "fib" a bit about their age. Most sources agree that 1920 is the correct year of birth. Her parents were Mildred Frances (Cowan) and John Virgil Turner, a miner, both still in their teens when she was born. In 1929, her father was murdered and it was shortly thereafter her mother moved her and the family to California where jobs were "plentiful". Once she matured into a beautiful young woman, she went after something that would last forever: stardom. She wasn't found at a drug store counter, like some would have you believe, but that legend persists. She pounded the pavement as other would-be actors and actresses have done, are doing and will continue to do in search of movie roles.

In 1937, Lana entered the movie world, at 17, with small parts in They Won't Forget (1937), The Great Garrick (1937) and A Star Is Born (1937). These films didn't bring her a lot of notoriety, but it was a start. In 1938 she had another small part in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) starring Mickey Rooney. It was this film that made young men's hearts all over America flutter at the sight of this alluring and provocative young woman--known as the "Sweater Girl"--and one look at that film could make you understand why: she was one of the most spectacularly beautiful newcomers to grace the screen in years. By the 1940s Lana was firmly entrenched in the film business. She had good roles in such films as Johnny Eager (1941), Somewhere I'll Find You (1942) and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). If her career was progressing smoothly, however, her private life was turning into a train wreck, keeping her in the news in a way no one would have wanted.

Without a doubt her private life was a threat to her public career. She was married eight times, twice to Stephen Crane. She also married Ronald Dante, Robert Eaton, Fred May, Lex Barker, Henry Topping and bandleader Artie Shaw. She also battled alcoholism. In yet another scandal, her daughter by Crane, Cheryl Crane, fatally stabbed Lana's boyfriend, gangster Johnny Stompanato, in 1958. It was a case that would have rivaled the O.J. Simpson murder case. Cheryl was acquitted of the murder charge, with the jury finding that she had been protecting her mother from Stompanato, who was savagely beating her, and ruled it justifiable homicide. These and other incidents interfered with Lana's career, but she persevered. The release of Imitation of Life (1959), a remake of a 1934 film (Imitation of Life (1934)), was Lana's comeback vehicle. Her performance as Lora Meredith was flawless as an actress struggling to make it in show business with a young daughter, her housekeeper and the housekeeper's rebellious daughter. The film was a box-office success and proved beyond a doubt that Lana had not lost her edge.

By the 1960s, however, fewer roles were coming her way with the rise of new and younger stars. She still managed to turn in memorable performances in such films as Portrait in Black (1960) and Bachelor in Paradise (1961). By the next decade the roles were coming in at a trickle. Her last appearance in a big-screen production was in Witches' Brew (1980). Her final film work came in the acclaimed TV series Falcon Crest (1981) in which she played Jacqueline Perrault from 1982-1983. After all those years as a sex symbol, nothing had changed--Lana was still as beautiful as ever.

She died on June 25, 1995, in Culver City, California, after a long bout with cancer. She was 74 years old.

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.

Enigmatic, dark-haired foreign import Alida Valli was dubbed "The Next Garbo" but didn't live up to postwar expectations despite her cool, patrician beauty, remote allure and significant talent. Born in Pola, Italy (now Croatia), on May 3, 1921, the daughter of a Tridentine journalist and professor and an Istrian homemaker, she studied dramatics as a teen at the Motion Picture Academy of Rome and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia before snaring bit roles in such films as Il cappello a tre punte (1935) ["The Three-Cornered Hat"] and I due sergenti (1936) ["The Two Sergeants"]. She made a name for herself in Italy during WWII playing the title role in Manon Lescaut (1940), won a Venice Film Festival award for Piccolo mondo antico (1941) ["Little Old World"] and was a critical sensation in We the Living (1942) ["We the Living"]. She briefly abandoned her career, however, in 1943, refusing to appear in what she considered fascist propaganda, and was forced into hiding. The next year she married surrealist painter/pianist/composer Oscar De Mejo. They had two children, and one of them, Carlo De Mejo, became an actor. She divorced in 1955, then she came back to Italy,

Following her potent, award-winning work in the title role of Eugenie Grandet (1946), she was discovered and contracted by David O. Selznick to play the murder suspect Maddalena Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). She was billed during her Hollywood years simply as "Valli," and Selznick also gave her top femme female billing in Carol Reed's classic film noir The Third Man (1949), but for every successful film--such as the ones previously mentioned--she experienced such failures as The Miracle of the Bells (1948), and audiences stayed away. In 1951 she bid farewell to Hollywood and returned to her beloved Italy. In Europe again, she was sought after by the best directors. Her countess in Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954) was widely heralded, and she moved easily from ingénue to vivid character roles. Later standout films encompassed costume dramas as well as shockers and had her playing everything from baronesses to grandmothers in such films as Eyes Without a Face (1960) ["Eyes Without a Face"], Le gigolo (1960), Oedipus Rex (1967) ["Oedipus Rex"], The Big Scare (1974), 1900 (1976), Suspiria (1977), Luna (1979), Inferno (1980), Aspern (1982), A Month by the Lake (1995) and, her most recent, Angel of Death (2001).

Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota.

Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe.

Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in Canada but moved to California when he found employment there.

The family was well-to-do and although Jane was the only girl among four brothers, her mother saw to it that she took piano lessons. In addition to music, Jane was interested in drama much as her mother had been and participated in high school stage productions.

Upon graduation, Jane took a job as a receptionist for a doctor who specialized in foot disorders. Although she had originally planned on being a designer, her father died, and she had to go to work to help the family.

Jane modeled on the side and was very much sought-after especially because of her figure.

She managed to save enough money to go to drama school, with the urging of her mother. She was signed by Howard Hughes for his production of The Outlaw (1943) in 1941, the film that was to make Jane famous. The film was not a classic by any means but was geared through its marketing to show off Jane's ample physical assets rather than acting abilities. Although the film was made in 1941, it was not released until two years later and then only on a limited basis due to the way the film portrayed Jane's assets. It was hard for the flick to pass the censorship board. Finally, the film gained general release in 1946. The film was a smash at the box office.

Jane did not make another film until 1945 when she played Joan Kenwood in Young Widow (1946). She had signed a seven-year contract with Hughes, and it seemed the only films he would put her in were those that displayed Jane in a very flattering light due to her body. Films such as His Kind of Woman (1951) and The Las Vegas Story (1952) did nothing to highlight her true acting abilities. The pinnacle of her career was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as Dorothy Shaw, with Marilyn Monroe. This film showed Jane's comedic side very well. Jane did continue to make films throughout the 1950s, but the films were at times not up to par, particularly with Jane's talents being wasted in forgettable movies to show off her sexy side. Films such as Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) and The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) did do Jane's justice and were able to show exactly the fine actress she was.

After The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957) (a flop), Jane took a hiatus from films, to dabble a little in television, returning in 1964 to film Fate Is the Hunter (1964). Unfortunately, the roles were not there anymore as Jane appeared in only four pictures during the entire decade of the 1960s. Her last film of the decade was The Born Losers (1967). After three more years away from the big screen, she returned to make one last film called Darker Than Amber (1970).

Her last major appearance before the public was in the 1970s when Jane was a spokesperson for Playtex bras.

Had Jane not been wasted during the Hughes years, she could have been a bigger actress than what she was allowed to show.

Jane Russell died at age 89 of respiratory failure on February 28, 2011, in Santa Maria, California.

Ms. Blaine is most noted for having portrayed Miss Adelaide, the long-suffering, perpetually engaged chorus girl, in the Broadway and film versions of Guys and Dolls (1955). She originated the role in 1950 on Broadway and stopped the show each night with her rendition of "Adelaide's Lament," in which she complains about having a bad cold because of her long engagement to gambler Nathan Detroit. Ms. Blaine also originated roles on Broadway in "Say Darling" and "Enter Laughing." She also starred on Broadway in "Hatful of Rain," "Company," and, briefly, in "Zorba." She starred in many national tours, including "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Don't Drink the Water," "Hello Dolly," and "Gypsy." Before going to Broadway, Ms. Blaine was a starlet at 20th Century-Fox, appearing in many musical comedy films, including Jitterbugs (1943), Greenwich Village (1944), and State Fair (1945). In the mid 1950s, Ms. Blaine reprised her role as Adelaide in the film version of Guys and Dolls (1955) with Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. After her Broadway appearance in "Company" in 1972, she appeared on national television at the 25th Tony anniversary special. This led to a revival of her TV career, and she continued to appear in guest roles on TV and in independent films and theater until her retirement in 1984.

Kathryn Grayson was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, NC, on February 9, 1922. This pretty, petite brunette with a heart-shaped face was discovered by MGM talent scouts while singing on the radio. The studio quickly signed her to a contract, and she was given acting lessons along and had to pose for countless publicity photos. Kathryn, a coloratura soprano, made her first film in 1941, a "B" picture called Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941). She soon was cast opposite some of MGM's top musical stars of the 1940s, such as Gene Kelly and Mario Lanza. She was paired with Lanza a few times, but the two never got along due mostly to Lanza's hot temper and alcohol abuse. The pairing of Lanza and Grayson would never match the success of lyrical soprano Jeanette MacDonald and baritone Nelson Eddy, although Kathryn and MacDonald did become great friends. Jeanette became a mentor and an older sister figure for Kathryn.

Grayson's most memorable roles came in the early 1950s. They were Show Boat (1951), where she played "Magnolia", opposite Ava Gardner and Howard Keel; Kiss Me Kate (1953), playing actress "Lilli Vanessi", who portrayed "Katherine" in the movie's "show within a show", a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew". In 1953 she exited MGM, then made only one more film, The Vagabond King (1956), at Paramount. She later worked in nightclubs and on stage.

Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she appeared in her first film, Something to Shout About (1943), billed as Lily Norwood. The same year, she played a Russian dancer in Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz. In 1945, she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies (1945), and that uncredited appearance got her a seven-year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Singin' in the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly that made her a star. That was quickly followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953). As the 1960s dawned, musicals faded from the screen, as did her career. She made appearances on television and performed in a nightclub revue with her second husband, singer Tony Martin. Cyd Charisse died at age 86 of a heart attack on June 17, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was three when her father abandoned the family. Her mother turned to waitressing in a restaurant to make ends meet--a rough beginning for an actress who would, one day, be one of Hollywood's elite. Yvonne's mother wanted her to be in the entertainment field and enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. Yvonne was not shy in the least. She was somewhat akin to Colleen Moore who, like herself, entertained the neighborhood with impromptu productions. In 1937, when Yvonne was 15, her mother took her to Hollywood to try for fame and fortune, but nothing came of it and they returned to Canada. They came back to Hollywood in 1940, where Yvonne would dance in chorus lines at night while she checked in at the studios by day in search of film work. After appearing in unbilled parts in three short films, she finally got a part in a feature.

Although the film Harvard, Here I Come! (1941) was quite lame, Yvonne glowed in her brief appearance as a bathing beauty. The rest of 1942 and 1943 saw her in more uncredited roles in films that did not quite set Hollywood on fire. In The Deerslayer (1943), she played Wah-Tah. The role did not amount to much, but it was much better than the ones she had been handed previously. The next year was about the same as the previous two years. She played small parts as either secretaries, someone's girlfriend, native girls or office clerks. Most aspiring young actresses would have given up and gone home in defeat, but not Yvonne. She trudged on. The next year, started out the same, with mostly bit parts, but later that year, she landed the title role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945) for Universal Pictures. While critics were less than thrilled with the film, it was at long last her big break, and the film was a success for Universal. Now she was rolling.

Her next film was the western comedy Frontier Gal (1945) as Lorena Dumont. After a year off the screen in 1946, she returned in 1947 as Cara de Talavera in Song of Scheherazade (1947), and many agreed that the only thing worth watching in the film was Yvonne. Her next film was the highly regarded Burt Lancaster prison film Brute Force (1947). Time after time, Yvonne continued to pick up leading roles, in such pictures as Slave Girl (1947), Black Bart (1948), Casbah (1948) and River Lady (1948). She had a meaty role in Criss Cross (1949), a gangster movie, as the ex-wife of a hoodlum. At the start of the 1950s, Yvonne enjoyed continued success in lead roles. Her talents were again showcased in movies such as The Desert Hawk (1950), Silver City (1951) and Scarlet Angel (1952). Her last film in 1952 was Hurricane Smith (1952), a picture most fans and critics agree is best forgotten.

In 1956, she appeared in the film that would immortalize her best, The Ten Commandments (1956). She played Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston). The film was, unquestionably, a super smash, and is still shown on television today. Her performance served as a springboard to another fine role, this time as Amantha Starr in Band of Angels (1957). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Yvonne appeared on such television series as Bonanza (1959) and The Virginian (1962). With film roles drying up, she took the role of Lily Munster in the smash series The Munsters (1964). However, she still was not completely through with the big screen. Appearances in such films as McLintock! (1963), The Power (1968), The Seven Minutes (1971) and La casa de las sombras (1976) kept her before the eyes of the movie-going public. Yvonne De Carlo died at age 84 of natural causes on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills, California.

Coleen Gray was born in Staplehurst, Nebraska, in 1922. After graduating from high school she studied dramatics at Hamline University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then decided to see America and traveled to California, stopping off at La Jolla where she worked as a waitress. After several weeks there, she moved to L.A. and enrolled in a drama school. Her performances attracted a talent scout from 20th Century-Fox, with whom she signed a contract after a screen test. Although Fox put her in several good pictures (Kiss of Death (1947), Nightmare Alley (1947), The Razor's Edge (1946) in which she acquitted herself well, many of the roles they gave her were not worthy of her talent and she never became as big a star as many thought she should have. Still, she has an extensive list of credits in films, TV, radio and on the stage.

Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockleman on November 14, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Constance Charlotta (Trimble) and Harry Eugene Ockelman, who worked for an oil company as a ship employee. Her father was of half German and half Irish descent, and her mother was of Irish ancestry. While still a child, Veronica's parents moved to Florida when she was not quite a year old. By the time she was five, the family had returned to Brooklyn. When Connie was only twelve, tragedy struck when her father died in an explosion on an oil ship. One year later her mother married Anthony Keane and Connie took his last name as her own. In 1934, when her stepfather was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the family moved to Saranac Lake, where Connie Keane enjoyed the outdoor life and flourished in the activities of boating on the lakes, skating, skiing, swimming, biking around Moody Pond and hiking up Mt Baker. The family made their home in 1935 at 1 Watson Place, (now 27 Seneca Street) then they moved to 1 Riverside Drive,(now Lake Kiwassa Road). Both Connie and Anthony benefited from the Adirondack experience and in 1936 the family left the Adirondacks and moved to Miami, FL., however, the memories of those carefree Saranac Lake days would always remain deeply rooted in her mind.

Two years later, Connie graduated from high school in Miami. Her natural beauty and charm and a definite talent for acting prompted her mother and step-father to move to Beverly Hills, California, where they enrolled her in the well known Bliss Hayden School of Acting in Hollywood. Connie had previously been diagnosed as a classic schizophrenic and her parents saw acting as a form of treatment for her condition. She showed remarkable abilities and did not have to wait long for a part to come her way.

Her first movie was as one of the many coeds in the RKO film, Sorority House (1939). It was a minor part, to be sure, but it was a start. Veronica quickly followed up that project with two other films. All Women Have Secrets (1939) and Dancing Co-Ed (1939), were again bit roles for the pretty young woman from the East Coast, but she did not complain. After all, other would-be starlets took a while before they ever received a bit part. Veronica continued her schooling, while taking a bit roles in two more films, Young as You Feel (1940) and Forty Little Mothers (1940). Prior to this time, she was still under her natural name of Constance Keane. Now, with a better role in I Wanted Wings (1941), she was asked to change her name, and Veronica Lake was born. Now, instead of playing coeds, she had a decent, speaking part. Veronica felt like an actress. The film was a success and the public loved this bright newcomer.

Paramount, the studio she was under contract with, then assigned her to two more films that year, Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Sullivan's Travels (1941). The latter received good reviews from the always tough film critics. As Ellen Graham, in This Gun for Hire (1942) the following year, Veronica now had top billing. She had paid her dues and was on a roll. The public was enamored with her. In 1943, Veronica starred in only one film. She portrayed Lieutenant Olivia D'Arcy in So Proudly We Hail! (1943) with Claudette Colbert. The film was a box-office smash. It seemed that any film Veronica starred in would be an unquestionable hit. However, her only outing for 1944, The Hour Before the Dawn (1944) would not be well-received by either the public or the critics. As Nazi sympathizer Dora Bruckmann, Veronica's role was dismal at best. Critics disliked her accent immensely because it wasn't true to life. Her acting itself suffered because of the accent. Mediocre films trailed her for all of 1945. It seemed that Veronica was dumped in just about any film to see if it could be salvaged. Hold That Blonde! (1945), Out of This World (1945), and Miss Susie Slagle's (1946) were just a waste of talent for the beautiful blonde. The latter film was a shade better than the previous two. In 1946, Veronica bounced back in The Blue Dahlia (1946) with Alan Ladd and Howard Da Silva. The film was a hit, but it was the last decent film for Veronica. Paramount continued to put her in pathetic movies. After 1948, Paramount discharged the once prized star, and she was out on her own. In 1949, she starred in the Twentieth Century film Slattery's Hurricane (1949), which, unfortunately, was another weak film. She was not on the big screen again until 1952 when she appeared in Stronghold (1951). By Veronica's own admission, the film "was a dog". From 1952 to 1966, Veronica made television appearances and even tried her hand on the stage. Not a lot of success for her at all. By now alcohol was the order of the day. She was down on her luck and drank heavily. In 1962, Veronica was found living in an old hotel and working as a bartender. She finally returned to the big screen in Footsteps in the Snow (1966). Another drought ensued and she appeared on the silver screen for the last time in Flesh Feast (1970) - a very low budget film.

On July 7, 1973, Veronica died of hepatitis in Burlington, Vermont. The beautiful actress with the long blonde hair was dead at the age of 50.

Ava Lavina Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to Mary Elizabeth (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner. Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty. With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-1945, were one-line bits or little better. After her first starring role in B-grade Whistle Stop (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film The Killers (1946). Few of her best films were made at MGM which, keeping her under contract for 17 years, used her popularity to sell many mediocre films. Perhaps as a result, she never believed in her own acting ability, but her latent talent shone brightly when brought out by a superior director, as with John Ford in Mogambo (1953) and George Cukor in Bhowani Junction (1956).

After three failed marriages, dissatisfaction with Hollywood life prompted Ava to move to Spain in 1955; most of her subsequent films were made abroad. By this time, stardom had made the country girl a cosmopolitan, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting and life in the spotlight. Her last quality starring film role was in The Night of the Iguana (1964), her later work being (as she said) strictly "for the loot". In 1968, tax trouble in Spain prompted a move to London, where she spent her last 22 years in reasonable comfort. Her film career did not bring her great fulfillment, but her looks may have made it inevitable; many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history. Ava Gardner died at age 67 of bronchial pneumonia on January 25, 1990 in Westminister, London, England.

Petite, attractive Mari Blanchard rarely managed to get the lucky breaks. The daughter of an oil tycoon and a psychotherapist, she suffered from severe poliomyelitis from the age of nine, which denied her a hoped-for dancing career. For several years, she worked hard to rehabilitate her limbs from paralysis, swimming and later even performing on the trapeze at Cole Brothers Circus. At the urging of her parents, she then attended the University of Southern California, where she studied international law before dropping out nine units short of a degree. Her university studies did not lead to a career either. Sometime in the late 1940s, she joined the Conover Agency as an advertising model and, at the same time, was promoted by famed cartoonist and writer Al Capp, becoming the inspiration for one of his Li'l Abner characters.

As the result of an advertisement on the back page of the Hollywood Reporter, Mari was signed to a contract with Paramount. However, her early experience in the movie business proved an unhappy one, most of her roles being walk-ons and bit parts. Ten Tall Men (1951), for example, limited her to a token stroll down a street, twirling a parasol and smiling seductively at members of the Foreign Legion. It wasn't until Mari joined Universal that her fortunes improved somewhat, with a co-starring role (opposite Victor Mature) in The Veils of Bagdad (1953). After that, it was all downhill again. Burt Lancaster, co-producer and star (with Gary Cooper of the excellent A-grade western Vera Cruz (1954), had requested Mari as his leading lady, but Universal refused her release to United Artists and forbade her to accept the lucrative role (Denise Darcel ended up getting the part). Mari then lost the lead in a much lesser picture,Saskatchewan (1954), to Shelley Winters. Instead, she was cast as Venusian Queen Allura in one of the least exciting outings by Universal's leading comic duo, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953).

Mari did end up with a respectable starring role in the western Destry (1954) opposite Audie Murphy. A remake of the classic Destry Rides Again (1939), she was cast in the Marlene Dietrich part and took great pains to affect a totally different look, darkening her hair so as not to be compared to the great star. Even the name of her character was changed from 'Frenchy' to 'Brandy'. "Destry" was not all smooth sailing. There was tension between her and director George Marshall (who had also directed the original version) and Mari suffered a facial injury as the result of a fight scene. The film was critically well received, but unfortunately Universal failed to renew its contract with Miss Blanchard, and her career then went into free fall.

Freelancing for lesser studios, she played a TB victim injected with a serum turning her into a Mr. Hyde-like killer in the lurid She Devil (1957) (during filming she nearly died of acute appendicitis). Mari then appeared for Republic in the eminently forgettable No Place to Land (1958) before briefly starring in her own short-lived adventure series Klondike (1960). Her last role of note was as the cheerful and likeable town madam in the rollicking John Wayne western comedy [error]. Sometime that year, Mari Blanchard developed the cancer which was to claim her life in 1970 at the age of just 47.

A native-born Californian, Rhonda Fleming attended Beverly Hills public and private schools. Her father was Harold Cheverton Louis (1896-1951). Her mother, Effie Olivia Graham (1891-1985), was a famous model and actress in New York. She has a son (Kent Lane), two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly) and four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane and Cole). She has appeared in over 40 films, including David O. Selznick's Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947); and Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946). She later got starring roles in such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Home Before Dark (1958), Pony Express (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), While the City Sleeps (1956) and The Big Circus (1959). While she was always a competent actress, she was more renowned for her exquisite beauty, and the camera absolutely adored her. One time a cameraman on one of her films remarked on how he was so struck by her beauty that, as a gag, he intentionally tried to photograph her badly; he was astonished to discover that no matter how deliberately he botched it, she still came out looking ravishing.

Among her co-stars over the years were Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan (with whom she made four films). In addition to motion pictures, Fleming made her Broadway debut in Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women", essayed the role of "Lalume" in "Kismet" at the Los Angeles Music Center and toured as "Madame Dubonnet" in "The Boyfriend". She made her stage musical debut in Las Vegas at the opening of the Tropicana Hotel's showroom. Later she appeared at the Hollywood Bowl in a one-woman concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin compositions. She also starred in a national ten-week concert tour with Skitch Henderson, featuring the music of George Gershwin. She has guest-starred on numerous television series, including Wagon Train (1957), Police Woman (1974), The Love Boat (1977), Last Hours Before Morning (1975) and a two-hour special of McMillan & Wife (1971). Waiting for the Wind (1991) reunited her with former co-star Robert Mitchum.

In private life she resides in Century City, California, and was married for 23 years to Ted Mann, a producer and chairman of Mann Theatres, until his death in January 2001. She is a member and supporter of Childhelp USA, ARCS (Achievement Rewards For College Scientists); a Life Associate of Pepperdine University; a Lifetime Member of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge; a Founding Member of the French Foundation For Alzheimer Research; a Benefactor of the Los Angeles Music Center: and a Member of the Center's Blue Ribbon Board of Directors. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of Olive Crest Treatment Centers for Abused Children and serves as a Board of Directors Trustee of World Opportunities International. Along with her husband she helped build the Jerusalem Film Institute in Israel. She also is a member of the Board of Trustees of The UCLA Foundation and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Revlon/UCLA Women's Health Research Program. In addition, she created at the City of Hope Hospital The Rhonda Fleming Mann Research Fellowship to further advance research and treatment associated with women's cancer.

In 1991, she and her husband established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at UCLA Medical Center. This clinic provides a full range of expert gynecologic and obstetric care to women. Since 1992, she has devoted her time to a second facility at UCLA - the Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center for Women with Cancer, which opened in early 1994. This Center is the fulfillment of her vision to create a safe, warm place where women cancer patients and their families might receive the highest quality psychosocial and emotional care as well as assistance with the complex practical problems that arise with cancer. In August 1997, the Center opened "Reflections", a unique retail store and consultation suite that carries wigs, head coverings, breast prostheses and other items to help men, women and children deal with the physical appearance changes brought on by cancer and its treatments. The staffs of the clinic, center and store are guided by her belief that caring, compassion, communication and commitment are essential components of the healing process.

Linda Darnell, one of five children of a postal clerk, grew up fast. At 11, she was modeling clothes, giving her age as 16. At 13, she was appearing on the stage with little theater groups. Her mother encouraged her to audition when Hollywood talent scouts came to Dallas. She went to California and when the studio found out how young she really was, she was sent home and told to come back when she was 15. Her fourth film, Star Dust (1940), was based on this real life experience. It was Star Dust (1940) that Darnell was watching the night of April 9, 1965, at the home of her former secretary, located in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The house caught on fire in the early hours of the next morning and Darnell died that afternoon in Cook County Hospital. The character she played in one of her best known roles, Forever Amber (1947) survived the London fire, the plague and the perils of being the mistress of the English king, Charles II.

Linda Christian was born Blanca Rosa Welter, to a Dutch father, Gerardus Jacob Welter, and a Mexican-born mother, Blanca Rosa Vorhauer. Her Father was an executive with Royal Dutch Shell and Christian traveled extensively as a result living in South Africa, Romania, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, and Palestine at various times during her childhood This was beneficial in that the little girl - a very good pupil at school - eventually was able to speak seven languages. She also turned into a shapely young lady who won a beauty contest. She started studying medicine in Palestine but had to be repatriated to the USA due to the international situation. She landed in Los Angeles and naturally considered a movie career there. She studied drama but got only minor parts for years. She really became famous when she married Tyrone Power, and her career somewhat improved. But it is scandal more than her film roles that long made her a favorite of the celebrity press rather than of specialized movie magazines.

It would have been pretty difficult for willowy actress/model Dina Merrill to have pulled off playing a commoner on stage, film or TV in her day. She reeked of elegance and class. The epitome of style, poise and glamour, the New York-born socialite and celebrity was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton on December 29, 1923, the daughter of E.F. Hutton, the financier and founder of the Wall Street firm that bore his name, and heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, of the Post cereal fortune. Although Dina made elegant, elaborate use of her upbringing over the decades, she handled it all positively and graciously without tabloid incidents, instilling these same refined credentials into a large portion of her characters.

Dina did not originally intend on an acting career. After studying at George Washington University, she suddenly dropped out after only a year (to the chagrin of her disapproving parents) after demonstrating a late desire to perform. Enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studying with Uta Hagen among others, Dina appeared in the comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner" before taking her first Broadway curtain call in "The Mermaids Singing" in 1945. She took some time off to play wife and mother to three children after marrying Stanley Rumbough, Jr., heir to the Colgate toothpaste fortune.

Dina finally made an official film debut with a smart and stylish support role in the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn vehicle Desk Set (1957). She continued to charm in the same upper crust vein playing some version of the model wife or blue-blooded maven in frequent posh outings. Some of her more noticeable roles came with Operation Petticoat (1959) with the equally classy Cary Grant; BUtterfield 8 (1960) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey; and The Young Savages (1961) opposite Burt Lancaster.

Following her divorce to Rumbough after 20 years, Dina married ruggedly handsome actor Cliff Robertson in 1966. The pair had one daughter and were a popular Hollywood fixture for nearly 20 years. With her film career on the wane in the mid 1960's, Dina gravitated toward TV guest spots on such popular shows as "Dr. Kildare," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Burke's Law," "Rawhide," "Daktari," "Bonanza," "Daniel Boone," "Batman" (as the villainous "Calamity Jan" alongside Robertson's western bad guy "Shame"), "The Name of the Game," "The Virginian," "Night Gallery," "Marcus Welby," "The Love Boat" and "The Odd Couple." She also graced a number of TV-movie dramas beginning with The Sunshine Patriot (1968) co-starring husband Robertson and Seven in Darkness (1969) (as a blind survivor of a plane crash), and continuing with The Lonely Profession (1969), Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1971), Family Flight (1972), The Letters (1973), The Tenth Month (1979), and a featured part in the mini-series sequel Roots: The Next Generations (1979).

Dina returned to Broadway as the co-star of the drama "Angel Street" (1975) and again with the revival of the musical "On Your Toes" in which she played "Peggy Porterfield" in both the 1983 Broadway revival and 1986 national tour. In the same year that Dina divorced second husband Cliff Robertson (1989), she married actor/investment banker Ted Hartley. Together the couple bought RKO Studios and renamed it RKO Pavilion. He serves as chairman and she vice chairperson/creative director. The studio produced such popular efforts as Milk & Money (1996) and the remake of Mighty Joe Young (1998).

Admired for her tireless philanthropic contributions, Dina was a moderate Republican (vice chair of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition), and an active lobbyist for women's health issues. She also devoted much time working for the disadvantaged, particularly for the New York City Mission Society. She remained active and was an avid tennis and golf player for quite some time. Broaching age 90, the ever-glamorous actress appeared in a summer stock production of "Only a Kingdom" (2004) and continued to appear in occasional movie and television productions until developing dementia. Dina died on May 22, 2017, at age 93, survived by her third husband.

The blonde, sultry, dreamy-eyed beauty of Dorothy Malone, who was born Mary Maloney in Chicago on January 29, 1924, took some time before it made an impact with American film-going audiences. But once she did, she played it for all it was worth in her one chance Academy Award-winning "bad girl" performance, a role quite unlike the classy and strait-laced lady herself.

Raised in Dallas, she was one of five children born to an accountant father and housewife mother. Two older sisters died of polio. Attending Ursuline Convent and Highland Park High School, she was quite popular (as "School Favorite"). She was also a noted female athlete while there and won several awards for swimming and horseback riding. Following graduation, she studied at Southern Methodist University with the intent of becoming a nurse, but a role in the college play "Starbound" happened to catch the eye of an RKO talent scout and she was offered a Hollywood contract.

The lovely brunette started off in typical RKO starlet mode with acting/singing/dancing/diction lessons and bit parts (billed as Dorothy Maloney) in such films as the Frank Sinatra musicals Higher and Higher (1943) and Step Lively (1944), a couple of the mystery "Falcon" entries and a showier role in Show Business (1944) with Eddie Cantor and George Murphy. RKO lost interest, however, after the two-year contract was up. Warner Bros., however, stepped up to the plate and offered the actress a contract. Now billed as Dorothy Malone, her third film offering with the studio finally injected some adrenaline into her floundering young career, when she earned the small role of a seductive book clerk in the Bogart/Bacall classic The Big Sleep (1946). Critics and audiences took notice of her captivating little part. As a reward, the studio nudged her up the billing ladder with more visible roles in Two Guys from Texas (1948), Romance on the High Seas (1948), South of St. Louis (1949) and Colorado Territory (1949), with the westerns showing off her equestrian prowess if not her acting ability.

Despite this positive movement, Warner Bros. did not extend Dorothy's contract in 1949 and she returned willingly back to her tight-knit family in her native Dallas. Taking a steadier job with an insurance agency, she happened to attend a work-related convention in New York City and grew fascinated with the big city. Deciding to recommit to her acting career, she moved to the Big Apple and studied at the American Theater Wing. In between her studies, she managed to find work on TV, which spurred freelancing "B" movie offers in the routine form of Saddle Legion (1951), The Bushwhackers (1951), the Martin & Lewis romp Scared Stiff (1953), Law and Order (1953), Jack Slade (1953), Pushover (1954) and Private Hell 36 (1954).

Things picked up noticeably once Dorothy went platinum blonde, which seemed to emphasize her overt and sensual beauty. First off was as a sister to Doris Day in Young at Heart (1954), a musical remake of Four Daughters (1938), back at Warner Bros. She garnered even better attention when she appeared in the war picture Battle Cry (1955), in which she shared torrid love scenes with film's newest heartthrob Tab Hunter, and continued the momentum with the reliable westerns Five Guns West (1955) and Tall Man Riding (1955) but not with melodramatic romantic dud Sincerely Yours (1955) which tried to sell to the audiences a heterosexual Liberace.

By this time she had signed with Universal. Following a few more westerns for good measure (At Gunpoint (1955), Tension at Table Rock (1956) and Pillars of the Sky (1956), Dorothy won the scenery-chewing role of wild, nymphomaniac Marylee Hadley in the Douglas Sirk soap opera Written on the Wind (1956) co-starring Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall and Robert Stack. Stack and Malone had the showier roles and completely out-shined the two leads, both earning supporting Oscar nominations in the process. Stack lost in his category but Dorothy nabbed the trophy for her splendidly tramp, boozed-up Southern belle which was highlighted by her writhing mambo dance.

Unfortunately, Dorothy's long spell of mediocre filming did not end with all the hoopla she received for Written on the Wind (1956). The Tarnished Angels (1957), which reunited Malone with Hudson and Stack faltered, and Quantez (1957) with Fred MacMurray was just another run-of-the-mill western. Two major film challenges might have changed things with Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) as the unsympathetic first wife of James Cagney's Lon Chaney Sr, and as alcoholic actress Diana Barrymore in the biographic melodrama Too Much, Too Soon (1958). Cagney, however, overshadowed everyone in the first and the second was fatally watered down by the Production Code committee.

To compensate, Dorothy, at age 35 in 1959, finally was married -- to playboy actor Jacques Bergerac (Ginger Rogers's ex-husband). A daughter, Mimi, was born the following year. Fewer film offers, which included Warlock (1959) and The Last Voyage (1960), came her way as Dorothy focused more on family life. While a second daughter, Diane, was born in 1962, the turbulent marriage wouldn't last and their divorce became final in December 1964. A bitter custody battle ensued with Dorothy eventually winning primary custody.

It took the small screen to rejuvenate Dorothy's career in the mid-1960s when she earned top billing of TV's first prime time soap opera Peyton Place (1964). Dorothy, starring in Lana Turner's 1957 film role of Constance MacKenzie, found herself in a smash hit. The run wasn't entirely happy however. Doctors discovered blood clots on her lungs which required major surgery and she almost died. Lola Albright filled in until she was able to return. Just as bad, her the significance of her role dwindled with time and 20th Century-Fox finally wrote her and co-star Tim O'Connor off the show in 1968. Dorothy filed a breach of contract lawsuit which ended in an out-of-court settlement.

Her life on- and off-camera did not improve. Dorothy's second marriage to stockbroker Robert Tomarkin in 1969 would last only three months, and a third to businessman Charles Huston Bell managed about three years. Now-matronly roles in the films Winter Kills (1979), Vortex (1982), The Being (1981) and Rest in Pieces (1987), were few and far between a few TV-movies -- which included some "Peyton Place" revivals, did nothing to advance her. Malone returned and settled for good back in her native Dallas, returning to Hollywood only on occasion.

Dorothy's last film was a cameo in the popular thriller Basic Instinct (1992) as a friend to Sharon Stone. She will be remembered as one of those Hollywood stars who proved she had the talent but somehow got the short end of the stick when it came to quality films offered. She retired to Texas and died in Dallas shortly before her 94th birthday on January 19, 2018.

Martha Hyer was born on August 10, 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. Once she finished her formal schooling, Martha played a bit role in 1946's The Locket (1946). Slowly, Martha began picking up roles with more and more substance. The best years for the beautiful actress began in 1954 when she played in films such as Down Three Dark Streets (1954), Showdown at Abilene (1956) and Battle Hymn (1957). Perhaps the best role of her long career was as "Gwen French" in 1958's Some Came Running (1958) in which she starred opposite Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. As a result of her stellar role, Martha received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she lost out to Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958). Afterwards, Martha's stint on the US silver screen's trailed off some. She did make a handful of foreign films, returning to appear in the US from time to time, but nothing compared to the pace she had in the fifties. Her last film was in 1973 in the film The Day of the Wolves (1971). In 1966, she married producer Hal B. Wallis and remained with him until his death in 1986.

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a salesman and her mother as a secretary. They divorced when she was five and she rarely saw her father after that.

As a school girl, she originally wanted to be a dancer, but later switched gears to head into acting. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, after attending She was educated at Highland Manor, a private boarding school in Tarrytown, New York (through the generosity of wealthy uncles), and then at Julia Richman High School, which enabled her to get her feet wet in some off-Broadway productions.

Out of school, she entered modeling and, because of her beauty, appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, one of the most popular magazines in the US. The wife of famed director Howard Hawks spotted the picture in the publication and arranged with her husband to have Lauren take a screen test. As a result, which was entirely positive, she was given the part of Marie Browning in To Have and Have Not (1944), a thriller opposite Humphrey Bogart, when she was just 19 years old. This not only set the tone for a fabulous career but also one of Hollywood's greatest love stories (she married Bogart in 1945). It was also the first of several Bogie-Bacall films.

After 1945's Confidential Agent (1945), Lauren received second billing in The Big Sleep (1946) with Bogart. The mystery, in the role of Vivian Sternwood Rutledge, was a resounding success. Although she was making one film a year, each production would be eagerly awaited by the public. In 1947, again with her husband, Lauren starred in the thriller Dark Passage (1947). The film kept movie patrons on the edge of their seats. The following year, she starred with Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore in Key Largo (1948). The crime drama was even more of a nail biter than her previous film.

In 1950, Lauren starred in Bright Leaf (1950), a drama set in 1894. It was a film of note because she appeared without her husband - her co-star was Gary Cooper. In 1953, Lauren appeared in her first comedy as Schatze Page in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). The film, with co-stars Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, was a smash hit all across the theaters of America.

After filming Designing Woman (1957), which was released in 1957, Humphrey Bogart died on January 14 from throat cancer. Devastated at being a widow, Lauren returned to the silver screen with The Gift of Love (1958) in 1958 opposite Robert Stack. The production turned out to be a big disappointment. Undaunted, Lauren moved back to New York City and appeared in several Broadway plays to huge critical acclaim. She was enjoying acting before live audiences and the audiences in turn enjoyed her fine performances.

Lauren was away from the big screen for five years, but she returned in 1964 to appear in Shock Treatment (1964) and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). The latter film was a comedy starring Henry Fonda and Tony Curtis. In 1966, Lauren starred in Harper (1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Harris, which was one of former's signature films.

Alternating her time between films and the stage, Lauren returned in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express (1974). The film, based on Agatha Christie's best-selling book was a huge hit. It also garnered Ingrid Bergman her third Oscar. Actually, the huge star-studded cast helped to ensure its success. Two years later, in 1976, Lauren co-starred with John Wayne in The Shootist (1976). The film was Wayne's last - he died from cancer in 1979. In late 1979, Lauren appeared with her good friend, James Garner, in a double episode, Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs (1979), of his Rockford Files series.

For Lauren's next film role, she appeared in a large ensemble film, HealtH (1980), which again paired her with James Garner, and in 1981, she played an actress being stalked by a crazed admirer in The Fan (1981). The thriller was absolutely fascinating with Lauren in the lead role, again playing opposite her good friend James Garner, making three straight screen roles with Lauren opposite James Garner. After that production, Lauren was away from films again, this time for seven years. In the interim, she again appeared on the stages of Broadway. When she returned, it was for the filming of 1988's Appointment with Death (1988) and Mr. North (1988). After 1990's Misery (1990) and several made for television films, Lauren appeared in 1996's My Fellow Americans (1996), a comedy romp with Jack Lemmon and James Garner as two ex-presidents and their escapades. In 1997, Lauren appeared in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), in one of the best roles of her later career, opposite Barbra Streisand, where Lauren was nominated as Best Actress in a Supporting Role by both the Academy and the Golden Globes, winning the Golden Globe for the role.

Despite her age and failing health, she made a small-scale comeback in the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004) ("Howl's Moving Castle," based on the young-adult novel by Diana Wynne Jones) as the Witch of the Waste, and several other roles through 2008, but thereafter acting endeavors for the beloved actress became increasingly rare. Lauren Bacall died on 12 August 2014, five weeks short of her 90th birthday.

Jeanne Crain was born in Barstow, California, on May 25, 1925. The daughter of a high school English teacher and his wife, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles not long after her birth after her father got another teaching position in that city. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a school production which set her on the path to acting. When she was in high school Jeanne was asked to take a screen test to appear in a film by Orson Welles. Unfortunately, she didn't get the part, but it did set her sights on being a movie actress.

After high school, Jeanne enrolled at UCLA to study drama. At the age of 18, Jeanne won a bit part in Fox Studio's film entitled The Gang's All Here (1943) and a small contract. Her next film saw Jeanne elevated to a more substantial part in Home in Indiana (1944) the following year, which was filmed in neighboring Kentucky. The movie was an unquestionable hit. On the strength of that box-office success, Jeanne was given a raise and star billing, as Maggie Preston, in the next film of 1944, In the Meantime, Darling (1944). Unfortunately, the critics not only roasted the film, but singled out Jeanne's performance in particular. She rebounded nicely in her last film of the year, Winged Victory (1944). The audiences loved it and the film was profitable.

In 1945, Jeanne was cast in State Fair (1945) as Margie Frake who travels to the fair and falls in love with a reporter played by Dana Andrews. Now, Jeanne got a bigger contract and more recognition. Later that year, Jeanne married Paul Brooks on New Year's Eve. Although her mother wasn't supportive of the marriage, the union lasted until her husband's death and produced seven children. The year 1947 was an off year for Jeanne, as she took time off to bear the Brooks' first child.

In 1949, Jeanne appeared in three films, A Letter to Three Wives (1949), The Fan (1949), and Pinky (1949). It was this latter film which garnered her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her role as Pinky Johnson, a nurse who sets up a clinic in the Deep South. She lost to Olivia de Havilland for The Heiress (1949). Jeanne left Fox after filming Vicki (1953) in 1953, with Jean Peters. She had made 23 films for the studio that started her career, but she needed a well-deserved change. As with any good artist, Jeanne wanted to expand her range instead of playing the girl-next-door types.

She went briefly to Warner Brothers for the filming of Duel in the Jungle (1954) in 1954. The film was lukewarm at best. Jeanne, then, signed a contract, that same year, with Universal Studios with promises of better, high profile roles. She went into production in the film Man Without a Star (1955) which was a hit with audiences and critics. After The Joker Is Wild (1957) in 1957, Jeanne took time off for her family and to appear in a few television programs. She returned, briefly, to film in Guns of the Timberland (1960) in 1960. The films were sporadic after that. In 1967, she appeared in a low-budget suspense yarn called Hot Rods to Hell (1966). Her final film was as Clara Shaw in 1972's Skyjacked (1972).

Jeanne died of a heart attack in Santa Barbara, California, on December 14, 2003. Her husband Paul Brooks had died two months earlier.

Elegance and femininity are fitting descriptions for Arlene Dahl. She is considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses to have graced the screen during the postwar period. Audiences were captivated by her breathtaking beauty and the way she used to it to her advantage, progressing from claimer to character roles.

Of Norwegian extraction, Miss Dahl was born in Minneapolis. Following high school she joined a local drama group, supporting herself with a variety of jobs, including modeling for a number of department stores. Arriving in Hollywood in 1946, she signed a brief contract with Warner Brothers, but she is best remembered for her work at MGM. The Bride Goes Wild (1948) was her first work at Metro. It was an odd but rather humorous love story, which starred Van Johnson and June Allyson.

Although her beauty captivated audiences, it ultimately limited her to smaller roles, and the mark she made at MGM was small. Some of her best films were Reign of Terror (1949), which actually required some acting and she acquitted herself quite well, Three Little Words (1950), Woman's World (1954), Slightly Scarlet (1956) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).

Leaving films behind her in 1959, her typecasting would pay off financially as she became a beauty columnist and writer. She later established herself as a businesswoman, founding Arlene Dahl Enterprises which marketed lingerie and cosmetics.

She was married six times, two of whom were actors, Lex Barker and Fernando Lamas. She is the mother of actor / action star Lorenzo Lamas, and actually made a guest appearance in his film Night of the Warrior (1991).

Kay Kendall was born on 21 May 1927 in Withernsea, Yorkshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Les Girls (1957), The Reluctant Debutante (1958) and Simon and Laura (1955). She was married to Rex Harrison. She died on 6 September 1959 in London, England, UK.

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.

She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.

Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.

She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.

When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.

On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called her. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening went on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.

Betty May Adams was the daughter of a travelling Iowa cotton buyer with a penchant for alcohol. Growing up in Arkansas, Betty expressed an early interest in acting and made her performing debut in a third grade play of "Hansel and Gretel." Beautiful, talented and determined, the freshly minted 'Miss Little Rock' left home at the age of 19 to live with her aunt and uncle in California. For three days a week she made ends meet working as a secretary. The remainder of her time was spent taking speech and drama lessons (in due course losing her Southern twang) and making the rounds of the various Hollywood casting departments. Her first screen role was (appropriately) as a starlet in Paramount's Red, Hot and Blue (1949). This was followed by an inauspicious leading role in the B-grade Western The Dalton Gang (1949). Over a period of five weeks she appeared in six further quota quickies of the sagebrush variety for Poverty Row outfit Lippert Productions. Since Lippert owned no actual studio facilities, most of the filming took place at the Ray Corrigan ranch in Chatsworth, California. In the summer of 1950, Betty assisted in a screen test for Detroit Lions football star Leon Hart at Universal-International. While Hart's movie career ended up stillborn, Betty clicked with producers who opted to change her first name to 'Julia.' The initial outing for her new studio was entitled Bright Victory (1951), with the budding actress a little underemployed as 'the other girl' in a love triangle involving a blind war veteran (played by Arthur Kennedy). Her career was significantly better served in her next assignment as co-star opposite James Stewart in Anthony Mann's seminal Technicolor western Bend of the River (1952) (Kennedy this time cast as the arch villain). Adams later recalled her part in this film as "a great learning experience" and one of her "fondest Hollywood memories," It also led to a life long friendship with Jimmy Stewart.

Signed to a seven-year contract (and having her legs insured by Universal to the tune of $125,000 by Lloyds of London), Julia seemed destined to remain perpetually typecast as a western heroine. A comely actress with soft, classical features, she often gave affecting performances in what amounted to little more than bread-and-butter pictures. At the very least, she got to play romantic leads opposite some of Universal's top box-office earners: Rock Hudson (in Horizons West (1952) and The Lawless Breed (1952)), Tyrone Power(The Mississippi Gambler (1953)) and Glenn Ford (The Man from the Alamo (1953)). Having played a succession of 'nice girls,' Julia took a turn as leader of an outlaw gang in Wings of the Hawk (1953), set against the background of the Mexican Revolution (Van Heflin was first-billed as a mining engineer, who, having his gold mine taken over by Federales, joins Julia's band of 'insurrectos'). 'Miss Melon Patch' of 1953 was about to experience another important career change, being famously cast as the imperilled heroine Kay Lawrence in Jack Arnolds cultish monster flic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), a role Adams initially considered turning down. Shot in 3-D on a shoestring budget, the picture was light on script but strong on atmosphere and proved once again that style can succeed over content. The not inconsiderable physical charms of Miss Adams often dominated the scenery and gave the 'Gill Man' a run for his money. Audiences approved and 'Creature' spawned two further sequels, alas without Julia and with diminishing returns.

In 1955, having generated strong box office heat, Julia changed her moniker (with studio approval) to the less gentle-sounding Julie. Accordingly, she was now offered more varied material ranging from tough melodramas, to comedies and lightweight romances. Adams further established her credentials with roles which included a soft porn model who survives a plane crash in the Colorado Rockies in The Looters (1955); as a cop's wife in Six Bridges to Cross (1955) (a crime drama based on Boston's Great Brinks Robbery); a sympathetic school's doctor in the family-oriented comedy The Private War of Major Benson (1955) and as the wife of an assistant D.A. fighting gangland on the New York waterfront in Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1957). After 1957, her contract with Universal having expired, Adams successfully transitioned into television where she remained a firm favorite in westerns and crime dramas, guest-starring in just about every classic prime-time series covering both genres (Perry Mason (1957) being her personal favorite). Latterly, she had a popular recurring role as real estate lady Eve Simpson in Murder, She Wrote (1984). Adams was still in demand for occasional screen appearances well into her 90s.

She was married twice: first, to writer-producer Leonard Stern, and, secondly, to the actor Ray Danton. Julie Adams passed away in Los Angeles on February 3, 2019 at the age of 92. Her autobiography (co-written with her son Mitchell Danton), entitled "The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections from the Black Lagoon" appeared in 2011.

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.

Gina Lollobrigida was born on July 4, 1927 in Subiaco, Italy. Destined to be called "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World," Gina possibly had St. Brigid as part of her surname. She was the daughter of a furniture manufacturer, and grew up in the pictorial mountain village. The young Gina did some modeling and, from there, went on to participate successfully in several beauty contests. In 1947, she entered a beauty competition for Miss Italy, but came in third. The winner was Lucia Bosè (born 1931), who would go on to appear in over 50 movies, and the first runner-up was Gianna Maria Canale (born 1927), who would appear in almost 50 films. After appearing in a half-dozen films in Italy, it was rumored that, in 1947, film tycoon Howard Hughes had her flown to Hollywood; however, this did not result in her staying in America, and she returned to Italy (her Hollywood breakout movie would not come until six years later in the John Huston film Beat the Devil (1953)).

Back in Italy, in 1949, Gina married Milko Skofic, a Slovenian (at the time, "Yugoslavian") doctor, by whom she had a son, Milko Skofic Jr. They would be married for 22 years, until their divorce in 1971. As her film roles and national popularity increased, Gina was tagged "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World", after her signature movie Beautiful But Dangerous (1955). Gina was nicknamed "La Lollo," as she embodied the prototype of Italian beauty. Her earthy looks and short "tossed salad" hairdo were especially influential and, in fact, there's a type of curly lettuce named "Lollo" in honor of her cute hairdo. Her film Come September (1961), co-starring Rock Hudson, won the Golden Globe Award as the World's Film Favorite. In the 1970s, Gina was seen in only a few films, as she took a break from acting and concentrated on another career: photography. Among her subjects were Paul Newman, Salvador Dalí and the German national soccer team.

A skilled photographer, Gina had a collection of her work "Italia Mia", published in 1973. Immersed in her other passions (sculpting and photography), it would be 1984 before Gina would grace American television on Falcon Crest (1981). Although Gina was always active, she only appeared in a few films in the 1990s. She retired from acting in 1997 after 50 years in the motion picture industry. In June 1999, she turned to politics and ran, unsuccessfully, for one of Italy's 87 European Parliament seats, from her hometown of Subiaco. Gina was also a corporate executive for fashion and cosmetics companies. As she told Parade magazine in April 2000: "I studied painting and sculpting at school and became an actress by mistake". (We're glad she made that mistake). Gina went on to say: "I've had many lovers and still have romances. I am very spoiled. All my life, I've had too many admirers."

Sara Montiel was born in the village of Campo de Criptana, province of Ciudad Real, in the region of Castille-La Mancha, Spain. Her parents were Isidoro Abad, a peasant, and Maria Vicenta Fernández, a door-to-door beautician. The future star was christened Maria Antonia Alejandra Abad Fernández. Barely in her teens, she won a beauty and talent contest held by Cifesa, the most influential Spanish film studio of that era. She was promptly signed to a movie contract and in 1944 made her debut playing a teenager in Te quiero para mí (1944), credited in the cast as "Maria Alejandra". By the end of 1944 she was given the starring role in Empezó en boda (1944), which introduced her with a more adult image and a new name: Sara Montiel.

In the next four years she appeared in 14 films, including her first international success Madness of Love (1948), which led to a long term-contract in Mexico. She quickly established herself as one of the most popular film actors of the decade. starring in over a dozen films between 1950 and 1954. Hollywood came calling and she was formally introduced to American moviegoers in Vera Cruz (1954), playing Gary Cooper's love interest. Later she worked at Warner Bros. in Serenade (1956) with Mario Lanza, directed by Anthony Mann, who became her first husband. After starring in Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow (1957) with Rod Steiger, Sarita shot El último cuplé (1957) ("The Last Song") in Spain, a musical production that turned out to be the biggest box-office success in Spain's film history. It played for over a year in the same theaters in which it opened. A similar reaction followed in Western Europe and Latin America. Sarita Montiel had become the most popular actress-singer of 1957 and a national treasure for Spain.

The unprecedented success of "El Último Cuplé" threw a wrench into her Hollywood career, as she was offered a multimillion-dollar contract to star in four films in Europe. Her next vehicle, La violetera (1958) ("The Violet Peddler"), confirmed Sara's popularity and broke the box-office records set by the previous movie. The theme song from "La Violetera" became Montiel's signature song. The soundtrack albums from both films reportedly outsold Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra in the world market. From then on, Sarita would combine the making of films with the recording of highly successful albums and live concerts in four continents. By 1962 she had become a legend to millions of fans worldwide, reaching markets that had previously been uncharted territory for Spanish cinema. Among her many blockbusters of the 1960s were Mi último tango (1960), Pecado de amor (1961), La bella Lola (1962), La reina del Chantecler (1962) and Esa mujer (1969).

However, by the 1970s her interest in films diminished, due largely to the almost pornographic turn of Spanish films in the late-Francisco Franco era when censorship was abolished and she retired from films in 1974. Her activities turned mainly to recording and stage work, and she achieved uncontested successes with her stage shows "Sara en Persona" (1970-73), "Saritísima" (1974-75), "Increible Sara" (1977-78), "Super Sara Show"(1979-80), "Doña Sara de La Mancha" (1981-82), "Taxi Vamos Al Victoria" (1983-84), "Nostalgia" (1985-86), "Sara, Siempre Sara" (1987-88) and others.

In the 1990s Sara surprised everyone by branching out into television: Sara y punto (1990), a mini-series of seven one-hour episodes, included a serialized biography of the star, many popular guests (including Luciano Pavarotti and Charles Aznavour, among others) and Miss Montiel singing her greatest hits in addition to new songs written especially for her. Next came Ven al Paralelo (1992), taped in a Barcelona theater where Montiel hosted,sang and acted in comedy sketches in front of a live audience.

It is quite impossible to cover here all the awards Sara Montiel has won in her long successful career but we must mention the "Premio del Sindicato" (at that time Spain's equivalent of the Oscar) for best actress, won two years in a row for her performances in "El Último Cuplé" and "La Violetera". In 1972 she was proclaimed an honorary citizen of Los Angeles by Mayor Sam Yorty and was given the gold key to the city. Similarly she has been awarded the gold keys of New York, Miami and Chicago. In 1981 she received Israel's most prestigious honor, the Ben Guiron Award and in 1983 she was awarded France's Legion of Honor medal, after a retrospective of her career ran at the Autumn Film Festival in Paris. In 1986 "Nosotros", a Hollywood-based Hispanic actors advocacy organization founded by Ricardo Montalban, gave her its Golden Eagle Award for life achievement. The trophy was presented to Sarita by her "Vera Cruz" costar-producer Burt Lancaster in an emotional reunion that triggered a standing ovation from all their Hollywood peers witnessing the event. In 1997 she was awarded the "Gold Medal", also a life achievement recognition, given--rarely0--by Spain's Academy of Arts and Sciences. The two-hour ceremony was beamed live by national television. In 2008 Sara returned to her hometown to unveil a sculpture with her image at the new Sara Montiel Park. A nearby avenue was also named after her and there was at the same time a dedication ceremony of her newly renovated museum, located inside a 16th-century windmill. In addition, the government placed a commemorative plaque on the house where she was born.

Sara Montiel's private life has also been a large part of her legend. After divorcing Anthony Mann in 1963, she married three more times (Vicente Ramirez Olalla 1964-1978; Jose Tous 1979-1992; Antonio Hernandez 2002-2004). Before, during and after these marriages she had countless affairs, among them Nobel prize-winning scientist Severo Ochoa and Italian actor Giancarlo Del Duca. Unable to have children, she adopted two during her marriage to Jose Tous: Thais (born in 1979) and Zeus (born 1983). In 2000 she published her autobiography, which became a best seller. Undaunted by the passage of time and ignoring critics who accused her of mishandling her legendary image, Sara Montiel continued living and working at a hectic pace. She kept touring with her one woman show and making guests appearances on television. In 2009 she won a new generation of fans when she recorded "Absolutamente," an outrageous duet with Fangoria's vocalist Alaska. Both the record and the promotional video reached the top of the popularity charts and remained there for weeks.

Next Sara recorded some love duets with baritone José Antonio Román Marcos and traveled to the United States for a short tour sponsored by New York's Cervantes Institute and the universities of Chicago and Cincinnati. In every city she charmed the audiences with her charismatic presence and sense of humor. Back in Spain she continued her activities which now included supporting the singing career of her son Zeus. She appeared in his 2011 "Sex Dance" video and caused quite a stir.

In February 2013 Sara Montiel became the subject of a made-for-TV documentary titled "Sara's Dream" which aired in Spain to high ratings and great reviews. It was a fitting celebration of her fantastic life and career which came at the right time. A couple of months later, the star who had seemed eternal, passed away suddenly and quietly in her Madrid penthouse. By her family's request, funeral services were private but the funeral procession, organized by the city of Madrid, was a very moving event attended by thousands who showed up at Plaza Callao to bid farewell to their beloved Sara. She was buried in the San Justo cemetery family plot.

Hazel-eyed English leading lady of the 1950s who started as an ingénue at the Windsor Repertory Theatre after having had an earlier career working for the BBC drama department. A social sophisticate and 'girl about town', she was crowned 'Miss Galaxy' and went to Hollywood in 1954 with high hopes for fame and fortune. She unsuccessfully auditioned for the female lead in Bhowani Junction (1956) (which went to Ava Gardner) but the following year was signed as a Columbia starlet and cast as the female lead in the Glenn Ford western Jubal (1956). She appeared with Lee J. Cobb in The Garment Jungle (1957), plus two other westerns (Decision at Sundown (1957)) and The Hard Man (1957)) as well as the abysmal science fiction C-grader The 27th Day (1957). Thereafter, Valerie alternated between television work in the U.S. and the stage, both on and off-Broadway, making headlines in 1969 when appearing nude in "The Mother Lover" at the Booth Theater (though with her back to the audience). Her other Broadway credits included "Inadmissible Evidence" (1965) and "A Taste of Honey (1981)". She was married to actor/writer/producer Michael Pertwee and actor Thayer David.

Born Verna Charlene Stavely. Holt, a former "Miss Maryland," enjoyed a rewarding modeling career prior to her screen work in both films and television that began when caught director Howard Hawks's attention when he saw her in a lipstick commercial. After her debut appearance in the Sandra Dee-Bobby Darin comedy, If a Man Answers (1962), Holt went on to appear in such films as Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Man's Favorite Sport? (1964), Red Line 7000 (1965), Zigzag (1970), and the TV movie Wonder Woman (1974). Her television series appearances included guest roles on Hawaiian Eye (1962), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1963), Perry Mason (1965), It Takes A Thief (1968), and CHiPs (1980). Following the filming of El Dorado in 1966, Holt married millionaire real estate developer William A. Tishman in 1966. The couple enjoyed traveling and collecting antiques and artwork for their lavish home in Trousdale Estates in West Los Angeles until their 1972 divorce. Her last screen appearance before retiring was in Melvin and Howard (1980).

Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929, in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). She had a small part as a harpist in the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), produced by Gabriel Pascal, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring her future husband Stewart Granger. Pascal saw potential in Simmons, and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract to the J. Arthur Rank Organization, and she went on to make a name for herself in such major British productions as Great Expectations (1946) (as the spoiled, selfish Estella), Black Narcissus (1947) (as a sultry native beauty), Hamlet (1948) (playing Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's great Dane and earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination), The Blue Lagoon (1949) and So Long at the Fair (1950), among others.

In 1950, she married Stewart Granger, and that same year, she moved to Hollywood. While Granger was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned RKO Pictures. Hughes was eager to start a sexual relationship with Simmons, but Granger put a stop to his advances. Her first Hollywood film was Androcles and the Lion (1952), produced by Pascal and co-starring Victor Mature. It was followed by Angel Face (1952), directed by Otto Preminger with Robert Mitchum. To further punish Simmons and Granger, Hughes refused to lend her to Paramount, where William Wyler wanted to cast her in the female lead for his film Roman Holiday (1953); the role made a star of Audrey Hepburn. A court case freed Simmons from the contract with Hughes in 1952. They settled out of court; part of the arrangement was that Simmons would do one more film for no additional money. Simmons also agreed to make three more movies under the auspices of RKO, but not actually at that studio - she would be lent out. MGM cast her in the lead of Young Bess (1953) playing a young Queen Elizabeth I with Granger. She went back to RKO to do the extra film under the settlement with Hughes, titled Affair with a Stranger (1953) with Mature; it flopped.

Simmons went over to 20th Century Fox to play the female lead in The Robe (1953), the first CinemaScope movie and an enormous financial success. Less popular was The Actress (1953) at MGM alongside Spencer Tracy, despite superb reviews; it was one of her personal favorites. Fox asked Simmons back for The Egyptian (1954), another epic, but it was not especially popular. She had the lead in Columbia's A Bullet Is Waiting (1954). More popular with moviegoers was Désirée (1954), where Simmons played Désirée Clary to Marlon Brando's Napoleon Bonaparte. Simmons and Granger returned to England to make the thriller Footsteps in the Fog (1955). She then starred in the musical Guys and Dolls (1955) with Brando and Frank Sinatra; she used her own singing voice and earned her first Golden Globe Award. Simmons played the title role in Hilda Crane (1956) at Fox, a commercial failure. So, too, were This Could Be the Night (1957) and Until They Sail (1957), both at MGM. Simmons had a big success, though, in The Big Country (1958), directed by Wyler. She starred in Home Before Dark (1958) at Warner Bros. and This Earth Is Mine (1959) with Rock Hudson at Universal.

Simmons divorced Granger in 1960 and almost immediately married writer-director Richard Brooks, who cast her as Sister Sharon opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960), a memorable adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. That same year, she co-starred with Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and played a would-be homewrecker opposite Cary Grant in The Grass Is Greener (1960).

Off the screen for a few years, Jean captivated moviegoers with a brilliant performance as the mother in All the Way Home (1963), a literate, tasteful adaptation of James Agee's "A Death in the Family". However, after that, she found quality projects somewhat harder to come by, and took work in Life at the Top (1965), Mister Buddwing (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), Rough Night in Jericho (1967), The Happy Ending (1969) (a Richard Brooks film for which she was again Oscar-nominated, this time as Best Actress).

Jean continued making films well into the 1970s. In the 1980s, she appeared mainly in television miniseries, such as North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985) and The Thorn Birds (1983). She made a comeback to films in 1995 in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) co-starring Winona Ryder and Anne Bancroft, and most recently voiced the elderly Sophie in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004). She now resided in Santa Monica, California, with her dog, Mr. Gates, and her two cats, Adisson and Megan. Jean Simmons died of lung cancer on January 22, 2010, nine days before her 81st birthday.

Audrey Hepburn was born as Audrey Kathleen Ruston on May 4, 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman. Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was a businessman and Honorary British Consul in the Dutch East Indies; he was born in Úzice, Bohemia, of English, Austrian and Czech-Jewish descent.

After her parents' divorce, Audrey went to London with her mother where she went to a private girls school. Later, when her mother moved back to the Netherlands, she attended private schools as well. While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town. It was here that she fell on hard times during the Nazi occupation. Audrey suffered from depression and malnutrition.

After the liberation, she went to a ballet school in London on a scholarship and later began a modeling career. As a model, she was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life--until the film producers came calling. In 1948, after being spotted modeling by a producer, she was signed to a bit part in the European film Nederlands in zeven lessen (1948). Later, she had a speaking role in the 1951 film, Young Wives' Tale (1951) as Eve Lester. The part still wasn't much, so she headed to America to try her luck there. Audrey gained immediate prominence in the US with her role in Roman Holiday (1953). This film turned out to be a smashing success, and she won an Oscar as Best Actress.

On September 25, 1954, she married actor Mel Ferrer. She also starred in Sabrina (1954), for which she received another Academy Award nomination. She starred in the films Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). She received yet another Academy Award nomination for her role in The Nun's Story (1959). On July 17, 1960, she gave birth to her first son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer.

Audrey reached the pinnacle of her career when she played Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), for which she received another Oscar nomination. She scored commercial success again playing Regina Lampert in the espionage caper Charade (1963). One of Audrey's most radiant roles was in the fine production of My Fair Lady (1964). After a couple of other movies, most notably Two for the Road (1967), she hit pay dirt and another nomination in Wait Until Dark (1967).

In 1967, Audrey decided to retire from acting while she was on top. She divorced from Mel Ferrer in 1968. On January 19, 1969, she married Dr. Andrea Dotti. On February 8, 1970, she gave birth to her second son, Luca Dotti in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland. From time to time, she would appear on the silver screen.

In 1988, she became a special ambassador to the United Nations UNICEF fund helping children in Latin America and Africa, a position she retained until 1993. She was named to People's magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. Her last film was Always (1989).

Audrey Hepburn died, aged 63, on January 20, 1993 in Tolochnaz, Vaud, Switzerland, from appendicular cancer. She had made a total of 31 high quality movies. Her elegance and style will always be remembered in film history as evidenced by her being named in Empire magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time".

Joan Taylor's mother, Amelia Berky, was a vaudeville singing-dancing star in the 1920s. Her father was a prop man in Hollywood during that same period, but, after Joan's birth, the family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, where her father managed a movie theater. She developed a love of movies from watching so many at her father's theater, and she graduated from the Chicago National Association of Dancing Masters. Heading to Hollywood in 1946, she enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse. Victor Jory arranged an interview for her with producer Nat Holt, and she made her film debut in the Randolph Scott western Fighting Man of the Plains (1949). She appeared in quite a few films over the next several years, many of them westerns. She also made many appearances on TV series, and had a recurring role in The Rifleman (1958), but it's for two sci-fi films that she is fondly remembered by 1950s movie audiences: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). After her two-year stint on "The Rifleman", however, she decided to retire from films, and did so in 1963.

The actress was born Marilyn Watts in Santa Monica, California, 17 years before she put her foot on the bottom step of the show biz ladder, dancing in the back row of the chorus in "Earl Carroll's Revue" at the famed showman's theater-restaurant in Hollywood. Modeling for photographers led to wider exposure and ultimately to TV roles and bit parts in low-budget movies. As a Universal-International contract player, she was in most every type of B picture that the studio made. She gave up acting in the early '60s to concentrate on marriage and motherhood during 17 tumultuous years as the wife of actor Richard Long. Since his 1974 death, she's played supporting parts in her friend Clint Eastwood's movies, just as he played a supporting role in one of hers (Tarantula (1955)).

Mamie Van Doren was born on 6 February 1931 in Rowena, South Dakota, USA. She is an actress, known for Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), Teacher's Pet (1958) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966). She has been married to Thomas Dixon since 26 June 1979. She was previously married to Ross McClintock, Lee Meyers, Ray Anthony and Jack Newman.

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.

Barbara Eden, born Barbara Jean Morehead in Tucson, Arizona, became one of America's most endearing and enduring actresses. A graduate of Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, California, Eden would go on to study at San Francisco's City College as well as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Elizabeth Holloway School of Theatre. While her aspirations as a singer motivated her during her early years for a career in music, it was her starring role in the NBC TV comedy series, I Dream of Jeannie (1965) where Barbara Eden immediately gained international acclaim.

Although most remembered for her role as "Jeannie", Barbara Eden has starred in more than 20 theatrical feature films and made-for-television films for at least four different movie studios: 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia Studios, and Universal Studios, most notably in the film Flaming Star (1960), when she acted as Elvis Presley's leading lady. Other films in which Barbara Eden had a leading role were Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962), 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) and The Brass Bottle (1964). The Brass Bottle comedy movie led to Sidney Sheldon's creation of I Dream of Jeannie (1965) comical TV series.

In television, Eden made her first featured appearance on Country Club Dance (1957), as the series was nearing cancellation (there were just two more episodes). Eden immediately landed a starring role in the television version of How to Marry a Millionaire (1957), where she portrayed the same character role originated by Marilyn Monroe. Another memorable appearance came on The Manicurist (1962), featuring her in the character role, special guest-star, as well as her occupation being titled.

In 1965, Barbara Eden was cast the leading role in Sidney Sheldon's NBC sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie (1965). It televised weekly, for five successful and humorous seasons with 139 episodes. After "Jeannie," Barbara Eden went on to star in many other comical and family productions including Harper Valley P.T.A. (1978) and Chattanooga Choo Choo (1984) among other numerous highly rated made-for-television movies well into the 1990s. She has also acted in multiple western series and thrillers.

Outside of her film and television works, Barbara Eden headlined major hotel resorts and casinos including Lake Tahoe, Atlantic City and Las Vegas. She also was the star attraction at the MGM Grand, Harrah's, Caesar's Palace and on concert stages and legitimate theaters across the country.

Utilizing her singing ability, Eden released an album titled "Miss Barbara Eden" in 1967, for record company, Dot Records. She has also been a musical guest star in a wide range of variety television shows. Eden's appearances included 21 Bob Hope special shows, along with The Carol Burnett Show (1967), The Jonathan Winters Show (1967), The Sonny and Cher Show (1976), The Jerry Lewis Show (1963), This Is Tom Jones (1969), Tony Orlando and Dawn (1974), and Donny and Marie (1975).

During the Persian Gulf War, she traveled with Bob Hope to the middle-east to perform for the combat troops and then continued on with Hope in a whirlwind eight-day, around-the-world USO tour entertaining servicemen during the Christmas season.

To celebrate the 2002 Yuletide season, she responded to an invitation from President George Bush; Barbara journeyed to Washington D.C. and sang "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" at the annual White House "Lighting of the National Christmas Tree" event where she also hosted the show and pageant with President and Mrs. Bush for an audience of 6,000 cheering fans on the Ellipse near the White House.

A multi-talent, Eden starred in the national touring musicals The Sound of Music (1965) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1998). In the latter production, she played Lorelei Lee, the character created on Broadway by Carol Channing and performed by Marilyn Monroe in the 20th Century Fox film version. Eden also toured vastly in various stage productions like Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), Annie Get Your Gun (1967), Wild Pacific (2009) and Nite Club Confidential (1996). In the play "Love Letters," Eden reunited with her I Dream of Jeannie (1965) co-star, Larry Hagman. The duo toured metropolitan and major cities, across the United States. Eden starred in Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple: Female Version", and "Social Security" (1985). She has also been seen in TV series like, All Star Blitz (1985), Entertainment Tonight (1981) and Larry King Live (1985).

In 2011, Crown Archetype, a division of Random House, published Barbara's memoir, "Jeannie Out of the Bottle," which debuted at number 14 on the New York Times Best Seller List and on Australia's Best Seller List, published there by Harper-Collins, Inc. The autobiography chronicle's Eden's colorful life and remarkable Hollywood career that spans more than 50 years.

One of Hollywood's busiest actresses, Barbara filmed a starring role in Always and Forever (2009), a movie filmed by and for the Hallmark Channel. The move was televised numerous times during the year it was filmed and released. On the road, she hosted productions of Ballets with a Twist (1996), the new groundbreaking show that stars rotating celebrity emcees and dancers from Dancing with the Stars (2010). Barbara Eden has appeared recently in a recurring role on Lifetime's Army Wives (2007) series, guest-starred on ABC's George Lopez (2002), and enacted a recurring role on Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996). During her long career, Barbara has starred in 25 feature films, five network TV series and 19 top-rated network made-for-television movies.

Barbara has been featured in TV commercials for Old Navy, AT&T, and she introduced the Lexus SUV, which was later named Car of the Year by Motor Trend Magazine.

People Magazine named Barbara "One of America's 200 Greatest Pop Icons of the 20th Century." She has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7003 Hollywood Boulevard near the front of the world famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre. She was named one of TV Guide's Most Popular Comedy Stars and has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Broadcasters Hall of Fame, The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the TV Land Television Network.

When there is time in her crowded schedule, Eden works actively on behalf of numerous charities including The Trail of Painted Ponies Breast Cancer Research, American Cancer Society, the Wellness Community, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the March of Dimes, the American Heart Association, Save the Children and Childhelp USA.

Barbara Eden resides with her architect/real estate developer husband Jon Eicholtz in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills.

It is perhaps ironic that the film for which this performer is best remembered was also her musical swansong and one of her very last motion picture appearances. That was, of course, South Pacific (1958), with Mitzi Gaynor famously cast as feisty Ensign Nellie Forbush, warbling "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair". She had not been first choice for the role: director Joshua Logan wanted Elizabeth Taylor while Richard Rodgers was fixated on Doris Day. Since neither was available, they had to settle on Mitzi. In retrospect, her performance (she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award) was perhaps the best thing about the movie. Hers was the only voice (other than that of Ray Walston) that was not dubbed in post- production. South Pacific was marred by Logan's lethargic direction and by garish hues, due to the use of colour filters in several lengthy sequences. The picture nonetheless became one of the highest grossing films of the 50s.

She was born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber of Hungarian aristocratic ancestry. Her father was violinist, cellist and music director Henry de Czanyi von Gerber, her mother Pauline was a dancer. Mitzi began performing in public from the age of four. Her family moved from Detroit to Hollywood when she was eleven. There, she was trained as a ballerina in the corps de ballet. Just three years later, she was on stage as a singer and dancer with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company in a production of Roberta. While playing the lead in Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta, Gaynor was discovered by a 20th Century Fox talent scout, auditioned and signed to a seven year contract. She made her screen debut as a dancer in My Blue Heaven (1950), singing 'Live Hard, Work Hard, Love Hard'. The studio kept her initials but changed her name from Gerber to Gaynor, likely in deference to Janet Gaynor, one of their major box-office stars of the 20s and 30s.

Aged 19, vivacious, blonde, slightly snub-nosed and undeniably cute, Mitzi began her career as a lead performer in musicals, acting alongside some of the genre's most prominent names. Now a headliner in her own right, she portrayed 19th century entertainer Lotta Crabtree in the biopic Golden Girl (1951), a South Sea Islander in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1952) and the 'Queen of Vaudeville', Eva Tanguay, in The I Don't Care Girl (1953). All were minor box-office hits. Arguably her best role was that of Emily Ann Stackerlee in Damon Runyon's Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), with Gaynor at her exuberant best, dancing and singing "Bye Low". Her final picture -- before Fox dropped her contract-- was the star-studded extravaganza There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). In this, she played second fiddle to Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor and Dan Dailey.

That same year (1954) and not long away from the limelight, Gaynor married the very savvy talent agent and public relations executive Jack Bean. Bean soon quit his job with MCA to set up his own agency, Bean & Rose, which was largely about shepherding and rejuvenating Gaynor's career. She signed a new contract with Paramount in 1955 which resulted in a trio of films, the best of which was The Joker Is Wild (1957), starring Frank Sinatra as vaudevillian and night club entertainer Joe E. Lewis and Gaynor as his chorus girl wife. Next up, she played another showgirl in Les Girls (1957). This stodgy and confusingly scripted enterprise was chiefly notable for being Gene Kelly 's final appearance in a major musical and for the show-stopping number "Why Am I So Gone About That Gal?" performed by Kelly and Gaynor (both dressed as bikers, effectively lampooning Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953)).

After South Pacific (a part which her husband managed to secure for her) Gaynor made only a handful of films. Her last effort was For Love or Money (1963), a matrimonial comedy starring Kirk Douglas. In 1963, Gaynor retired from films, explaining that she felt 'kind of ordinary' as an actress. She considered her talents to be better suited to the stage, to live performances. Consequently, the latter part of her career was spent on the nightclub circuit (especially in Las Vegas) and in television specials. In the 90s, Gaynor's career found a new lease of life as a featured columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, chronicling the golden years.

Gaynor's many accolades have included a Golden Laurel (1958). She received a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard in 1960, and, in 2017, she was inducted into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame. Jack Bean, her husband of 52 years died of pneumonia at the couple's Beverly Hills home on December 4 2006.

Anne Bancroft was born on September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, NY, the middle daughter of Michael Italiano (1905-2001), a dress pattern maker, and Mildred DiNapoli (1907-2010), a telephone operator. She made her cinema debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) in 1952, and over the next five years appeared in a lot of undistinguished movies such as Gorilla at Large (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), New York Confidential (1955), Nightfall (1956) and The Girl in Black Stockings (1957). By 1957 she grew dissatisfied with the scripts she was getting, left the film business and spent the next five years doing plays on Broadway. She returned to screens in 1962 with her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won an Oscar. Bancroft went on to give acclaimed performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Slender Thread (1965), Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and other movies, but her most famous role would be as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967). Her status as the "older woman" in the film is iconic, although in real life she was only eight years older than Katharine Ross and just six years older than Dustin Hoffman. Bancroft would later express her frustration over the fact that the film overshadowed her other work. Selective for much of her intermittent career, she appeared onscreen more frequently in the '90s and early '00s, playing a range of characters in such films as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000) and Up at the Villa (2000). She also started to make some TV films, including Deep in My Heart (1999) for which she won an Emmy. Sadly, on June 6, 2005, Bancroft passed away at the age of 73 from uterine cancer. Her death surprised many, as she had not disclosed her illness to the public. Among her survivors was her husband of 41 years, Mel Brooks, and their son Max Brooks, who was born in 1972. Her final film, the animated feature Delgo (2008), was released posthumously in 2008 and dedicated to her memory.

Angie Dickinson was born in Kulm, North Dakota, in 1931, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L. H. Brown. Mr. Brown was the publisher of The Kulm Messenger. The family left North Dakota in 1942 when Angie was 11 years old, moving to Burbank, California. In December of 1946, when she was a senior at Bellamarine Jefferson High School in Burbank, she won the Sixth Annual Bill of Rights Contest. Two years later her sister Janet, did likewise. Being the daughter of a printer, Angie at first had visions of becoming a writer, but gave this up after winning her first beauty contest. After finishing college she worked as a secretary in a Burbank airplane parts factory for 3-1/2 years. In 1953 she entered the local Miss America contest one day before the deadline and took second place. In August of the same year she was one of five winners in a beauty contest sponsored by NBC and appeared in several TV variety shows. She got her first bit part in a Warner Brothers movie in 1954 and gained television fame in the TV series The Millionaire (1955) and got her first good film role opposite John Wayne and Dean Martin in Rio Bravo (1959). Her success then climbed until she became one of the nation's top movie stars.

Monica Vitti was born on 3 November 1931 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She was an actress and writer, known for L'Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964) and La Notte (1961). She was married to Roberto Russo. She died on 2 February 2022 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

This cosmopolitan actress is best remembered for appearing as different characters in two early James Bond films. Multilingual Nadezda "Nadja" Poderegin hailed from Kraljevo, a town in present day Serbia (then Yugoslavia). Her father, a Ukrainian-born scientist and lecturer, was killed during World War II when she was just nine years old. With her mother and sister Nadja subsequently resettled in Yugoslavia's capital. She abandoned plans for a career in journalism after commencing studies at Belgrade's Academy of Dramatic Arts (eventually graduating with a B.A.) and was soon featured in a few locally made films.

Her first major role (after shortening her surname to "Regin") was in Das Haus an der Küste (1954), a German-Yugoslav co-production, filmed around picturesque Dubrovnik. It gained some international exposure via distribution through the Rank Organisation and this led to more substantial film offers in Germany. For much of the 50s, Nadja appeared near the top of the bill in a string of romantic dramas and comedies opposite well-seasoned German and Austrian stars like Curd Jürgens, Rudolf Prack, Theo Lingen and Peter Pasetti.

Following her marriage to a Polish war veteran, Nadja moved to Britain. Having a natural aptitude for picking up languages quickly, she added English to her repertoire within a few months, though (by her own admission) her accent tended to restrict her "to either sexy parts or as a spy". Her own favourite film role was the (typically British) wartime comedy Don't Panic Chaps (1959) (starring Dennis Price and George Cole) in which she provided the romantic spark.

She later had guest spots opposite Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man (1960) and Roger Moore in The Saint (1962) before landing a small role as the girlfriend of MI 6 station chief Kerim Be (Pedro Armendáriz) in From Russia with Love (1963). Arguably, Nadja's best known role was as the double-crossing belly-dancer Bonita in Goldfinger (1964). A memorable scene has James Bond (played by Sean Connery) preempting an assailant's attack by catching his reflection in one of Bonita's eyes (photographed in close-up), then spinning her around and using her as a shield.

She swapped the acting profession in the 1970s to work behind the cameras as a script reader/consultant for Rank and Hammer studios. In tandem with her sister, she set up a publishing company (Honeyglen Publishing Ltd) in 1980 and latterly published her own e-book novel "The Victims and the Fools" under the name Nadja Poderegin.

Rita Moreno is one of the very few performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, thus becoming an EGOT. She was born Rosita Dolores Alverío in the hospital in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931 (but raised in nearby, smaller Juncos, which had no hospital), to seamstress Rosa María (Marcano) and farmer Francisco José "Paco" Alverío. Her mother moved to New York City in 1937, taking Rita with her while leaving her reportedly unfaithful husband and Rita's younger brother behind. Rita's professional career began before she reached adolescence.

From the age of nine, she performed as a professional dancer in New York night clubs. At age 11, she landed her first movie experience, dubbing Spanish-language versions of US films. Less than a month before her 14th birthday on November 22, 1945, she made her Broadway debut in the play "Skydrift" at the Belasco Theatre, costarring with Arthur Keegan and a young Eli Wallach. Although she would not appear again on Broadway for almost two decades, Rita Moreno, as she was billed in the play, had arrived professionally. In 1950, she was signed by MGM, but the studio dropped her option after just one year.

The cover of the March 1, 1954, edition of "Life Magazine" featured a three-quarters, over-the-left-shoulder profile of the young Puerto Rican actress/entertainer with the provocative title "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence". It was sexpot time, a stereotype that would plague her throughout the decade. If not cast as a Hispanic pepper pot, she could rely on being cast as another "exotic", such as her appearance on Father Knows Best (1954) as an exchange student from India. Because of a dearth of decent material, Moreno had to play roles in movies that she considered degrading. Among the better pictures she earned featured roles in were the classic Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The King and I (1956).

Director Robert Wise, who was chosen to co-direct West Side Story (1961) (the film version of the smash Broadway musical, a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" with the warring Venetian clans the Montagues and Capulets re-envisioned as Irish/Polish and Puerto Rican adolescent street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks), cast Moreno as "Anita", the Puerto Rican girlfriend of Sharks' leader Bernardo, whose sister Maria is the piece's Juliet.

However, despite her talent, roles commensurate with that talent were not forthcoming in the 1960s. The following decade would prove kinder, possibly because the beautiful Moreno had aged gracefully and could now be seen by filmmakers, TV producers and casting directors as something other than the spitfire/sexpot that Hispanic women were supposed to conform to. Ironically, it was in two vastly diverging roles--that of a $100 hooker in director Mike Nichols' brilliant realization of Jules Feiffer's acerbic look at male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge (1971), and Milly the Helper in the children's TV show The Electric Company (1971)--that signaled a career renaissance.

Moreno won a 1972 Grammy Award for her contribution to "The Electric Company"'s soundtrack album, following it up three years later with a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for "The Ritz" (a role she would reprise in the film version, The Ritz (1976)). She then won Emmy Awards for The Muppet Show (1976) and The Rockford Files (1974).

She has continued to work steadily on screen (both large and small) and on stage, solidifying her reputation as a national treasure, a status that was officially ratified with the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in June 2004.

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked with ever after.

Taylor was born on February 27, 1932 in London, England. Although she was born an English subject, her parents, Sara Taylor (née Sara Viola Warmbrodt) and Francis Taylor, were Americans, art dealers from St. Louis, Missouri. Her father had moved to London to set up a gallery prior to Elizabeth's birth. Her mother had been an actress on the stage, but gave up that vocation when she married. Elizabeth lived in London until the age of seven, when the family left for the US when the clouds of war began brewing in Europe in 1939. They sailed without her father, who stayed behind to wrap up the loose ends of the art business.

The family relocated to Los Angeles, where Mrs. Taylor's own family had moved. Mr. Taylor followed not long afterward. A family friend noticed the strikingly beautiful little Elizabeth and suggested that she be taken for a screen test. Her test impressed executives at Universal Pictures enough to sign her to a contract. Her first foray onto the screen was in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), released when she was ten. Universal dropped her contract after that one film, but Elizabeth was soon picked up by MGM.

The first production she made with that studio was Lassie Come Home (1943), and on the strength of that one film, MGM signed her for a full year. She had minuscule parts in her next two films, The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) and Jane Eyre (1943) (the former made while she was on loan to 20th Century-Fox). Then came the picture that made Elizabeth a star: MGM's National Velvet (1944). She played Velvet Brown opposite Mickey Rooney. The film was a smash hit, grossing over $4 million. Elizabeth now had a long-term contract with MGM and was its top child star. She made no films in 1945, but returned in 1946 in Courage of Lassie (1946), another success. In 1947, when she was 15, she starred in Life with Father (1947) with such heavyweights as William Powell, Irene Dunne and Zasu Pitts, which was one of the biggest box office hits of the year. She also co-starred in the ensemble film Little Women (1949), which was also a box office huge success.

Throughout the 1950s, Elizabeth appeared in film after film with mostly good results, starting with her role in the George Stevens film A Place in the Sun (1951), co-starring her good friend Montgomery Clift. The following year, she co-starred in Ivanhoe (1952), one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Her busiest year was 1954. She had a supporting role in the box office flop Beau Brummell (1954), but later that year starred in the hits The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) and Elephant Walk (1954). She was 22 now, and even at that young age was considered one of the world's great beauties. In 1955 she appeared in the hit Giant (1956) with James Dean.

Sadly, Dean never saw the release of the film, as he died in a car accident in 1955. The next year saw Elizabeth co-star with Montgomery Clift in Raintree County (1957), an overblown epic made, partially, in Kentucky. Critics called it dry as dust. In addition, Clift was seriously injured during the film, with Taylor helping save his life. Despite the film's shortcomings and off-camera tragedy, Elizabeth was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Southern belle Susanna Drake. However, on Oscar night the honor went to Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve (1957).

In 1958 Elizabeth starred as Maggie Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The film received rave reviews from the critics and Elizabeth was nominated again for an Academy Award for best actress, but this time she lost to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! (1958). She was still a hot commodity in the film world, though. In 1959 she appeared in another mega-hit and received yet another Oscar nomination for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Once again, however, she lost out, this time to Simone Signoret for Room at the Top (1958). Her Oscar drought ended in 1960 when she brought home the coveted statue for her performance in BUtterfield 8 (1960) as Gloria Wandrous, a call girl who is involved with a married man. Some critics blasted the movie but they couldn't ignore her performance. There were no more films for Elizabeth for three years. She left MGM after her contract ran out, but would do projects for the studio later down the road. In 1963 she starred in Cleopatra (1963), which was one of the most expensive productions up to that time--as was her salary, a whopping $1,000,000. The film took years to complete, due in part to a serious illness during which she nearly died.

This was the film where she met her future and fifth husband, Richard Burton (the previous four were Conrad Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd--who died in a plane crash--and Eddie Fisher). Her next films, The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Sandpiper (1965), were lackluster at best. Elizabeth was to return to fine form, however, with the role of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Her performance as the loudmouthed, shrewish, unkempt, yet still alluring Martha was easily her finest to date. For this she would win her second Oscar and one that was more than well-deserved. The following year, she and Burton co-starred in The Taming of The Shrew (1967), again giving winning performances. However, her films afterward were box office failures, including Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Comedians (1967), Boom! (1968) (again co-starring with Burton), Secret Ceremony (1968), The Only Game in Town (1970), X, Y & Zee (1972), Hammersmith Is Out (1972) (with Burton again), Ash Wednesday (1973), Night Watch (1973), The Driver's Seat (1974), The Blue Bird (1976) (considered by many to be her worst), A Little Night Music (1977), and Winter Kills (1979) (a controversial film which was never given a full release and in which she only had a small role). She later appeared in some movies, both theatrical and made-for-television, and a number of television programs. In February 1997, Elizabeth entered the hospital for the removal of a brain tumor. The operation was successful. As for her private life, she divorced Burton in 1974, only to remarry him in 1975 and divorce him, permanently, in 1976. She had two more husbands, U.S. Senator John Warner and construction worker Larry Fortensky, whom she met in rehab.

In 1959, Taylor converted to Judaism, and continued to identify herself as Jewish throughout her life, being active in Jewish causes. Upon the death of her friend, actor Rock Hudson, in 1985, she began her crusade on behalf of AIDS sufferers. In the 1990s, she also developed a successful series of scents. In her later years, her acting career was relegated to the occasional TV-movie or TV guest appearance.

Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011 in Los Angeles, from congestive heart failure. Her final resting place is Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.

Anna Maria Pierangeli was born June 19, 1932, in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. Anna and her twin sister, Marisa Pavan, both had their eyes on becoming film stars, since that was one of the big Italian pastimes. Anna adopted her surname and split it in half, and it was as Pier Angeli that she would find fame. Her first role was an uncredited part in 1948's The Million Dollar Nickel (1952), an Italian production. Pier was 16 at the time and it was to be the first of many roles for this beautiful woman. The film was largely forgettable but it was a start. The following year she played in another Italian production, Tomorrow Is Too Late (1950). Again it was a very small role, and she was not seen on the screen again until 1951. Between 1949 and 1951 she appeared in stage productions and found work in menial jobs. When she did return it was in the film The Light Touch (1951) as Anna Vasarri. Later that year she won the title role in Teresa (1951). However, she again hit a drought with only one film in 1952 and two in 1953. The next year things began to pick up, however, with Hollywood beckoning. After the Italian Miss Nitouche (1954) she caught the eyes of Hollywood moguls, who cast her in Flame and the Flesh (1954) and The Silver Chalice (1954). Now she divided her time between Italy and the US making movies. She married Vic Damone in 1954, a union that lasted only four years and produced one son.

No film offers came in 1955, but in 1956 Pier landed the role of Norma Graziano (wife of fighter Rocky Graziano) in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) opposite Paul Newman. The film was well received at the box office and she had hopes that things were going to pick up again. She played Ynez in Port Afrique (1956) later that year and then another drought ensued. After The Vintage (1957), Merry Andrew (1958) and SOS Pacific (1959), she made three more films in 1960. Then once again 1961 saw no appearances. In 1962 Pier played Ildith in Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) and later that year played in a French production entitled White Slave Ship (1961). After the Italian production of Shadow of Evil (1964) she returned in the hit European-American co-production Battle of the Bulge (1965).

After a handful of films between 1966 and 1970, Pier realized her dreams of super-stardom were not to be. She had divorced her second husband (Armando Trovajoli) in 1969 and made her final appearance on the screen in 1971 in the low-budget sci-fi opus Octaman (1971). On September 10th of that year Pier was found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her Beverly Hills home. She was only 39 years old.

Kim Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 13, 1933 with the birth name of Marilyn Pauline Novak. She was the daughter of a former teacher turned transit clerk and his wife, also a former teacher. Throughout elementary and high school, Kim did not get along well with teachers. She even admitted that she didn't like being told what to do and when to do it.

Her first job, after high school, was modeling teen fashions for a local department store. Kim, later, won a scholarship in a modeling school and continued to model part-time. Kim later worked odd jobs as an elevator operator, sales clerk, and a dental assistant. The jobs never seemed to work out so she fell back on modeling, the one job she did well.

After a stint on the road as a spokesperson for an appliance company, Kim decided to go to Los Angeles and try her luck at modeling there. Ultimately, her modeling landed her an uncredited role in the RKO production of The French Line (1953). The role encompassed nothing more than being seen on a set of stairs.

Later a talent agent arranged for a screen test with Columbia Pictures and won a small six month contract. In truth, some of the studio hierarchy thought that Kim was Columbia's answer to Marilyn Monroe. Kim, who was still going by her own name of Marilyn, was originally going to be called "Kit Marlowe". She wanted to at least keep her family name of Novak, so the young actress and studio personnel settled on Kim Novak.

After taking some acting lessons, which the studio declined to pay for, Kim appeared in her first film opposite Fred MacMurray in Pushover (1954). Though her role as "Lona McLane" wasn't exactly a great one, it was her classic beauty that seemed to capture the eyes of the critics. Later that year, Kim appeared in the film, Phffft (1954) with Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday. Now more and more fans were eager to see this bright new star. These two films set the tone for her career with a lot of fan mail coming her way.

Her next film was as "Kay Greylek" in 5 Against the House (1955). The film was well-received, but it was her next one for that year that was her best to date. The film was Picnic (1955). Although Kim did a superb job of acting in the film as did her co-stars, the film did win two Oscars for editing and set decoration. Kim's next film was with United Artists on a loan out in the controversial Otto Preminger film The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). Her performance was flawless, but it was was Kim's beauty that carried the day. The film was a big hit.

In 1957, Kim played "Linda English" in the hit movie Pal Joey (1957) with Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth. The film did very well at the box office, but was condemned by the critics. Kim really didn't seem that interested in the role. She even said she couldn't stand people such as her character.

That same year, Novak risked her career when she started dating singer/actor Sammy Davis Jr.. The interracial affair alarmed studio executives, most notably Harry Cohn, and they ended their relationship in January of the following year. In 1958, Kim appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's, now classic, Vertigo (1958) with James Stewart. This film's plot was one that thoroughly entertained the theater patrons wherever it played. The film was one in which Stewart's character, a detective, is hired to tail a friend's wife (Kim) and witnesses her suicide. In the end, Stewart finds that he has been duped in an elaborate scheme.

Her next film was Bell Book and Candle (1958) which was only a modest success. By the early 1960s, Kim's star was beginning to fade, especially with the rise of new stars or stars that were remodeling their status within the film community. With a few more nondescript films between 1960 and 1964, she landed the role of "Mildred Rogers" in the remake of Of Human Bondage (1964). The film debuted to good reviews.

In the meantime, Kim broke off her engagement to director Richard Quine and embarked on a brief dalliance with basketball player Wilt Chamberlain. While filming The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), she had a romance with co-star Richard Johnson, whom she married, but the marriage failed the following year.

Kim stepped away from the cameras for a while, returning in 1968 to star in The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968). It was a resounding flop, perhaps the worst of her career. However, after that, Kim, basically, was able to pick what projects she wanted. After The Great Bank Robbery (1969) in 1969, Kim was away for another four years until she was seen with then-boyfriend Michael Brandon in a television movie called The Third Girl from the Left (1973), playing a veteran Las Vegas showgirl experiencing a midlife crisis.

In a personal development, Novak met equine veterinarian Robert Malloy in October 1974 and the couple married in 1976. Subsequent films were not the type to get the critics to sit up and take notice, but afforded her the opportunity to work with strong talent. She appeared to good effect in Satan's Triangle (1975), Just a Gigolo (1978), The Mirror Crack'd (1980) and Malibu (1983).

In 1986 and 1987, Kim played, of all people, "Kit Marlowe" in the TV series Falcon Crest (1981). In 1990, she starred alongside Ben Kingsley in The Children (1990), a fine independent film shot in Europe. It was not widely distributed, thus few got to see Novak giving one of her most powerful performances.

Her last film, on the silver screen, was Liebestraum (1991), in which she played a terminally ill woman with a past. The film was a major disappointment in every aspect. Kim clashed with director Mike Figgis over how to play her character. Consequently, the role was cut to shreds. Kim has ruled out any plans for a comeback and says she just isn't cut out for Hollywood.

Fortunately, she has found long-lasting happiness outside her career. Today she lives in Eagle Point, Oregon with her husband Bob, on a ranch where they raise horses and llamas. Kim is also an accomplished artist and has exhibited her painting in galleries around the country. She enjoys riding, canoeing and expressing herself through paint, poetry and photography.

One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, film actress Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of Vera J. (née Palmer; later Peers) and Herbert W. Palmer. Her parents were well-to-do; her father was a successful attorney in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where Jayne spent a portion of her childhood. Her parents were born with the same surname, and her ancestry was seven-eighths English and Cornish and one-eighth German. She was reportedly a talented pianist and played the violin when she was young.

Tragedy struck when Jayne was three: her father suddenly died of a heart attack. Her mother remarried three years later, moving Jayne to Dallas, Texas and buying a small house where the child had violin concerts in their driveway. Her IQ was reportedly 163, and she attended the University of Dallas and participated in little-theater productions. In 1949, at age 16, she married Paul Mansfield, who was five years her senior; in November 1950, 17-year-old Jayne gave birth to Jayne Marie Mansfield. The union ended in divorce, but she kept the surname Mansfield, considering it a good surname for an actress.

After some productions there and elsewhere, Jayne decided to go to Hollywood. Her first film was a bit role as a cigarette girl in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Although the roles in the beginning were not much, she was successful in gaining those roles because of her ample physical attributes which placed her in two other films that year, Hell on Frisco Bay (1955) and Illegal (1955). Her breakout role came the next year with a featured part in The Burglar (1957). By the time she portrayed Rita Marlowe in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and Playgirl After Dark (1960), Jayne was now known as the poor man's Marilyn Monroe. She did not get the plum roles that Marilyn got in her productions; her films were more of a showcase for her body. She did have a real talent for acting, but the movie executives insisted that she stay in her dumb-blonde stereotype roles. By the 1960s, her career options were shrinking to making somewhat embarrassing guest appearances on game shows, such as four appearances on the popular game show What's My Line? (1950) in 1956, 1957, 1964, and 1966. By 1962, she was dropped from 20th Century Fox and the rest of her career had smaller options like being in B-movies and low-budget movies or performing at food stores or small nightclubs.

While traveling from a nightclub in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was 30 miles from New Orleans where she was to be on television the following day when she was killed instantly on Highway 90 in Slidell, Louisiana in a car crash in the early hours of June 29, 1967, when the car in which she was riding slammed into the back of a semi-tractor trailer truck that had stopped due to a truck in front of the tractor trailer that was spraying for bugs. Her car went under the truck at nearly 80 miles per hour. Her boyfriend Samuel Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison were also killed. The damage to the car was so bad that the engine was twisted sideways. She was not, however, decapitated, as had long been misreported. She was 34 years old.

Mansfield's funeral was on July 3, 1967 and hundreds of people lined the main street of Pen Argyl for Mansfield's funeral, a small private ceremony at Fairview Cemetery in Plainfield (outside Pen Argyl), Pennsylvania (where her father was also buried), attended by her family. The only ex-husband to attend was Mickey Hargitay. Her final film, Single Room Furnished (1966), was released the following year. In 2000, Mansfield's 97 year old mother, Mrs. Vera Peers, was interred alongside Mansfield.

After Mansfield's death, her mother, as well as her ex-husband Mickey Hargitay, William Pigue (legal guardian for her daughter Jayne Marie), Charles Goldring (Mansfield's business manager), and Bernard B. Cohen and Jerome Webber (administrators of the estate) all filed unsuccessful suits to gain control of her estate, which was initially estimated at $600,000 ($3,712,000 in 2018 dollars), including the Pink Palace (estimated at $100,000 ($619,000 in 2018 dollars)), a sports car sold for $7,000 ($43,000 in 2018 dollars), her jewelry, and Sam Brody's $185,000 estate left to her in his last will ($1,145,000 in 2018 dollars).

In 1971, Beverly Brody sued the Mansfield estate for $325,000 ($2,011,000 in 2018 dollars) worth of presents and jewelry given to Mansfield by Sam Brody; the suit was settled out of court.

In 1977, Mansfield's first four children (Jayne Marie, Mickey, Zoltan, and Mariska) went to court to discover that some $500,000 in debt which Mansfield had incurred ($3,093,000 in 2018 dollars) and litigation had left the estate insolvent.

Joan Collins is an English actress from Paddington, London. She is most famous for playing the role of vengeful schemer Alexis Carrington Colby in the soap opera "Dynasty" (1981-1989). In 1997, She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to drama. In 2015, She was promoted to the rank of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to charity.

She was the daughter of talent agent Joseph William Collins (1902-1988) and his wife, dance teacher Elsa Bessant, (1906-1962). Joseph was born in South Africa, and of Jewish descent. As a talent agent, his most famous clients were Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Tom Jones. Elsa was born in the United Kingdom to an Anglican family.

Collins was educated at Francis Holland School in London, an independent day school for girls. She made her theatrical debut c. 1942, as a child actress. She had a role in a performance of the play "A Doll's House" (1879) by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). In 1949, She started training as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. In 1950, she signed a contract with a British film studio, the Rank Organisation of businessman Joseph Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank (1888-1972).

Collins made her film debut in the short film "Facts and Fancies" (1951), and her feature film debut in "Lady Godiva Rides Again" (1951), where she played an unnamed Beauty Queen Contestant. She had supporting roles as the Greek maid Marina in "The Woman's Angle" (1952) and gangster's moll Lil Carter in "Judgment Deferred" (1952).

Collins had her big break when cast as juvenile delinquent Norma Hart in prison drama "I Believe in You" (1952). She was hailed as Britain's new "bad girl" and started being offered high-profile roles in British films. The next stage in her career started when cast as Princess Nellifer of Egypt in the historical epic "Land of the Pharaohs" (1955), an international production . While the film was not successful at the box office, it became a cult classic and Nellifer was one of her most recognizable roles. Studio executive Darryl Francis Zanuck (1902-1979) was sufficiently impressed to offer her a 7-year-long contract with American studio 20th Century Fox. She took the offer.

Collins' first American film was the historical drama "The Virgin Queen" (1955), where she shared the top-billing with established stars Bette Davis and Richard Todd. She then played the leading role of actress Evelyn Nesbit (1884/1885-1967) in the biographical film "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" (1955). The role was intended for established actress Marilyn Monroe, but she replaced Monroe based on a studio decision.

Collins was placed on loan to studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for her next role, that of gold digger Crystal in "The Opposite Sex" (1956). She received the top billing in the refugee-themed film "Sea Wife" (1956), and enjoyed box-office success with the interracial-love themed drama "Island in the Sun" (1957). In the drama film "The Wayward Bus" (1957), she received top-billing over her co-star Jayne Mansfield. Her next films included the spy thriller "Stopover Tokyo" (1957), the Western "The Bravados" (1958), the comedy "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" (1959), the caper film "Seven Thieves" (1960), and the biblical epic Esther and the King (1960).

By 1960, Collins was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest stars, but she demanded a release from her studio contract. She had campaigned for the title role in the upcoming production of "Cleopatra", but the studio chose to cast Elizabeth Taylor in the role. Collins felt slighted. As a freelance actress for most of the 1960s, she had few film roles. Among her most notable roles was playing the leading lady in "The Road to Hong Kong" (1962), the last film in the long-running "Road to ..." series. The male leads for the entire series were Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, but their usual leading lady Dorothy Lamour was considered too old for the role. Collins replaced Lamour.

Collins started appearing frequently on television guest star roles. Among her most notable television roles was the villainous Siren in "Batman", and pacifist spokeswoman Edith Keeler in "Star Trek: The Original Series". "Road to ..." played in only one episode of Star Trek, the time-travel episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" (1967). However the episode is regarded among the best episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise, with Collins considered one of the most memorable guest stars in the original series.

In 1970, Collins returned to her native United Kingdom. She started appearing frequently in British thriller and horror films of the decade. Among her films was revenge-themed drama "Revenge" (1971),science fiction film "Quest for Love" (1972), horror anthology "Tales from the Crypt" (1972), psychological horror "Fear in the Night" (1972), thriller "Dark Places", horror anthology "Tales That Witness Madness" (1973), and horror film "I Don't Want to Be Born" (1975).

Collins appeared in a few comedies in-between horror films, but none was particularly successful. She returned to the United States in order to play a role in the giant monster film "Empire of the Ants" (1977). She then returned to mostly appearing in thriller roles. She was catapulted back to stardom with the lead role of nymphomaniac Fontaine Khaled in the erotic drama "The Stud" (1978), an adaptation of a novel written by her younger sister Jackie Collins. The film was a surprise box office hit, earning 20 million dollars at the worldwide box office. "Road to ..." returned to the role of Fontaine in the sequel film ''The Bitch'' (1979), which was also a hit.

Collins found herself in high demand in both stage and film. But she gained more notoriety with the television role of Alexis Carington in "Dynasty". She started appearing in the role in the second season of the soap opera. Her performance is credited with the subsequent rise of the show's Nielsen's ratings. She became a household name, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983.

By 1985, "Dynasty" was the number-one show in the United States, beating out rival soap opera "Dallas". Collins was nominated six times for a Golden Globe Award for her role, winning once in 1983. She was also once nominated for an Emmy as Best Actress in a Drama Series. Collins was viewed as a sex symbol at the time, and in 1983 appeared in a 12-page photo layout for Playboy magazine. She was 50-years-old, unusually old for a Playboy model.

Collins appeared in a total of 195 episodes of "Dynasty". The series was canceled with the last episode of its 9th season, due to falling ratings. New ABC entertainment president Bob Iger (1951-) is credited with ending the series as soon as possible. The show had a cliffhanger ending, and several of its subplots were not resolved. Collins returned to the role of Alexis in the sequel mini-series "Dynasty: The Reunion" (1991). The miniseries only lasted for 2 episodes, but resolved several subplots and was a ratings hit.

Throughout the 1990s., Collins returned to guest star roles in television. She appeared in (among others) "Roseanne", "Egoli: Place of Gold", and "The Nanny", She had the recurring role of Christina Hobson in the short-lived soap opera "Pacific Palisades" (1997). She appeared in 7 of its 13 episodes. Her next notable soap opera role was that of so-called "rich bitch" Alexandra Spaulding in 2002 episodes of the long-running series "Guiding Light". Collins was the third actress to play this role. following Beverlee McKinsey and Marj Dusay.

In film, Collins played Pearl Slaghoople, Wilma Flintstone's mother, in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" (2000). It was the second live-action film based on the popular animated series "The Flintstones". In 2006, she toured the United Kingdom with "An Evening with Joan Collins", an one-woman show where she narrated the highs and lows of her career and life. She later toured the word with both this show and its sequel "Joan Collins Unscripted".

Collins had a notable guest star-role as Ruth Van Rydock in the television film "Agatha Christie's Marple: They Do It with Mirrors" (2009). The film was an adaptation of the 1952 novel by Agatha Christie, where Ruth is an old school friend of Jane Marple, who assigned Jane to investigate a home for juvenile delinquents.

Collins played herself in three episodes of the sitcom "Happily Divorced" (2011-2013). She had the recurring role of Crystal Hennessy-Vass in the sitcom "Benidorm" (2007-2018). She had another recurring role as Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Oxford in the soap opera "The Royals" (2015-2018).

Collins had two different roles in the horror anthology series "American Horror Story". She played wealthy grandmother Evie Gallant, and witch Bubbles McGee. She appeared in a total of four episodes in 2018.

By 2024, Collins was 90-years-old. She has never retired from acting, and she continues to appear in new roles.

Lori Nelson began her show biz career at the age of two-and-a-half, dancing in a show in her native Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was voted Santa Fe's most talented and beautiful child, and toured the state billed as "Santa Fe's Shirley Temple." At age four, Nelson moved to Hollywood with her parents and there was named Little Miss America. She worked as a fashion photographer's model, then (in the early 1940s) made her first bid for a movie career, testing (unsuccessfully) for a role in Warner Brothers' Kings Row (1942). There was a second false start a few years later, when Arthur M. Landau, a Hollywood producer and self-proclaimed "discoverer" of 1930s star Jean Harlow, expressed interest in casting teenage Nelson as Harlow in a movie bio. (The project never materialized.) Agent Milo O. Frank Jr. helped Nelson get into the movies, taking her to Universal to meet with casting people. Nelson trained with the studio dramatic coach, enacted a scene for the front office and ultimately was offered a seven-year contract, which was approved in court on her 17th birthday. After several years at Universal, she freelanced in movies and TV.

Julia Chalene Newmeyer was born on August 16, 1933, in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of three children. Her father, Don, was a one-time professional football player (LA Buccaneers, 1926), her mother, Helene Jesmer, was a star of the Follies of 1920 and later became a fashion designer under the professional name of Chalene. From an early age, Julie studied piano, dance, and classical ballet. She graduated from high school at the age of 15, and spent a year touring Europe with her mother and brother. She became prima ballerina for the Los Angeles Opera. She attended UCLA studying classical piano, philosophy, and French.

Newmar went to New York and tried out for Broadway musicals; in 1955, she made her Broadway debut as the ballerina in "Silk Stockings." She won acclaim for her role as Stupefyin' Jones in "Li'l Abner." Though audiences and critics alike were stupefied by her good looks, that was not the compliment Newmar wanted.

Newmar wanted to be known for her comedy, as she told the New York Times: "Tell me I'm funny, and it's the greatest compliment in the world." She had beauty, brains and a fantastic sense of humor. Promoting her various Broadway and off-Broadway show appearances, she often posed as a pin-up girl. Making the transition to television, Newmar appeared in Rod Serling's science-fiction series The Twilight Zone (1959), playing Miss Devlin (devil). As physical perfection, Julie was perfect to play Rhoda the Robot in My Living Doll (1964); the sitcom had an enthusiastic cult following. In 1966, urged on by her friends, she tried out for and was cast as Catwoman (a character she had never heard of) in the wildly popular television series Batman (1966) On account of a movie commitment, Newmar was unavailable to play Catwoman in the third season. (Her role was taken over by Eartha Kitt.)

Newmar was very busy in the 1960s and 1970s, making guest appearances in many television series and several television movies. She toured the country in stage productions of "Damn Yankees" and "Dames at Sea," among others. Becoming an entrepreneur, in 1977, Newmar turned up in People magazine wearing her new invention, Nudemar pantyhose. In the 1980s, she appeared in nine films while she was busy raising her son and working in the real-estate business. Newmar went back to UCLA to take a few real-estate courses. In 1991, she toured in a stage production of "The Women." Still very active, and very beautiful, she occasionally has appeared at fan conventions.

An acting career was always in the cards for Debra Paget (nee Debralee Griffin) and her siblings, coming from a show biz family and being the offspring of a "stage mother" anxious to get her kids into the movies. Paget's sister Teala Loring got her movie breaks in the 1940s, Lisa Gaye was a film and TV star in the 50s and 60s, and even brother Frank Griffin (acting as 'Ruell Shayne') landed some film jobs. Paget got a 20th Century-Fox contract at age 14 and her first role in the film noir Cry of the City (1948), her first of nearly 20 movies at the studio, mostly Westerns, swashbucklers and period musicals. Every inch (all five-foot-two of her) the Hollywood star, Paget retired from the screen after marrying a Chinese millionaire in 1962.

Sylva Koscina was born on 22 August 1933 in Zagreb, Croatia, Yugoslavia [now Zagreb, Croatia]. She was an actress, known for Hercules (1958), Hornets' Nest (1970) and Judex (1963). She was married to Raimondo Castelli. She died on 26 December 1994 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

Diane Cilento was an Australian actress from Queensland. She had partial Italian descent. She was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. For a theatrical role as Helen of Troy, Cilento was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

In 1932, Cilento was born in Brisbane, Queensland's state capital, to a relatively affluent family. Her maternal grandfather was the prominent merchant Charles Thomas McGlew (1870-1931), founder of the Liberty Motor Oil Company. Cliento's father was the medical practitioner Raphael "Ray" Cilento (1893-1985). He became famous as the director of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine, the director of the Commonwealth Government's Division of Tropical Hygiene, the Director-General of Health and Medical Services, the president of the Queensland's Medical Board, a high-ranking member of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the Director for Refugees and Displaced Persons, and director of disaster relief in Palestine. Raphael spend much of his career combating malaria and other tropical diseases.

Cilento's mother was the medical practitioner and medical journalist Phyllis Cilento (née McGlew, 1894 - 1987). Phylis became famous for advocating family planning, contraception, and the legalization of abortion in Australia. She wrote many books on health matters. Her medical research involved the use of Vitamin E in therapy, and as a method for preventing blood clots.

Cilento was the fifth of six children born to her famous parents. Four or her siblings followed their parents' footsteps as medical practitioners. Cilento's most famous sibling was the professional painter and print-maker Margaret Cilento (1923-2006). Margaret's works are preserved in both the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia.

Cilento was expelled from school while living in Australia. She then studied abroad, spending part of her school years in the U.S. state of New York. She decided to follow an acting career and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), located in London. She settled in England during the early 1950s.

Following her graduation from RADA, Cilento started a career as a theatrical actress. She was eventually offered a five-year contract by the British film producer Alexander Korda (1893-1956), and took the offer. She started out with several small roles in film. Her first leading role was playing British governess Ruth Elton in the romantic drama "Passage Home" (1955). In the film, Elton rejects a marriage proposal from Captain Lucky Ryland (played by Peter Finch), who she barely knows. Ryland then tries to rape her. She eventually marries another man, but she is secretly in love with her would-be rapist.

During the late 1950s, Cilento found steady work in British films. She played the only woman in a love triangle in the circus-themed "The Woman for Joe" (1955). She played the between maid in the castaway-themed "The Admirable Crichton" (1957), an adaptation of a play by J. M. Barrie (1860-1937). She played a free-thinker in the romantic comedy "The Truth About Women" (1957),concerning the memories of an old man. She also had a role in the aviation disaster film "Jet Storm" (1959), in which a man has placed a bomb on a passenger airplane.

In the early 1960s, Cilento continued to have notable roles. She played the female lead Denise Colby in the psychological thriller "The Full Treatment" (1960). In the film Denise's husband struggles with mood swings and the dark impulse to kill his wife, which makes him fear for his sanity. The film was one of the murder-themed films produced by Hammer Film Productions.

Cilento played the supporting role of a murder suspect's wife in the thriller film "The Naked Edge" (1961). The film is mainly remembered as the last film role for protagonist Gary Cooper (1901-1961), who died of prostate cancer following the film's completion. Cilento played the murder victim Liane Dane in the crime film "I Thank a Fool" (1962), where a female doctor is suspected of killing her own patient.

Cilento played the most acclaimed role of her career as Molly Seagrim in the comedy film "Tom Jones" (1963), the title character's first love. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but the award was instead won by rival actress Margaret Rutherford (1892 - 1972).

Cilento next played one of the murder suspects in the crime film "The Third Secret" (1964). In the film a well-known psychoanalyst is found murdered within his own residence, and a number of his patients are suspected of killing him. The main plot twist is that the victim was killed by someone much closer to him than his patients.

Cilento also played the prostitute Cyrenne in the comedy-drama film "Rattle of a Simple Man" (1964). The film concerns the efforts of 39-year-old virgin man to finally have sex. She next played the Italian noblewoman Contessina Antonia Romola de' Medici in the historical film "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (1965), a fictionalized version of the life of the artist Michelangelo (1475-1564). The film was critically acclaimed and nominated for awards, but under-performed at the box office. The struggling studio 20th Century Fox reportedly lost over 5 million dollars due to this box office flop.

Cilento had the supporting role of the caretaker Jessie in the revisionist Western film "Hombre" (1967). The film depicted the relations between the Apache and the white men in 19th-century Arizona. The film earned 12 million dollars in the worldwide box office, one of the greatest hits in its year for release.

Cilento's last film role in the 1960s was the photographer Reingard in the film "Negatives" (1968). The film concerned a couple who liked to role-play as part of their erotic fantasies, however they chose to play the role of famous murderer Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen (1862-1910) and his lover. This film is remembered as the directorial debut of Hungarian expatriate Peter Medak (1937-), who later had a lengthy career.

Cilento gained her first regular television role when cast as Lady Sarah Bellasize in the prison-themed television series "Rogues' Gallery" (1968-1969). It depicted life in the famous Newgate Prison (1188 -1902) of London during the 18th century. The series lasted 2 seasons and a total of 10 episodes.

Following a hiatus in her film career, Cilento returned in the dystopian science fiction film "Z.P.G." ( "Zero Population Growth", 1972). The film depicted a future Earth suffering from overpopulation and environmental destruction. The world's government has decreed than no new child must be born over the next 30 years, but a couple decide to illegally procreate. Cilento played the supporting role of Edna Borden. Borden offers to help conceal the new baby from the world, while she actually wants to keep it for herself. The film's was well received in its time, and lead actress Geraldine Chaplin (1944-) won an award for this role.

Cilento played the role of the famous German test pilot Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979) in the historical film "Hitler: The Last Ten Days". (1973) The film depicted the last few days in the life of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), based on the eye-witness account of Gerhard Boldt (1918 - 1981). The authenticity of the source book has since been questioned.

Cilento had a supporting role in the classic horror film "The Wicker Man" (1973), concerning a neo-pagan cult which practices Celtic paganism. The film was based on a novel by David Pinner (1940-). The film won the 1978 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, and has often been listed among the best British films. It was one of the most acclaimed films of Cilento's career.

The lesser known film "The Tiger Lily" (1975) included Cilento's last film role in the 1970s. She gained another regular role in the television series "Tycoon" (1978), which only lasted a single season and a total of 13 episodes.

Her film career was in decline during the 1980s, and Cilento chose to return to her native Queensland. She settled in the small town of Mossman, named after the Mossman River which flows though it. She built the outdoor theater Karnak in the local rain-forest, which she operated for the rest of her life. She used the theater as a venue for experimental drama.

In 2001, Cilento was awarded with Australian's Centenary Medal for her services to theater. In 2007, Cilento published her autobiography "My Nine Lives". In her last years she was suffering from cancer. In 2011, she died due to this disease while hospitalized in the Cairns Base Hospital. The hospital was the largest major hospital in Far North Queensland. Cilento was 79-years-old at the time of her death.

Cilento was survived by her daughter Giovanna Volpe and her son Jason Connery (1963-), her only heirs. A collection of items from her personal estate was donated by her heirs to the Queensland University of Technology. The collection reportedly included "hundreds of books, memorabilia, posters, furniture". Also included were original scripts which Cilento had inherited from her last husband, the playwright Anthony Shaffer. Original scripts by both Cilento and Shaffer have been digitized, and made available to scholars through the University's digital collections.

Born in Königsberg in 1935, Renate Ewert and her family had to leave their home and relocate to Hamburg during WWII. As she was determined to become an actress, she applied for the "Hamburger Kammerspiele" but was rejected. By doing synchronising jobs for foreign movies she finally got her first role in the third part of 08/15 - In der Heimat (1955). After that one, she appeared in a number of movies as the seductive, mysterious girl but never got the dramatic parts she was eager to play.

She had affairs with some famous actors of the time but these didn't help her career. At the middle of the 60s she didn't get many offers anymore and turned to tablets and alcohol. At the 10th of December of 1966, she was found dead by a friend, actress Susanne Cramer, who wanted to visit her in her apartment: she had died three weeks previously, probably by starvation.

Her parents couldn't deal with Renate Ewert's untimely death: They poisoned themselves not long after their daughter died.

Born in New York City, Tina was still in her teens when she burst upon the national scene by starring on Broadway in the critically acclaimed box-office success "Li'l Abner," based on the famous comic strip character created by Al Capp. Stellar reviews caught the attention of Hollywood and Tina signed up for her first feature film, God's Little Acre (1958), which was an entry in the Venice Film Festival. It was at this point in her career that she began studying with Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio in New York because she believed it was "time to develop and deepen my knowledge of the craft . . . Lee Strasberg," says Tina, "had the most dynamic effect on me. He influenced my life as no other man ever has."

After several more films, Tina returned to Broadway to star with Carol Burnett in "Fade in, Fade Out." She continued her work in Hollywood, starring in the CBS sitcom Gilligan's Island (1964) as Ginger Grant. Moving among Broadway, television and motion pictures, she next starred in The Happy Ending (1969), directed by Richard Brooks, The Stepford Wives (1975) with Katherine Ross and Dog Day (1984), with Lee Marvin and French actress Miou-Miou. Tina was cast as a regular on the first season of Dallas (1978) and has profuse credits in made-for-TV films for ABC and NBC, including Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979), The Day the Women Got Even (1980), Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976) and the famed ABC movie Nightmare in Badham County (1976).

In 1991 Tina appeared in Johnny Suede (1991), in which she co-starred with Brad Pitt. The film marked the debut of director Tom DiCillo, and won the 1992 Gold Leopard Award for Best Picture at the 44th International Film Festival at Lorcano, Switzerland. Other film and television work followed, including Stephan Elliott Welcome to Woop Woop (1997) and Growing Down in Brooklyn (2000), and she guest-starred in the syndicated television series L.A. Heat (1996).

In 2004 she received the coveted TVLand Pop Culture Icon Award in Los Angeles, which was aired nationally. She has made numerous television appearances, from The Rosie O'Donnell Show (1996) to Entertainment Tonight (1981) and Access Hollywood (1996).

A unique opportunity pursued Tina in 2005 with IGT (International Game Technology) in conjunction with Warner Bros. Consumer Products, when she inked a six-figure deal in exchange for 80 lines of voice-over work for a highly publicized gaming machine, a MegaJackpots product with the chance to win $1 million. The slot machines appeared in casinos from coast-to-coast as well as internationally.

Tina is an active member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio. As a literacy and academic advocate, she became a volunteer teacher at Learning Leaders, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing tutoring to New York City school children. It has been her passion to help young students gain not only literary skills, but also confidence, self-determination and proof of their own potential. Besides continuing her volunteer work in literacy, she has written several books. Her first book, a personal memoir on her first eight years entitled "Sunday," was published in 1998. She followed Sunday, with a children's book, "When I Grow Up," published in 2007. "Teaching children the skill of reading and a love for the written word is important because this will remain with them throughout their lives. If we can reach children at an early age, I believe it will make a difference. This thought brings me tremendous joy." Says Tina. She embarked on a book tour that included New York City and then continued to New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, Philadelphia and the Festival of Books at UCLA. Her third book, "What Does a Bee Do?" was published in 2009 (available only at Amazon.com) and was inspired by The Colony Collapse Disorder, otherwise known as Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome. The book continues to be an educational tool for children, as well as adults and was recently approved by Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City Public Schools, and is tentatively awaiting on the E-Catalog for principals in the fall of 2010. An animated version of "What Does a Bee Do?" is in development.

Besides being an accomplished actress and author, she recorded an album, "It's Time for Tina," a sultry warm and breathy collection of standards. The enchanting album features music from saxophone legend Coleman Hawkins and lyrics and music by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Jule Styne and Cole Porter. She also made her debut as a visual artist when she exhibited her paintings at the Ambassador Galleries, and later with newer works at the notable Gallery Stendhal in Soho. Most recently she exhibited her original paintings at the Patterson Museum of Art. Tina Louise continues to live in New York City.

Named after child star Shirley Temple, Shirley Jones started singing at the age of six. She started formal training at the age of 12 and would dream of singing with her idol, Gordon MacRae. Upon graduating from high school, Shirley went to New York to audition for the casting director of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Taken by Shirley's beautifully trained voice, Shirley was signed as a nurse in the Broadway production of "South Pacific". Within a year, she would be in Hollywood to appear in her first film Oklahoma! (1955) as Laurey, the farm girl in love with cowboy Gordon MacRae. Oklahoma! (1955) would be filmed in CinemaScope and Todd-AO wide-screen and would take a year to shoot. After that, Shirley returned to Broadway for the stage production of "Oklahoma!" before returning to Hollywood for Carousel (1956). But by this time, musicals were a dying art and she would have a few lean years. She would work on television in programs like Playhouse 90 (1956). With a screen image comparable to peaches-n-cream, Shirley wanted a darker role to change her image. In 1960, she would be cast as the vengeful prostitute in the Richard Brooks dramatic film Elmer Gantry (1960). With a brilliant performance against an equally brilliant Burt Lancaster, Shirley would win the Oscar for Supporting Actress. But the public wanted the good Shirley so she was cast as "Marion", the librarian, in the successful musical The Music Man (1962). Robert Preston had played the role on Broadway and his performance along with Shirley was magic. Shirley would again work with little Ron Howard in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963). But the movies changed in the 60's and Shirley's image did not fit so she would see her movie career stop in 1965. There were always nightclubs, but Shirley would be remembered by another generation as "Shirley Partridge" in the television series The Partridge Family (1970). While the success of the show would do more for her stepson, teen idol David Cassidy, it would keep her name and face in the public view for the four years that the series ran. The show still plays in reruns. After the show ended, Shirley would spend the rest of the 70's in the land of television movies. The television movie The Lives of Jenny Dolan (1975) would be made as a pilot for a series that was not picked up. In 1979, Shirley appeared in a comedy show called Shirley (1979), but the show lasted only one season. Shirley would appear infrequently in the 80's and in video's extolling fitness and beauty at the end of the decade.

Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister Maria Scicolone). Growing up in the slums of Pozzuoli during the second World War without any support from her father, she experienced great sadness in her childhood. Her life took an unexpected turn for the best when, at age 14, she entered into a beauty contest and placed as one of the finalists. It was here that Sophia caught the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior, whom she later married. Perhaps he was the father figure she never experienced as a child. Under his guidance, Sophia was put under contract and appeared as an extra in ten films beginning with Le sei mogli di Barbablù (1950), before working her way up to supporting roles. In these early films, she was credited as "Sofia Lazzaro" because people joked her beauty could raise Lazzarus from the dead.

By her late teens, Sophia was playing lead roles in many Italian features such as La favorita (1952) and Aida (1953). In 1957, she embarked on a successful acting career in the United States, starring in Boy on a Dolphin (1957), Legend of the Lost (1957), and The Pride and the Passion (1957) that year. She had a short-lived but much-publicized fling with co-star Cary Grant, who was nearly 31 years her senior. She was only 22 while he was 53, and she rejected a marriage proposal from him. They were paired together a second time in the family-friendly romantic comedy Houseboat (1958). While under contract to Paramount, Sophia starred in Desire Under the Elms (1958), The Key (1958), The Black Orchid (1958), It Started in Naples (1960), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), A Breath of Scandal (1960), and The Millionairess (1960) before returning to Italy to star in Two Women (1960). The film was a period piece about a woman living in war-torn Italy who is raped while trying to protect her young daughter. Originally cast as the more glamorous child, Sophia fought against type and was re-cast as the mother, displaying a lack of vanity and proving herself as a genuine actress. This performance received international acclaim and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Sophia remained a bona fide international movie star throughout the sixties and seventies, making films on both sides of the Atlantic, and starring opposite such leading men as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston. Her English-language films included El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arabesque (1966), Man of La Mancha (1972), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). She gained wider respect with her Italian films, especially Marriage Italian Style (1964) and A Special Day (1977), both of which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni. During these years she received a second Oscar nomination and won five Golden Globe Awards.

From the eighties onward, Sophia's appearances on the big screen came few and far between. She preferred to spend the majority of her time raising sons Carlo Ponti Jr. (b. 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (b. 1973). Her only acting credits during the decade were five television films, beginning with Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), a biopic in which she portrayed herself and her mother. She ventured into other areas of business and became the first actress to launch her own fragrance and design of eyewear. In 1982 she voluntarily spent nineteen days in jail for tax evasion.

In 1991 Sophia received an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work, and was declared "one of world cinema's greatest treasures." That same year, she experienced a terrible loss when her mother died of cancer. Her return to mainstream films in Ready to Wear (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. She followed this up with her biggest U.S. hit in years, the comedy Grumpier Old Men (1995), in which she played a sexy divorcée who seduces Walter Matthau. Over the next decade Sophia had plum roles in a few independent films like Soleil (1997), Between Strangers (2002) (directed by Edoardo), and Lives of the Saints (2004). Still beautiful at 72, she posed scantily-clad for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar. Sadly, that same year she mourned the death of her 94-year-old spouse, Carlo Ponti. In 2009, after far too much time away from film, she appeared in the musical Nine (2009) opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. These days Sophia is based in Switzerland but frequently travels to the states to spend time with her sons and their families (Eduardo is married to actress Sasha Alexander). Sophia Loren remains one of the most beloved and recognizable figures in the international film world.

Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance, and she proved to be very adept at it. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career, and found herself in the French magazine "Elle". Her incredible beauty readily apparent, Brigitte next tried films. In 1952, she appeared on screen for the first time as Javotte Lemoine in Crazy for Love (1952). Two more films followed and it was also the same year she married Roger Vadim (the union lasted 3½ years). Capitalizing on her success in French films, Brigitte made her first American production in Act of Love (1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France. Brigitte's explosive sexuality took the United States by storm, and the effect she had on millions of American men who had not seen a woman like her in a long, long time--if ever--was electric. Rise to the phrase "sex kitten" and fascination of her in the United States consisted of magazines photographs and dubbed over French films--good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences--mainly men--into theaters like lemmings. In 1965, she appeared as herself in the American-made Dear Brigitte (1965) with James Stewart (she only appeared in one scene). Just before she turned 40, Brigitte retired from movies after filming The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot (1973). She prefers life outside of stardom. While it enabled her to become internationally famous, it also carried with it annoyances. It was not anything for her to have "fans" enter her house or wander around the grounds of her home in the hopes of getting a glimpse of her or to take something that belonged to her. Paparazzi constantly hounded her with their cameras. She has been so soft-hearted that some people even have taken advantage of her generosity. After her life in the spotlight, Brigitte went on to become a leading spokesperson for animal rights and started the "Foundation Brigitte Bardot" dedicated solely to that cause. Her work in that realm is, perhaps, far greater than any film she could have made. Brigitte has been married to Bernard d'Ormale since 1992 and they reside in St. Tropez with their nearly 50 pets.

She started as a model, and in 1955 became an actress. She acted under her birth name, Marjorie Hellen, until 1959. Afterwards she was known as Leslie Parrish. She appeared in more than 100 TV shows. She is known as one of the first women producers. She's always had a passion for music. She was involved in social causes such as the Vietnam war. She met the airplane pilot/writer Richard D. Bach during the making of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973), and they married in 1981. They divorced in 1999.

Mylène Demongeot, one of the blond sex symbols of French cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, managed to overcome typecasting and survived a long hiatus before a stellar comeback in her 70s. She appeared in more than 70 films, including such classics as the Fantomas trilogy.

She was born Marie-Helene Demongeot on September 29, 1935, in Nice, France, into a family of actors. Her parents met in Shanghai, China, and moved to Nice, where she grew up. Her mother, Klaudia Trubnikova, was a Russian-Ukrainian émigré from Kharkiv, who escaped from the horrors of the Russian Civil War. Her father, Alfred Demongeot, was of French-Italian heritage. The family was bilingual and young Mylène was able to speak Russian and French, but eventually switched to French.

As a young girl she was an outcast: she suffered from ruthless kids making vicious comments about her eyes (she was cross-eyed until she had surgery in her teens). She was fond of music and movies, a perfect escape from the horrors of WWII that devastated Europe during her childhood. At the age of 13, she went to Paris and continued her education. She studied piano under the tutelage of Marguerite Long and Yves Nat. She then studied dramatic art with Maria Ventura at Le Cours Simon in Paris. At 15 she became a model in the atelier of Pierre Cardin.

At 17, Mylène made her film debut in the supporting role of Nicole in Children of Love (1953). Appearing in three or four feature films every year, she rose to international fame in the late 1950s. She was together with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema (at the Rex Theatre in Paris) on June 7, 1957. She had a memorable seduction scene opposite Yves Montand in The Crucible (1957). Her first notable leading role was in Be Beautiful But Shut Up (1958) (aka "Blonde for Danger") in which she played a 17-year-old jewel smuggler.

Mylène further developed her screen image of a manipulative blond mistress in her brilliant performance opposite David Niven in Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and became permanently locked in the cliché image of a humorous seductress after co-starring with Alain Delon in the 1959 comedy Three Murderesses (1959). Her chance to update her film image came in period films. She played manipulative and coquettish Andromeda opposite Steve Reeves in The Giant of Marathon (1959) and the leading role of Rea opposite Roger Moore in Romulus and the Sabines (1961). Among her best known roles are the manipulative Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers: Part I - The Queen's Diamonds (1961) and Helen in all three of the Fantomas films.

Mylène Demongeot became one of the blond sex symbols in 1950s, 60s and 70s French cinema. She co-starred with the major French actors of the time, including Jean Marais and Louis de Funès, in the Fantomas (1964) trilogy. Although she gradually phased out of the stereotypical image of a beautiful coquette, she still looked pretty convincing as a middle-aged Madame, which she developed in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time her acting career came to a pause, as she had been aging gracefully in the South of France. She was also a producer during that time and was the co-owner of Kangarou Films, a production company that she founded with her late husband Marc Simenon. After a lengthy hiatus, she made a comeback in 36th Precinct (2004). She has also appeared in Camping (2006) and La Californie (2006) by director/writer Jacques Fieschi, based on a short story by Georges Simenon.

In addition to her film work, Mylène has also written several books, the best-known of which would be "Tiroirs Secrets" and "Animalement vôtre". In the 2000s, she made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of her mother in Kharkiv, Ukraine. There she planted a commemorative tree and presented her autobiographical book, "Les Lilas de Kharkov" (The Lilacs of Kharkiv). In 2006, she was named Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters for her achievements in acting. She resides in her French hometown of Nice.

Stunning Italian actress Virna Lisi, a brief but lovely Hollywood import in the 1960's, was merely one of a plethora of European movie beauties who proved over the course of their long careers, that they were capable of more than just visual performances.

Born Virna Lisa Pieralisi on November 8, 1936, she began her film career as a 17-year-old teen with a co-starring part with the musical drama ...e Napoli canta! (1953) (Naples Sings!). Cast initially for her photographic beauty, she gained more experience in such early pictures as Lettera napoletana (1954) and La corda d'acciaio (1954) before earning her first top-billed movie lead in Piccola santa (1954) opposite Rosario Borelli. Other late 50's/early 60's films that helped steam up her image included Luna nova (1955), Le diciottenni (1955), La rossa (1955), The Doll That Took the Town (1957), Lost Souls (1959) opposite Jacques Sernas, Don't Tempt the Devil (1963) (Don't Tempt the Devil), Sua Eccellenza si fermò a mangiare (1961) (His Excellency Stayed to Dinner], the Italian-made spectacle, Duel of the Titans (1961) and an innocent role in the French-made Eva (1962) starring the scheming Jeanne Moreau in the title role.

The pert and sexy star later made a decorative dent in late 1960's Hollywood as a tempting blue-eyed blonde opposite the likes of Jack Lemmon in How to Murder Your Wife (1965), Frank Sinatra in Assault on a Queen (1966) and Tony Curtis in Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1966). Confined once again to the same type of glamour roles (she turned down the title role of "Barbarella"), she returned to Europe within a couple of years but hardly fared better with such nothing special movies as Anyone Can Play (1967), The Girl Who Couldn't Say No (1968), The Christmas Tree (1969), The Statue (1971), Bluebeard (1972) and White Fang (1973) and its sequel Challenge to White Fang (1974).

Come middle age, however, a career renaissance occurred for Virna. She began to be perceived as more than just a tasty dish and was given a wide variety of quality mature performances. As the stature of her films improved, she began winning foreign awards right and left for such European pictures as Beyond Good and Evil (1977), The Cricket (1980), Time for Loving (1983), Buon Natale... Buon anno (1989) and Va' dove ti porta il cuore (1996) (Follow Your Heart). It all culminated in the lifetime role of the malevolent "Caterina de Medici" in Queen Margot (1994) for which she captured both the César and Cannes Film Festival awards, not to mention the Italian Silver Ribbon award.

Virna continued reigning supreme on TV as a character lead and support player into the millennium with parts in such TV movies as the title role in Anna's World (2004) and Donne sbagliate (2007) (Steel Women) as well as Italian TV series work. Starring as the matriarch in the excellent family film drama Il più bel giorno della mia vita (2002), Virna would find her last excellent movie role in the award-winning dramedy Latin Lover (2015). Having passed away on December 14, 2014, at age 78, of lung cancer, the actress received a couple of award nominations posthumously for her work here. Survived by her son Corrado, her longtime husband (from 1960), architect Franco Pesci (1934-2013), died a year earlier.

Jocelyn Lane is one of the most stunningly beautiful, and overlooked, actresses to grace the screen. Born Jocelyn Bolton in Austria to British parents in 1937, she was the younger sister of Mara Lane, who was considered one of the most beautiful models in the UK during the early 1950s. Either because, or in spite of, her glamorous older sister, Jocelyn had established herself as a popular model and cover girl by the time she was 18, using the stage name Jackie Lane. During this period she kept extremely busy as a cover girl, appearing on hundreds of magazine covers around the world. Jackie was not above fibbing about her age; in a 1957 photo pictorial by Russ Meyer in "Modern Man", the 20-year-old Jackie is referred to as "Mara's 18-year-old sister". Soon Mara became yesterday's news and Jackie's extraordinary beauty found her heralded as the "British Bardot". Her movie roles during this period are international, and often confused with those of Jackie Lane, who played Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet opposite William Hartnell's Doctor Who during part of 1966. Our Jackie moved to Hollywood in the mid-1960s, and began using her birth name, perhaps to avoid confusion with the "other" Jackie Lane who remained in England. There seems to have been some trouble getting the new name to stick. In the October 4, 1964, "Life" magazine, where she was the feature model in the article "The End of [Hollywood's] Great Girl Drought", she is already billed as Jocelyn Lane. Yet early publicity for the Elvis Presley musical Tickle Me (1965) still refers to her as Jackie, as does her January 1966 cover photo on "Popular Photography" magazine. Although Jocelyn feigned a convincing American accent, her aloof, haughty screen persona did not endear her to US audiences, despite several showy leading roles in popular B-films. She retired from the screen in the early 1970s, ultimately marrying Spanish royalty. However, she remains in the memory, literally becoming a fixture of her cinematic times. One image of her, used on the poster of her film Hell's Belles (1969), features a ground-level shot of the 32-year old-Jocelyn (looking all of 22) in a black leather miniskirt and boots, staring haughtily at the camera, has become an icon of 1960s pop culture.

Fran Jeffries was born on 18 May 1937 in Mayfield, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Pink Panther (1963), Sex and the Single Girl (1964) and Harum Scarum (1965). She was married to Steven Schaeffer, Richard Quine, Dick Haymes and Edward Emile Belasco, Jr.. She died on 15 December 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Luciana Paluzzi's an Italian actress, best known for playing SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in the fourth James Bond film, "Thunderball".

For the film, she had auditioned for the part of the lead Bond girl, Dominetta "Domino" Petacchi, but producers cast Claudine Auger, changing the Domino character from an Italian to a Frenchwoman and renaming her Dominique Derval.

Paluzzi's first film was an uncredited walk-on part in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).

Born in New York City to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and Ontario-born New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of "The Country Girl". Her interest in acting grew after meeting Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joining the Actors Studio. Her screen debut in Tall Story (1960) (directed by Logan) marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by two Academy Awards for her performances in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), and five Oscar nominations for Best Actress in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), The Morning After (1986) and On Golden Pond (1981), which was the only film she made with her father. Her professional success contrasted with her personal life, which was often laden with scandal and controversy. Her appearance in several risqué movies (including Barbarella (1968)) by then-husband Roger Vadim was followed by what was to become her most debated and controversial period: her espousal of anti-establishment causes and especially her anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and husband Tom Hayden in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1980s she started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the "Jane Fonda's Workout Book". She and Hayden divorced, and she married broadcasting mogul Ted Turner in 1991.

She was born Scilla Gabellini, one of five siblings, in Rimini on the Adriatic coast. Scilla initially studied law at Oxford University, graduating with a doctorate. Her interest in pursuing a legal career waned quickly, however, since her next move was a return to Italy for acting classes at Rome's Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica. At the age of seventeen, the voluptuous, blue-eyed Scilla became a body double for Sophia Loren (to whom she bore more than a passing resemblance), notably in the classic Boy on a Dolphin (1957). Two years later, she underwent cosmetic surgery to look less like Sophia in order to forge her own screen image.

In 1963, Scilla featured on the cover of several magazines, including Playboy, the Milanese publication Le Ore and Parade (at the time, the most widely read weekly in the U.S.). Though she went on to command leads in a number of films during the 60s, Scilla tended to be typecast in roles which emphasized her physical attributes, rather than her acting ability. She appeared most often in genre films, anything from innocuous sex comedies (Genitori in blue-jeans (1960), How to Seduce a Playboy (1966)) to swashbuckling costume dramas (The Queen of the Pirates (1960)), and from spaghetti westerns (Djurado (1966)) to peplum spectacles (Colossus of the Arena (1962), La vendetta di Spartacus (1964)). After 1971, she was afforded more challenging and critically acclaimed roles as a star in Italian TV miniseries.

Eleven years after leaving the screen, Scilla attracted media attention as a result of the murder of her 87-year old landlord father Giuseppe, by a crazed tenant at his villa on the via Campi di Torre Flavia in Ladispoli.

Born Kätherose Derr in Wiesbaden, Karin Dor studied acting and ballet at school and began in films as an extra. The attractive redhead made an indelible impression on Austrian director Harald Reinl (who became her first husband in 1954) and this paved the way to higher profile roles. Her first significant featured appearance was in Reinl's melodrama Der schweigende Engel (1954). Karin subsequently shared top billing in a classroom drama about wayward matriculation students, Ihre große Prüfung (1954). During the initial segment of her career she played nice girls, mainly wide-eyed ingénues, innocent victims and assorted naive juveniles in war and period dramas (As Long as You Live (1955)), Heimatfilms (Almenrausch und Edelweiß (1957)) and operettas (The White Horse Inn (1960)).

By 1960, a more glamorous, lithe and sensual Karin had graduated to juicer roles as heroines in Edgar Wallace potboilers (beginning with Der grüne Bogenschütze (1961)) and a series of Karl May European westerns, invariably directed by Reinl and co-starring Tarzan actor Lex Barker (a combination which proved equally successful for other crime/sci-fi franchises, including The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962)). Many of these pictures enjoyed only limited release and were rarely exhibited outside Germany.

Karin succeeded at last to break her stereotyping by playing a pathological serial killer wielding a cutthroat razor in another Wallace/Reinl outing, Room 13 (1964), and - for a total change of pace -- essayed Brunhilde in a two-part filming of the epic 'Die Nibelungen' (also directed by Reinl). With her international appeal now widening, she appeared in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), a British-West German co-production, as a scientist's daughter menaced by the titular villain. To follow was arguably her best-known international role as an early 'Bond girl', Helga Brandt (alias Number Eleven), a SPECTRE operative whose failure to eliminate J.B. results in her being dropped into a piranha-infested pool by super villain Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) in You Only Live Twice (1967). She was then engaged by Alfred Hitchcock for the part of Cuban resistance leader Juanita de Cordoba in Topaz (1969) in which her character came to a similarly sticky end. Karin's career never quite recovered from this director's rare box-office aberration. British Times reviewer and Hitchcock specialist John Russell Taylor described the picture as "generally flat, undistinguished, and lacking in any sign of positive interest or involvement on his (Hitchcock's) part". In the wake of Topaz, Karin's screen appearances became infrequent, except for a couple of guest spots on American crime shows, followed by an of unsuccessful feature film comeback attempt in the incongruous thriller Warhead (1977). She was latterly seen on German television in several episodes of Rosamunde Pilcher (1993). Karin's third husband was actor and stuntman George Robotham who predeceased her in 2007.

Pascale Petit hailed from Paris and was 'discovered' while working as a hairdresser in a Carita salon by Françoise Lugagne, the actress-wife of director Raymond Rouleau. Rouleau proceeded to direct Petit's screen debut as Mary Warren, erstwhile accuser at the Salem witch trials of 1692 and later confessed 'witch', in The Crucible (1957). Despite having no formal acting training, she made an indelible impression with back-to-back performances in Marcel Carné's film, Les tricheurs (1958) and in Alexandre Astruc's One Life (1958) (as the servant girl Rosalie). Her performance won her a coveted Prix Suzanne Bianchetti as Most Promising Young Actress of 1958. She followed up her success with a title role in the comedy Julie the Redhead (1959) and a co-starring role along Micheline Presle in A Mistress for the Summer (1960).

During the following decade, Petit was seen predominantly in German and Italian co-productions. She portrayed Cleopatra during the internecine struggles with her brother Ptolemy in A Queen for Caesar (1962) and helped American super spy Ray Danton foil a Soviet plot in Code Name: Jaguar (1965). In 1966 Petit married Belgian singer/songwriter and actor Giani Esposito, whom she met in 1959 and became partners. They had a son and a daughter while living in Italy. She next joined Stewart Granger, Lex Barker and Pierre Brice in the lackluster Killer's Carnival (1966) and helped American agent Darren McGavin track down a traitor in the above-average espionage thriller Berlin Affair (1970), set in Berlin at the height of the Cold War.

With fewer decent film roles coming her way in the 70s and 80's, Petit turned her attention towards acting in French television series and made-for-TV movies, but failed to recapture the success of her early career. She published her memoirs in 2022, entitled 'Une vie sans tricher' (A Life without Cheating).

Like many other female Italian film stars, Claudia Cardinale's entry into the business was by way of a beauty pageant. She was 17 years old and studying at the Centro Sperimentale in Rome when she entered a beauty contest, which resulted in her getting a succession of small film roles. Her earthy interpretations of Sicilian women got her noticed by Italian producers, and the combination of her beauty, dark, flashing eyes, explosive sexuality and genuine acting talent virtually guaranteed her stardom. After Careless (1962) she rose to the front ranks of Italian cinema, and became an international star in Federico Fellini's classic 8½ (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni. American audiences may best remember her from her starring role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

She won a beauty pageant and attended il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (The Center for Experimental Cinematography). In 1956, she received an offer to go to Hollywood and attend the Actor's Studio but didn't take the offer for undisclosed reasons.

She began her film career at the age of 15 with a role in the film I pinguini ci guardano (1955) (The Penguins Watch Us) in which the animals at the zoo watched the humans around them and cultivated some very interesting thoughts. Many sources, however, list her first film as Mogli pericolose (1958). She is uncredited in this comedy which was directed by Luigi Comencini.

Neri was also much in demand for erotic films. She played Zoe, in Jesús Franco's 99 Women (1969), a movie about women in prison who must turn to each other for comfort while dealing with a sadistic warden. In 1971 she was Eleanor Stuart, Farley Granger's 'wife' in Amuck! (1972).

Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.

Wood was born July 20, 1938 in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents: housewife Maria Gurdin (née Zoudilova; transliterated as Zoodiloff on legal records), known by multiple aliases including Mary, Marie and Musia, and second husband Nick Gurdin (née Zacharenko), a janitor and prop builder. Nicholas was born in Primorsky Krai, son of a chocolate-factory worker. Maria was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia to a wealthy industrialist. Natalie's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories.

Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War. Her paternal grandfather joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces early in the war and was killed in a street fight between Red and White Russian soldiers. This convinced the Zacharenkos to migrate to Shanghai, China, where they had relatives. Wood's paternal grandmother remarried in 1927 and moved the family to Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1933 they resettled along the U.S. West Coast. Nicholas met Wood's mother, four years his senior, while she was still married to Alexander Tatuloff, an Armenian mechanic she divorced in 1936.

Mary Tatuloff, Wood's mother, had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming a ballet dancer. She grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin and had married Alexander there in 1925. The Tatuloffs had one daughter, Ovsanna, before coming to America in 1930. After marrying Nicholas Zacharenko in 1938, five months before Wood's birth, Mary (now calling herself Marie) transferred her dream of stardom onto her second child. Marie frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where she could study the films of Hollywood child stars.

Wood's parents changed the family name to Gurdin upon obtaining U.S. citizenship, and her pseudonymous mother finally settled on a permanent first name: Maria. In 1942 they bought a house in Santa Rosa, where young Natalie was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. She got to audition for roles as an actress, and the family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name Wood for her, in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalie's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood.

Wood made her film debut in Happy Land (1943). She was only five years old, and her scene as the "Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone" lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family. She had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was unable to "cry on cue" for a key scene, so her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene.

Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which was a commercial and critical hit. Wood got her first taste of fame, and afterwards Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Following her early success, Wood receive many more film offers. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter of such stars as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood found herself in high demand and appeared in over twenty films as a child actress.

The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom. Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. She was reportedly a "straight A student." Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was quite impressed by Wood's intellect. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.

While Wood acquired the services of agents, her early career was micromanaged by her mother. An older Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She played the role of a teenage girl who wears makeup and dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child actress to an ingenue. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Her next significant film was The Searchers (1956), a western in which she played the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of John Wayne's character. The film was a commercial and critical hit, and has since become regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, WB had her paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period was the title character in Marjorie Morningstar (1958), as a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the '50s.

Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and MGM recorded a loss of $1,108,000. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt. With her career in decline following this failure, Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in his upcoming film Splendor in the Grass (1961). Kazan cast Wood as the female lead, because he found in her (in his words): a "true-blue quality with a wanton side that is held down by social pressure." Kazan is credited for producing Wood's most powerful moment as an actress. The film was a critical success, with Wood nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Wood's next important film was West Side Story (1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about $44 million gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed, and is still regarded as one of the best films of Wood's career. Her next film was Gypsy (1962), playing the role of burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Film historians credit the film as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterization. The film was the eighth highest-grossing release of 1962, and was well-received critically.

Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano, played by Steve McQueen, finds herself pregnant and desperately seeks an abortion. The film under-performed at the box office but was critically well-received. Wood received her third (and last) nomination for an Academy Award. At age 25, Wood was tied with Teresa Wright as the youngest person to score three Oscar nominations. Wood held that designation until 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence achieved her third nomination at age 23.

Wood continued her successful film career until 1966, but her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. $175,000 to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.

Wood made her comeback in the comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars in profits. She chose not to capitalize on the film's success, however, and did not take another acting job for five years.

In 1970, Wood was married to the screenwriter Richard Gregson and was expecting her first child, Natasha Gregson Wagner. She went into semi-retirement to be a stay-at-home mom, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery comedy Peeper (1975), the science fiction film Meteor (1979), the comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980), and the posthumously-released science fiction film Brainstorm (1983).

In the late '70s, Wood found success in television roles, appearing in several made-for-TV movies and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (1979). Her project received high ratings, and she had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of Anastasia.

On November 28, 1981, Wood joined her last husband Robert Wagner, their married friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. Conspicuously absent from the group was Christopher's wife, casting director Georgianne Walken. The four of them were on board the Wagners' yacht "Splendour." Earwitness Marilyn Wayne heard cries for help around 11:05 P.M. and a "man's voice slurred, and in aggravated tone, say something to the effect of, 'Oh, hold on, we're coming to get you,' and not long after, the cries for help subsided." On the morning of November 29, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat, near small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. The toxicology report revealed her blood alcohol level was at .14, over the legal limit of .10. Wood was buried on December 2 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Nine days later, the LACSD officially closed the case.

Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation in Christine (1958), the remake of Max Ophüls's Playing at Love (1933), where Magda Schneider once starred herself. During the shooting, she fell in love with her co-star Alain Delon and eventually moved with him to Paris. At that time, she started her international career collaborating with famous directors such as Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles. After Delon had broken up with her in 1964, she married Harry Meyen shortly after. Although she gave birth to a boy, David-Christopher, their relationship was difficult, so they divorced in 1975. Being unsatisfied with her personal life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, but her cinematic career -especially in France- remained intact. She was the first actress, receiving the new created César Award as "Best Actress" for her role in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975). Three years later, she was awarded again for A Simple Story (1978). After a short marriage to her former secretary Daniel Biasini, being the father of her daughter Sarah Biasini, she suffered the hardest blow of her life when her son was impaled on a fence in 1981. She never managed to recover from this loss and died on 29 May 1982 in Paris. Although it was suggested she committed suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, she was declared to have died from cardiac arrest.

At just 18, Nancy Kwan was studying dance with England's Royal Ballet School, when she was spotted by producer Ray Stark, who tested her and gave her the starring role of a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). She followed it the next year with the hit musical Flower Drum Song (1961), and became one of Hollywood's most visible Asian actresses.

Born in China to a Chinese father and British mother, Kwan spent the 1960s commuting between film roles in America and Europe (including the pilot for Hawaii Five-O (1968)), but faded from view in the West when she returned to her native Hong Kong in 1972 to be with her critically-ill father. Divorced from her second husband, screenwriter David Giler, and with a young son from her first marriage to Austrian hotelier Peter Pock, Kwan intended to stay for a year, but wound up staying for a decade.

As managing director of her own production company, she produced and directed dozens of commercials for the Southeast Asia market. She also acted in a spate of films made for Southeast Asian audiences, including "Fear" (1977) (aka Night Creature (1978)), which introduced her to filmmaker Norbert Meisel, who became her third husband. They returned to the US in 1979 so that her teenage son Bernie Pock could complete his education. He was a martial-arts master, fluent in Chinese, and became a stunt coordinator and actor before his untimely death.

After returning to the US, Kwan appeared in numerous TV series, the NBC miniseries, Noble House (1988), and the CBS made-for-TV movie, Miracle Landing (1990). She's politically active as the spokeswoman for the Asian-American Voters Coalition, and touts a beauty product, Oriental Pearl Cream, in TV spots. Kwan was at the ceremonies in Los Angeles at Hollywood Park, where the Asian community gathered to watch the handover of Hong Kong to the government of China.

On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace struck out on her own, heading to New York's bright lights to try her luck there. Grace worked some as a model and made her debut on Broadway in 1949. She also made a brief foray into the infant medium of television. Not content with the work in New York, Grace moved to Southern California for the more prestigious part of acting -- motion pictures. In 1951, she appeared in her first film entitled Fourteen Hours (1951) when she was 22. It was a small part, but a start nonetheless. The following year she landed the role of Amy Kane in High Noon (1952), a western starring Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges which turned out to be very popular. In 1953, Grace appeared in only one film, but it was another popular one. The film was Mogambo (1953) where Grace played Linda Nordley. The film was a jungle drama in which fellow cast members, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner turned in masterful performances. It was also one of the best films ever released by MGM. Although she got noticed with High Noon, her work with director Alfred Hitchcock, which began with Dial M for Murder (1954) made her a star. Her standout performance in Rear Window (1954) brought her to prominence. As Lisa Fremont, she was cast opposite James Stewart, who played a crippled photographer who witnesses a murder in the next apartment from his wheelchair. Grace stayed busy in 1954 appearing in five films. Grace would forever be immortalized by winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby in The Country Girl (1954). In 1955, Grace once again teamed with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955) co-starring Cary Grant. In 1956, she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society (1956) which also starred Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The whimsical tale ended with her re-marrying her former husband, played by Crosby. The film was well received. It also turned out to be her final acting performance. Grace had recently met and married Prince Rainier of the little principality of Monaco. By becoming a princess, she gave up her career. For the rest of her life, she was to remain in the news with her marriage and her three children. On September 14, 1982, Grace was killed in an automobile accident in her adoptive home country. She was just 52 years old.

Barbara Ann Luna was born in Manhattan and virtually grew up on Broadway. Her Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese and Filipino background has led her to portray a variety of roles. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II cast her in the Broadway hit musical "South Pacific", as Ngana, which was spoken entirely in French. When she outgrew her sarong, Luna, as she prefers to be called, was cast again by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "The King and I". When the show was closing after many years, Luna auditioned for the understudy role of Lotus Blossom in "Teahouse of the August Moon". Not only was she hired, but she was given the starring role--which was spoken entirely in Japanese--in the first national touring company for three years. While she was appearing with "Teahouse" in Los Angeles, she was seen by producer/director Mervyn LeRoy, who cast her as Camille, a blind girl who was the love interest for Frank Sinatra in The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961), also starring Spencer Tracy.

This led to other films, such as Firecreek (1968) with James Stewart and Henry Fonda, Ship of Fools (1965) with Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner, and the prison drama The Concrete Jungle (1982) portraying Cat, the queen bee of the prison. Her exotic beauty and timeless look, along with her talent, has afforded her the opportunity to have a lengthy television career, as well. She is remembered by Star Trek (1966) fans for her portrayal of Lt. Marlena Moreau in the all-time classic episode "Mirror, Mirror" from the original series. She has guest-starred on nearly 500 television series. Some of her favorites are Aaron Spelling productions such as Fantasy Island (1977). Other favorites are Dallas (1978), The Bill Cosby Show (1969), Hunter (1984), Mission: Impossible (1966) (and its 1988 reincarnation, Mission: Impossible (1988)), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), The Outer Limits (1963) and many others.

Luna continued to keep one foot on Broadway; in between film commitments, she appeared in a revival of "West Side Story" as Anita, at Lincoln Center in New York City. This was followed by the role of Morales in "A Chorus Line", where she got to sing the beautiful Marvin Hamlisch tune, "What I Did For Love". This inspired the multi-talented Luna to meet with Oscar nominee link=nm0003299] to have him write a nightclub act for her, and that he did: "An Evening with BarBara Luna". A New York reviewer, after her first engagement, said, "Ms. Luna can take the cabaret scene by storm". This review was noticed by agent Lee Solomon of the William Morris Agency office. He called and booked Luna to open for Bill Cosby at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills and Caesars Palace in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While she was singing at Freddies in New York City, she was offered a role in a soap opera.

After a six-month stint as Anna Ryder (a role she created) on Search for Tomorrow (1951), she was then offered a two-year contract to play Maria Roberts on One Life to Live (1968). This character very quickly became notorious and extremely popular as the "character everyone loved to hate". Spelling then hired Luna for her to play Sydney Jacobs, a jewelry fence, on Sunset Beach (1997). Luna loves to travel, so she co-hosted "The Alpen Tour", a television special for the Travel Channel sponsored by TWA airlines that was filmed throughout Europe. When she returned to Los Angeles, Luna performed her club act to sold-out crowds at Tom Rolla's Gardenia Cabaret and the Cine-grill at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Recently, Luna made her first trip to the Philippines to film a movie for Showtime, Noriega: God's Favorite (2000), starring Bob Hoskins. Luna is a member of "The Thalians", a charity foundation at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. She is an avid sports fan, loves playing golf, tennis and dancing on roller skates.

Rosanna Schiaffino was born on 25 November 1939 in Genoa, Liguria, Italy. She was an actress, known for La mandragola (1965), The Miracle of the Wolves (1961) and Romulus and the Sabines (1961). She was married to Giorgio Enrico Falck and Alfredo Bini. She died on 17 October 2009 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy.

Christiane Schmidtmer was born in Mannheim, Germany. She took acting lessons in Munich and worked in the stage in Germany from 1961-1963, then turned to photographic modeling for German nude magazines and later, Playboy. She also modeled for advertising companies, namely Max Factor cosmetics, before she started her movie career.

She was the beautiful mistress of José Ferrer in Ship of Fools (1965), but most people will remember her as the evil wardress in the exploitation women-in-prison film, The Big Doll House (1971), as well as one of the three airline stewardesses in Boeing, Boeing (1965).

Lovely Jacqueline Sassard's career as a leading actress endured just over a decade and was launched not in her native country, but across the border in Italy. Her first featured role was as the titular heroine in Alberto Lattuada's Guendalina (1957) at the tender age of 17. This got her noticed and paved her way to headline in a string of popular comedies, beginning with March's Child (1958) (as a young woman going through a failing marriage to an older architect, played by Gabriele Ferzetti). For her performance, Sassard was awarded a Zulueta Prize as best actress at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in 1958. In the black comedy Three Murderesses (1959), she again proved her flair, portraying one of a trio of jilted ladies plotting revenge on a caddish playboy (Alain Delon). That same year, she also made two significant forays into serious drama with Luigi Zampa's Il magistrato (1959) and Valerio Zurlini's Violent Summer (1959), set in Italy during World War II. Now at the height of her popularity, Sassard was featured on the cover of Tempo magazine and in an edition of Playboy. By the early 60s, the honeymoon was suddenly over. Her subsequent films were of decidedly lower quality, including peplum, tawdry costume dramas and corny musical comedy. A perhaps non unexpected two-year hiatus followed, after which Sassard made a brief comeback as an enigmatic Austrian princess in Joseph Losey's off-beat drama Accident (1967) and as one third of a ménage à trois in Les Biches (1968), alongside Stéphane Audran and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Little information exists about Sassard's private life, save that she left show biz upon her marriage to automobile manufacturer Gianni Lancia and eventually retired -- far from the limelight -- to the well-to-do neighbourhood of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southern France.

Gorgeous, brown-eyed, chestnut-maned Sherry Jackson began her promising career as a pig-tailed, pleasant-looking child actress. Born in Idaho on February 15, 1942, she was the only daughter of four children born to Maurita Kathleen Gilbert and Curtis Loys Jackson, Sr. Her father died when she was 6, and the family relocated to Los Angeles. Her mother married television writer/director/actor Montgomery Pittman, who died of cancer in 1962. Sherry's mother provided her daughter drama, singing and dancing lessons as a child. The story goes that the little girl was discovered by a talent agent while she and her mother were waiting for a bus. She began her career at age 7 with small, un-billed bit parts in You're My Everything (1949), For Heaven's Sake (1950), Lorna Doone (1951), The Great Caruso (1951), and two of the "Ma and Pa Kettle" films series, Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950) and Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951), as Susie Kettle, one of the couple's numerous children.

Sherry gained more attention as her parts increased in size, holding her own among the Hollywood's movie elite, including moppet star Bobby Driscoll in When I Grow Up (1951); John Garfield and Patricia Neal in The Breaking Point (1950); and rugged Steve Cochran in the "B" western The Lion and the Horse (1952). She earned good notices as John Wayne's daughter in Trouble Along the Way (1953), but her most impressive role during this time was as a Portuguese youngster who witnesses a vision in the religious offering The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952). At age 11, she made appearances on both "The Roy Rogers Show" and "The Gene Autry Show". She literally grew up on the small screen as Danny Thomas' daughter Terry Williams on the comedy series The Danny Thomas Show (1953) which co-starred Jean Hagen as her mother and Rusty Hamer as her pesky younger brother. A cast change occurred in 1956 when Hagen, who did not get along with Danny Thomas, opted to leave the show (Hagen's character was killed off between seasons) and a step-mother (played by Marjorie Lord) and step-sister (played by Angela Cartwright) helped increase the ratings. During the show's run, she was given a strong teen role in the film drama Come Next Spring (1956) as the daughter of Ann Sheridan and Steve Cochran.

Named a "Deb Star" in 1959, Sherry played a number of beguiling victims or bewitching vixens on such 60's programs as "77 Sunset Strip," "Mr. Novak," "The Twilight Zone," "Hawaiian Eye," "Gunsmoke," "Perry Mason," "Gomer Pyle," "The Virginian," "My Three Sons," "Batman" and "The Wild, Wild West." On film, the vivacious beauty was pretty much relegated to minor cult worship in low-budgets or exploitation films -- Wild on the Beach (1965), Gunn (1967), The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968) and The Monitors (1969). One could usually spot Sherry somewhere as a biker babe, party chick, capricious rich girl or scantily-clad fem-fatale with character names such as "Comfort", "Shasta", "Lola" and "Mona" pretty much putting a stamp on her typecast.

Her adult work remained a sexy standard throughout the 1970's as seen in the TV-movies Wild Women (1970), Hitchhike! (1974), The Girl on the Late, Late Show (1974), Returning Home (1975), and Casino (1980). She also reprised her role as Terry Williams in the premiere episode (only) of the series Make Room for Granddaddy (1970) and appeared in the glamorous title role of Brenda Starr, Reporter (1979), an unsold TV pilot. As a guest star, she participated in such well-established series as "Love, American Style", "Get Christie Love", "The Rockford Files", "Matt Helm", "Barnaby Jones", "The Streets of San Francisco", "Starsky & Hutch", "The Incredible Hulk", "Fantasy Island", "Charlie's Angels", and "CHiPs".

A few forgettable films came her way with Cotter (1973), Bare Knuckles (1977) and Stingray (1978), but she grew hard-pressed to find more challenging parts. By the early 1990s, a frustrated Sherry let her career slide away. She was last seen onscreen of an episode of the soap opera "Guiding Light" in 1992. Never married, she was involved in a fairly long-term relationship with business executive and horse breeder Fletcher R. Jones. That ended in 1972 when he died in a small plane crash.

Jeanne Carmen spent her early childhood in Paragould, Arkansas with her family picking cotton. At age 13, she ran away from home, eventually landing in New York City and taking a job as a dancer in an off-Broadway touring company. The early 1950s found her in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the company of the likes of mobster Johnny Roselli. She discovered she had a natural talent for the game of golf and made great hay and much money hustling on the links. In the early 1950s, she turned her back on the game of golf and went to Hollywood, where she was often in the company of some of that town's most notable swingers, men like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and many others. She also maintained a close relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Jeanne never made it into the "big" movies but appeared in many "B" pictures, and was quite an item at the celebrity parties. After the death of her close friend Monroe, Carmen dropped out of sight and resided in Arizona for over a decade. On December 20, 2007, Jeanne Carmen died at age 77 from lymphoma at her Orange County, California home, where she resided since 1978.

Diana Dors was born Diana Mary Fluck on October 23, 1931 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. She and her mother both nearly died from the traumatic birth. Because of the trauma, her mother lavished on Diana anything and everything she wanted--clothes, toys and dance lessons were the order of the day. Diana's love of films began when her mother took her to the local movies theaters. The actresses on the screen caught Diana's attention and she said, herself, that from the age of three she wanted to be an actress. She was educated in the finest private schools, much to the chagrin of her father (apparently he thought private education was a waste of money). Physically, Diana grew up fast. At age 12, she looked and acted much older than what she was. Much of this was due to the actresses she studied on the silver screen and Diana trying to emulate them. She wanted nothing more than to go to the United States and Hollywood to have a chance to make her place in film history. After placing well in a local beauty contest, Diana was offered a role in a thespian group (she was 13).

The following year, Diana enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) to hone her acting skills. She was the youngest in her class. Her first fling at the camera was in The Shop at Sly Corner (1947). She did not care that it was a small, uncredited role; she was on film and at age 16, that's all that mattered. That was quickly followed by Dancing with Crime (1947), which consisted of nothing more than a walk-on role. Up until this time, Diana had pretended to be 17 years old (if producers had known her true age, they probably would not have let her test for the role). However, since she looked and acted older, this was no problem. Diana's future dawned bright in 1948, and she appeared in no less than six films. Some were uncredited, but some had some meat to the roles. The best of the lot was the role of Charlotte in the classic Oliver Twist (1948). Throughout the 1950s, she appeared in more films and became more popular in Britain. Diana was a pleasant version of Marilyn Monroe, who had taken the United States by storm. Britain now had its own version.

Diana continued to play sexy sirens and kept seats in British theaters filled. She really came into her own as an actress. She was more than a woman who exuded her sexy side, she was a very fine actress as her films showed. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, she began to play more mature roles with an effectiveness that was hard to match. Films such as Craze (1974), Swedish Wildcats (1972), The Amorous Milkman (1975) and Three for All (1975) helped fill out her resume. After filming Steaming (1985), Diana was diagnosed with cancer, which was too much for her to overcome. The British were saddened when word came of her death at age 52 on May 4, 1984 in Windsor, Berkshire, England.

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was born on September 29, 1931 in Malmo, Sweden. Growing up with seven brothers and sisters was not an adventure, but Anita's adventure began when she was elected Miss Sweden in 1950. She did not win the Miss Universe contest but she got a modeling contract in the United States. She quickly got a film contract with Howard Hughes's RKO that did not lead anywhere (but Anita herself has said that Hughes wanted to marry her). Instead, she started making movies with Universal, small roles that more often than not only required her to look beautiful. After five years in Hollywood, she found herself in Rome, where Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) meant her breakthrough. She stayed in Italy and made around 20 movies during the next ten years, some roles memorable, some to be forgotten. Her two marriages gave her a great deal of attention from the press. During the 1970s, the roles became less frequent, but she made a marvellous comeback with Fellini's Intervista (1987).

Anita Ekberg retired from acting in 2002 after 50 years in the motion picture industry. In December 2011, she was destitute following three months in a hospital with a broken thigh in Rimini, during which her home was robbed of jewelry and furniture, and her villa was badly damaged in a fire. Ekberg applied for help from the Fellini Foundation, which also found itself in difficult financial straits. She died at age 83 from complications of an enduring illness on January 11, 2015 at the clinic San Raffaele in Rocca di Papa, Italy. Ekberg had a new film project with exclusively female Italian producer "Le Bestevem", in which her character, as movie star, should have been recovered again as an icon of the silver screen, a project that was interrupted by her death.

Her funeral was held on January 14, 2015, at the Lutheran-Evangelical Christuskirche in Rome, after which her body was cremated and her remains were buried at the cemetery of Skanor Church in Sweden.

Joi Lansing was born Joyce Renee Brown on April 6, 1929 in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a teen she developed early, and because of her striking good looks, she began to model and was extremely successful throughout the 1940s.

It was only natural that her physical assets eventually landed her on the silver screen. Her first go at films occurred in 1948 with roles as--what else?--models in The Counterfeiters (1948), Julia Misbehaves (1948), and Easter Parade (1948). She was 20 years old and her acting wasn't exactly polished in the beginning, but producers cared not--she was hired for her looks and her body.

The following year brought more of the same; she got mostly uncredited roles in films as nothing more than a showpiece. She took a hiatus in 1950 to concentrate on her modeling career. She returned to the big screen in 1951 to play minor roles, though this time went a little better. She played Susan Matthews in F.B.I. Girl (1951) and Marilyn Turner in On the Riviera (1951); at least she played characters with names. Then it was back to being a showpiece. In 1952, she had an uncredited role in one of the most popular movies of all time, Singin' in the Rain (1952). Another minor role as the Maxim Girl in The Merry Widow (1952) followed. She began appearing on television in 1955 when she played in an episode of Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951) and one of I Love Lucy (1951) the following year.

In 1955, Joi landed a recurring role as Shirley Swanson in the television series The Bob Cummings Show (1955). It was this series that proved to all that she actually could act well. Because of this series, she began to get more-substantial parts in films such as The Brave One (1956), Hot Cars (1956), and So You Think the Grass Is Greener (1956), all in 1956. Then it was back to bit roles. For the balance of the 1950s, she continued to appear in B-movies with less-than-quality roles. After appearing in the comedy film Who Was That Lady? (1960), Joi landed the role of Goldie in the television series Klondike (1960). However, most viewers remember her as the wife of Lester Flatt on the situation comedy The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), in which she appeared from 1965 to 1968. As Gladys Flatt, her beauty even surpassed Donna Douglas' as Elly May Clampett.

Her film career was now winding down and she appeared as Boots Malone in the B-movie Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), which went nowhere.

Joi Lansing died of breast cancer at age 43 on August 7, 1972 in Santa Monica, California.

The enticing, voluptuous European beauty Greta Thyssen filled out the pages of movie magazines everywhere during the 1950s. Born on March 30, 1927, she was a freshly-scrubbed brunette when she was crowned Miss Denmark in 1952. The subsequent attention had her packing her bags for Hollywood. At that time, Marilyn Monroe had become an international sex symbol and Hollywood hopefuls were falling all over themselves to be just like her. Enter Greta, in a major, major transformation, as a statuesque, peroxide-blonde bombshell -- competing against the whistle-blowing likes of Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren. With mouth-dropping measurements reported at 40-24-36, this pin-up favorite became the best piece of Danish pastry in town. She also had her eyes out for films.

Like Ms. Mansfield and Ms. Van Doren, Greta's movie career was a bust -- literally. She bordered slightly on the seamy side and was offered such roles. However, she proved a trooper and was qualified enough to handle a scattered amount of low-grade crime dramas, adventures and horror stories -- a few having since reached "cult turkey" status. Greta actually started off in the quality movie Bus Stop (1956), unbilled as a "cover girl". She also served as Ms. Monroe's double in the movie. Another small film role in Accused of Murder (1956) led to a regular role as a busty "Pirate Girl" model on the quiz show Treasure Hunt (1956) starring wolfish host Jan Murray. She momentarily took a few male minds off the horrific The Beast of Budapest (1958) and did her scream queen schtick in Terror Is a Man (1959), in which she played vulnerable to a mad scientist-turned-panther-like creature à la "The Island of Dr. Moreau".

Greta added the requisite hard-boiled touch to the noirish detective film Three Blondes in His Life (1961) opposite Jock Mahoney and showed up in Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962) as well, which was another John Agar sci-fi cheapie. On television, she played a fetching foil in some of The Three Stooges shorts (Joe Besser was the third Stooge at the time) and appeared on television series, mostly crime stories, including Dragnet (1951) and Perry Mason (1957). Her film career ended dismally with the inane comedy Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers (1967), which pretty much says this all. Toward the end, she appeared in a couple of wink-wink stage comedies such as "Pajama Tops" until the early 1970s. She then retired from acting and moved to New York City where she found success as a painter, combining representational nude figures and surrealistic allegory. Generally, Greta took advantage of the equipment she had, made this work for her, and got her "fifteen minutes".

Greta Thyssen passed away at age 90 of complications from pneumonia on January 6, 2018 at her Manhattan home.

Carroll Baker was born on May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a traveling salesman, William W. Baker. She attended community college for a year and then worked as a dancer and magician's assistant. After a brief marriage, she had a small part in Easy to Love (1953), did TV commercials, and had a bit part on Broadway. She studied at the Actors Studio and was married to director Jack Garfein (one daughter, Blanche Baker). Warner Brothers, sensing a future Marilyn Monroe, cast her in Giant (1956), Baby Doll (1956) (Oscar nomination for her thumb-sucking role), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Harlow (1965) (title role). Moving to Italy, she made films there and in England, Germany, Mexico and Spain . After returning to American films, she married Donald Burton in 1982 and resided in Hampstead, London in the 1980s. They remained together until Burton's death from emphysema in their home in Cathedral City, California in 2007.

Lovely, auburn-haired Martha Vickers (nee Martha MacVicar) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 28, 1925, the daughter of James S. and Frances MacVicar. After attending schools in various states - Florida, Texas and California - she and her family settled on the West Coast. A raving beauty, she broke into the entertainment field as a model for still photographer William Mortenson. This attracted the interest of David O. Selznick and she signed a starlet contract with him, but nothing came of it. Universal took over her contract where she was groomed in inauspicious bit parts such as her corpse/victim in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), and in such low-level entries as Captive Wild Woman (1943) and The Mummy's Ghost (1944). In between assignments, Martha earned WWII pin-up exposure in such magazines as "Yank: The Army Weekly."

RKO gave her some higher-level billing chances with Marine Raiders (1944) and The Falcon in Mexico (1944), but it was Warner Bros. that put her officially on the map. The enticing Martha earned celebrity status and a new stage moniker when she generated some real heat as Lauren Bacall's wild, thumb-sucking sister Carmen in the film noir classic The Big Sleep (1946), which also starred Humphrey Bogart, playing the teenage nymphet "bad girl" for all it was worth. This major success quickly led to other "B" roles and not necessarily all "bad girl" parts. Highly appealing as the second femme lead in the pleasant musical The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946), Martha looked radiant but was overlooked for bigger things. She continued on and disrupted the proceedings again in the atmospheric film noir The Man I Love (1946) with Ida Lupino and finally earned leading lady status in That Way with Women (1947) opposite Dane Clark.

Very much a part of the Hollywood dating scene, which included actor James Stewart and director Frederick De Cordova, Martha finally married producer A.C. Lyles in March of 1948, but the marriage was over within a couple of months. Post-war films included Love and Learn (1947), another film noir piece Ruthless (1948), and the melodrama Bad Boy (1949), which was Audie Murphy's first starring role. She ended the decade top-lining the "Poverty-Row" drama Alimony (1949). Surprisingly, Martha's high-profiled second marriage in 1949 to film star Mickey Rooney (she was his third wife) did not advance her career. In fact, Martha was not seen in films at all during this period. Despite the couple having a son, Teddy Rooney, the next year (1950), Rooney had already hit the nadir of his career and had turned excessively to the bottle. Her marriage to Rooney would be short-lived as well.

Martha married a third time in 1954 to Chilean polo player-turned-actor Manuel Rojas, best known for his co-starring role in The Magnificent Matador (1955), and she finally returned to the screen in The Big Bluff (1955) co-starring with John Bromfield. The momentum, however, was gone and the movie did nothing to generate new interest. She did move, however, into TV and performed effectively in a number of dramatic showcases. She and Rojas had two children, Tina and Tessa. In 1960, Martha did her last filming with the western Four Fast Guns (1960) and after guesting on a couple of episodes of the TV series "The Rebel," ended her career. Not much was heard from this sultry beauty until her death from cancer in 1971 at age 46 in Hollywood, California.

American leading woman of films and television in the 1950s, whose career was hampered by injuries. Raised in San Francisco, Paula Raymond studied music, dance, and opera as a child. She made her film debut as a child by chance in Keep Smiling (1938) during a visit to Los Angeles. She remained to attend Hollywood High School and to appear in local theater productions. She returned to San Francisco for studies at San Francisco Junior College and, while there, entered into a brief marriage. Divorced, she came back to Hollywood and modeled. Although contracted to Paramount in 1947, she was released without working there and signed instead with Columbia. She made numerous television appearances and low-budget features before MGM signed her and began placing her in more important projects, starting with Adam's Rib (1949). Despite good notices and some successful films, she was eventually released from her contract. She made several unimportant pictures as a freelancer, then left the industry in 1955. She worked a number of non-film related jobs under a variation of her married name, then returned to acting in 1958. She had a long string of success in television, including State Trooper (1956), Mike Hammer (1958), Yancy Derringer (1958), Peter Gunn (1958), and others. This string of successes was shattered in a 1962 car crash. She was very nearly killed and had severe facial damage, requiring massive plastic surgery. Her beauty miraculously recovered, she managed to return to acting within a year and appeared occasionally into the 1970s. A series of subsequent falls injured her repeatedly, and she moved into business interests, though remaining an actor at heart.

London-born Sylvia May Laura Syms hit major film appeal at a relatively young age. Born on January 6, 1934, she was educated at convent schools before receiving dramatic training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her stage debut in a production of "The Apple Cart" in 1954.

A repertory player by the time she was discovered for films by the British star Anna Neagle and her director/husband Herbert Wilcox, the lovely demure blonde started out auspiciously enough in the delinquent film Teenage Bad Girl (1956) in which she played Neagle's troubled daughter. This was followed by a second Neagle/Wilcox collaboration with No Time for Tears (1957).

Excelling whether cast in stark melodrama, spirited adventure or harmless comedy fluff, Syms' film list grew impressive in the late 1950s and early 1960s working alongside the likes of John Mills and Anthony Quayle in Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Curd Jürgens and Orson Welles in Ferry to Hong Kong (1959), Lilli Palmer and Yvonne Mitchell in Conspiracy of Hearts (1960), Laurence Harvey in Expresso Bongo (1959), William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960), and Dirk Bogarde in the landmark gay-themed Victim (1961), playing the unsuspecting wife of Bogarde's closeted male. After nearly a decade's absence, Sylvia returned briefly to the London theatre lights in 1964 to play the title role in "Peter Pan."

Ably portraying innocent love interests throughout the years, she graced a number of pictures without ever nabbing that one role that would truly put her over the top. She was nominated, however, three times for British Film Academy Awards--twice for best actress in Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) and No Trees in the Street (1959) and once for supporting actress in The Tamarind Seed (1974) that starred Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif.

The 1970s saw quite a bit of TV series work and she played British prime minister Margaret Thatcher at one point on both stage and TV. She grew plumper with middle age and found herself immersed in character roles, offering support in such films as Absolute Beginners (1986), Shirley Valentine (1989) and Shining Through (1992).

The stage once again beckoned in the mid-to-late 1980's with touring performances, among many others, in "The Heiress," "The Beaux Stratagem," "The Ideal Husband," "A Doll's House," "Ghosts," "The Vortex," "Hamlet," "Anthony and Cleopatra" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" She portrayed the Queen and Margaret Thatcher in a production of "Ugly Rumours" and was among the cast in a musical presentation of "On the Town" in 2005.

Into the millennium, Sylvia has continued to have remarkable agility. American audiences have recently seen her as the dog-doting "Princess Charlotte" in the light teen comedy What a Girl Wants (2003) with Amanda Bynes and Colin Firth, and treading water as the Shelley Winters character in the TV-remake of The Poseidon Adventure (2005). Other movies have included the role of the Queen Mum in The Queen (2006) starring Oscar-winning Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, as well as featured roles in Is Anybody There? (2008) starring Michael Caine and Booked Out (2012). She also co-starred opposite Peter Bowles in the heart-warming senior character study Together (2018).

Married once and divorced in the 1980s from Alvin Edney, daughter Beatie Edney (aka Beatrice) is a highly prolific actress in her own right, and her son, Benjamin Edney, was briefly an actor while young and appeared with his mother as her son in the western The Desperados (1969). Ms. Syms is sometimes confused with Brooklyn-born jazz/cabaret performer and recording artist Sylvia Syms (1917-1992) (née Sylvia Blagman).

Age has not taken the flower off this Bloom. The well-known and highly respected stage, screen and television actress Claire Bloom continues to be in demand as an octogenarian actress and looks as beautiful as ever.

She was born Patricia Claire Blume on February 15, 1931, in Finchley, North London, to Elizabeth (Grew) and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales. Her parents were from Jewish families from Belarus. Educated at Badminton School in Bristol and Fern Hill Manor in New Milton, Claire expressed early interest in the arts and was stage trained as an adolescent at the Guildhall School, under the guidance of Eileen Thorndike, and then at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Marking her professional debut on BBC radio, she subsequently took her first curtain call with the Oxford Repertory Theatre in 1946 in the production of "It Depends What You Mean". She then received early critical accolades for her Shakespearean ingénues in "King John", "The Winter's Tale" and, notably, her Ophelia in "Hamlet" at age 17 at Stratford-on-Avon opposite alternating Hamlets Paul Scofield and Robert Helpmann. By 1949 Claire was making her West End debut with "The Lady's Not For Burning" with the up-and-coming stage actor Richard Burton.

A most becoming and beguiling dark-haired actress whose photogenic, slightly pinched beauty was accented by an effortless elegance and poise, Claire's inauspicious film debut came with a prime role in the British courtroom film drama The Blind Goddess (1948). It was her second film, when Charles Chaplin himself selected her specifically to be his young leading lady in the classic sentimental drama Limelight (1952), that propelled her to stardom. Her bravura turn as a young suicide-bent ballerina saved from despair by an aging music hall clown (Chaplin) was exquisitely touching and sparked an enviable but surprisingly sporadic career in films.

Despite the sudden film attention, Claire continued her formidable presence on the Shakespearean stage. Joining the Old Vic Company for the 1952-53 and 1953-54 seasons, she appeared as Helena, Viola, Juliet, Jessica, Miranda, Virgilia, Cordelia and (again) Ophelia in a highly successful tenure. Touring Canada and the United States as Juliet, she made her Broadway bow in the star-crossed-lover role in 1956, also playing the Queen in "Richard II". A strong presence on both the London and New York stages over the years, she gave other powerful performances with "The Trojan Women", "Vivat! Vivat! Regina!", "Hedda Gabler", "A Doll's House" and "A Streetcar Named Desire". Much later in life she performed in a superb one-woman show entitled "These Are Women: A Portrait of Shakespeare's Heroines" that included monologues from several of her acclaimed stage performances.

Claire's stylish and regal presence was simply ideal for mature period films, and she appeared opposite a roster of Hollywood's most talented leading men, including Laurence Olivier in the title role of Richard III (1955), Richard Burton and Fredric March in Alexander the Great (1956), Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), and Brynner and Charlton Heston in the DeMille epic The Buccaneer (1958), in which she had a rare dressed-down role as a spirited pirate girl. On the more contemporary scene, she appeared with Burton in two classic film dramas: the stark "kitchen sink" British stage piece Look Back in Anger (1959) and the Cold War espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). In addition she courted tinges of controversy, playing a housewife gone bonkers in the offbeat sudser The Chapman Report (1962) and a lesbian in the supernatural chiller The Haunting (1963).

Claire met first husband Rod Steiger while performing with him on stage in 1959's "Rashomon". They married that year and in 1960 had a daughter, Anna, who grew up to become a well-regarded opera singer. Claire and Rod appeared in two lesser films together, The Illustrated Man (1969) and Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), in 1969. That same year, they divorced after 10 tumultuous years.

As with other maturing actresses during the 1970s, Claire looked toward classy film roles in TV movies for sustenance, appearing in Backstairs at the White House (1979) as First Lady Edith Wilson and in Brideshead Revisited (1981), for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Also lauded were the epic miniseries Ellis Island (1984); a remake of Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables (1983); The Ghost Writer (1984), an acclaimed adaption of Philip Roth's novel ; and Shadowlands (1985), the latter earning her a British Television Award. Claire married Roth the writer (her third marriage) in 1990 after a brief second marriage to producer Hillard Elkins (1969-1972). The union with Roth lasted five years.

Claire appeared in several Shakespearean teleplays over the decades while also portraying a choice selection of historical royals, including Czarina Alexandra and Katherine of Aragon. On daytime drama, she delightfully played matriarch and murderess Orlena Grimaldi on the daytime drama As the World Turns (1956) starting in 1993. She left the role in 1995 and was replaced.

Continuing sporadically in films from the 1970s on, Claire graced such films as the stylish British social comedy A Severed Head (1971), the tender coming-of-age drama Red Sky at Morning (1971) as Richard Thomas's mother, and one of that year's versions of Ibsen's A Doll's House (1973) (Jane Fonda starred as Nora in the other). She also movingly played George C. Scott's estranged wife in Islands in the Stream (1977) and had a very brief cameo as Hera in Clash of the Titans (1981), a small part as a manipulative mother in Déjà Vu (1985), and mature parts in the romantic dramedy Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) and classic Woody Allen drama Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).

In the new millennium, Claire has been seen in such quality films as and The Book of Eve (2002), Imagining Argentina (2003), The King's Speech (2010) (as Queen Mary), And While We Were Here (2012), Max Rose (2013) starring a dramatic Jerry Lewis, and Miss Dalí (2018). She has also made appearances on such TV miniseries as The Ten Commandments (2006) and Summer of Rockets (2019).

Claire wrote two memoirs. The first was the more career-oriented "Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress," released in 1982. Her more controversial second book, "Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir," published in 1996, focused on her personal life.

French ballet dancer Leslie Caron was discovered by the legendary MGM star Gene Kelly during his search for a co-star in one of the finest musicals ever filmed, the Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951), which was inspired by and based on the music of George Gershwin. Leslie's gamine looks and pixie-like appeal would be ideal for Cinderella-type rags-to-riches stories, and Hollywood made fine use of it. Combined with her fluid dancing skills, she became one of the top foreign musical artists of the 1950s, while her triple-threat talents as a singer, dancer and actress sustained her long after musical film's "Golden Age" had passed.

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron was born in France on July 1, 1931. Her father, Claude Caron, was a French chemist, and her American-born mother, Margaret Petit, had been a ballet dancer back in the States during the 1920s. Leslie herself began taking dance lessons at age 11. She was on holidays at her grandparents' estate near Grasse when the Allies landed on the 15th of August 1944. After the German rendition, she and her family went to Paris to live. There she attended the Convent of the Assumption and started ballet training. While studying at the National Conservatory of Dance, she appeared at age 14 in "The Pearl Diver," a show for children where she danced and played a little boy. At age 16, she was hired by the renowned Roland Petit to join the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, where she was immediately given solo parts.

Leslie's talent and reputation as a dancer had already been recognized when on opening night of Petit's 1948 ballet "La Rencontre," which was based on the theme of Orpheus and featured the widely-acclaimed dancer 'Jean Babilee', she was seen by then-married Hollywood couple Gene Kelly and Betsy Blair. Leslie did not meet the famed pair at the end of the show that night as the 17-year-old went home dutifully right after her performance, but one year later Kelly remembered Leslie's performance when he returned to Paris in search for a partner for his upcoming movie musical An American in Paris (1951). The rest is history.

Kelly and newcomer Caron's touching performances and elegant and exuberant footwork (especially in the "Our Love Is Here to Stay" and "Embraceable You" numbers, as well as the dazzling 17-minute ballet to the title song) had critics and audiences simply enthralled. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, won a total of six Oscar awards, including "Best Picture," plus a Golden Globe for "Best Picture in a Musical or Comedy". Leslie was put under a seven-year MGM contract where her luminous skills would also be featured in non-musical showcases.

While Leslie's dramatic mettle was tested as a New Orleans nightclub entertainer opposite Ralph Meeker's boxer in Glory Alley (1952) and as a French governess in The Story of Three Loves (1953), it was as the child-like urchin who falls for a cruel carnival puppeteer (Mel Ferrer) in Lili (1953) that finally lifted Leslie to Academy Award attention. The film, which went on to inspire the Tony-winning Broadway musical "Carnival," earned Leslie not only an Oscar nomination, but the British Film Award for "Best Actress" as well. At her waif-like best once again in the musical Daddy Long Legs (1955), Leslie was paired this time with the "other" MGM male dancing legend Fred Astaire. The story, which unfolded in an appealing Henry Higgins/Eliza Dolittle style, was partly choreographed by Roland Petit, who founded the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, Leslie's former dance company.

While the actress gave poignant life to the ugly-duckling-turned-swan tale, The Glass Slipper (1955), choreographed by Petit and co-starring Britisher Michael Wilding as Prince Charming, Leslie also played a ballerina in love with WWII soldier John Kerr in Gaby (1956), a lukewarm remake of the superior Waterloo Bridge (1940). It took another plush musical classic, Gigi (1958), to remind audiences once again of Leslie's unique, international appeal. Audrey Hepburn, who had played the title part on Broadway, was keen on doing the film, but producer Arthur Freed wrote the part expressly for Leslie. It was also Freed who called up Fred Astaire to suggest her as his leading lady in Gigi (1958). Leslie tried the role out on the London stage prior to doing the film version. The musical wound up receiving nine Academy Awards, including "Best Picture," and Leslie herself was nominated for a Golden Globe as "Best Musical/Comedy Actress".

A few more forgettable film roles came and went until she returned triumphantly in a non-musical adaptation of a highly successful 1954 Broadway musical. The film version of Fanny (1961) was more adult in nature for Leslie and was blessed with gorgeous cinematography, a touching script and the continental flavor of veterans, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Horst Buchholz. At the movie's centerpiece is a child-like Leslie (at age 30!) who is mesmerizing as a young girl with child who is deserted by her sailor/boyfriend. Even more adult in scope was the shattering British drama The L-Shaped Room (1962) wherein the actress plays a pregnant French refugee who is abandoned yet again. She earned her a second British Academy Award and a second Oscar nomination for this superb performance.

On stage in London with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Leslie earned applause in another Audrey Hepburn Broadway vehicle, "Ondine," in 1961. While the mid-1960s and 1970s saw her film career take a Hollywood detour into breezy comedy with a number of lightweight fare opposite the likes of Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and Warren Beatty, she managed to shine with a complex working class mother role in the remarkable Italian film Il padre di famiglia (1967) starring Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi, and was spotted in the popular crossover film Valentino (1977) starring iconic Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev.

In the 1980s, Leslie appeared in stage productions of "Can-Can", "On Your Toes" and "One for the Tango". She also was invited and accepted to appear on American TV. At the age of 75, the actress won her first Emmy Award with her very moving portrayal of an elderly woman and closeted rape victim in a 2006 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). More recent filming have included Damage (1992) by Louis Malle, Chocolat (2000) by Lasse Hallström, and the Merchant Ivory romantic comedy/drama The Divorce (2003).

Leslie's private life has been more turbulent than expected. She is divorced from the late meat packing heir and musician Geordie Hormel; from avant-garde Royal Shakespeare director Peter Hall, by whom she has two children, Christopher and Jennifer (both of whom have careers in the entertainment field); and from her Chandler (1971) movie producer Michael Laughlin.

One of the few MGM post-musical stars to enjoy a long, lasting and formidable dramatic career, Leslie Caron is still continuing today though on a much more limited basis. In 2008, the actress published her memoirs, "Thank Heaven," later translated to French as "Une Francaise à Hollywood". In 2010, she triumphed on the Chatelet Theater stage in Paris with her portrayal of Madame Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music. More recently the still mesmerizing octogenarian had a recurring role as a countess in the British TV series The Durrells (2016). Over the years, she has received a number of "Life Achievement" awards for her contributions to both film and dance.

The daughter of actress Geneviève Sorya, in 1948 she played the part of Juliette in The Lovers of Verona (1949). During the 1950s and 1960s she made various films, including Montparnasse 19 (1958) and La Dolce Vita (1960), but only Lola (1961) , Jacques Demy, and A Man and a Woman (1966) Claude Lelouch saw major success. With the latter she had, but did not use, the chance to establish herself in the United States. Thereafter she only participated in second-tier productions in Europe and the United States.

Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, to substitute teacher Dorothy Arline (Benson) and pharmacist Edward Waldemar Seberg. Her father was of Swedish descent and her mother was of English and German ancestry.

One month before her 18th birthday, Jean landed the title role in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957) after a much-publicized contest involving some 18,000 hopefuls. The failure of that film and the only moderate success of her next, Bonjour Tristesse (1958), combined to stall Seberg's career, until her role in Jean-Luc Godard's landmark feature, Breathless (1960), brought her renewed international attention. Seberg gave a memorable performance as a schizophrenic in the title role of Robert Rossen's Lilith (1964) opposite Warren Beatty and went on to appear in over 30 films in Hollywood and Europe.

In the late 1960s, Seberg became involved in anti-war politics and was the target of an undercover campaign by the FBI to discredit her because of her association with several members of the Black Panther party. She was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1979.

Juliette Gréco was born on 7 February 1927 in Montpellier, Hérault, France. She was an actress, known for The Sun Also Rises (1957), Crack in the Mirror (1960) and The Big Gamble (1961). She was married to Gérard Jouannest, Michel Piccoli and Philippe Lemaire. She died on 23 September 2020 in Ramatuelle, Var, France.

Born in Hawthorne, California (Los Angeles area) on November 26, 1929, the former Betty Jean Striegler was part of the Meglin Kiddies troupe as a child and entered pictures in her adolescent years. Betta made her film debut at age 10 with an unbilled role of a little girl who sings Marlene Dietrich's song "Little Joe" in the classic western Destry Rides Again (1939) starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. She went on to also appear in an Our Gang short and had unbilled orphan roles in both Jane Eyre (1943) and Lydia (1941). She was also a one-time model.

The musical team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein took sharp notice of this young, attractive singing/dancing teen talent and gave her a small role in Broadway's "Carousel" in 1945. Four years later, when they were ready to cast the exotic role of "Liat" for their upcoming musical "South Pacific" starring Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, they had to look no further than darkly beautiful Betta St. John. The Broadway show was a blockbuster hit come opening night. While performing in the show's London tour at the Theatre Royale Drury Lane Theatre early in 1952, she met and worked with British opera singer and cast member Peter Grant (he played Lt. Cable). They married on November 27th of that year and remained so until his death in 1992.

The musical splash Betta made on Broadway suddenly reopened the door for some decorative film work. She made her adult debut in the second femme lead (behind Deborah Kerr) in Dream Wife (1953). In this she plays Tarji, a princess, who is courted by bachelor tycoon Cary Grant. This led to other "B"-level co-star/featured parts in a number of exotic eastern and western adventures throughout the 1950's including Miriam in the biblical epic The Robe (1953); Lady Iolanthe opposite Ricardo Montalban in The Saracen Blade (1954); Princess Johanna in The Student Prince (1954); outlaw Billy the Kid's (played by Scott Brady) love interest in The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954); a British belle in the mystery drama Alias John Preston (1955) which had a small featured role for husband Peter Grant; an alternative to "Jane" in Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957) starring Gordon Scott; and a Canadian islander (she is top-billed) in the British-made High Tide at Noon (1957).

After numerous guest appearances on TV here and in England, Betta co-starred with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee in the British-made horror Corridors of Blood (1958) and Lee again in the horror The City of the Dead (1960), and made one more movie excursion into the jungle with Gordon Scott's Tarzan in Tarzan the Magnificent (1960) before abandoning the limelight altogether.

Sultry, glamorous blonde Venetia Stevenson was a British-born starlet of late 1950s Hollywood whose face was her initial fortune; the camera simply adored her and, in her early years, she dotted the covers of several magazines. Her acting talent, however, never measured up and, within a few years, she willingly retired.

Born in London on March 10, 1938, Venetia came from strong entertainment stock. Her mother, actress Anna Lee, was a well-known co-star of the British cinema, and her father, director Robert Stevenson, was well-respected for his directing of such classy Grade "A" motion pictures as Nine Days a Queen (1936), King Solomon's Mines (1937), Back Street (1941) and Jane Eyre (1943). Just prior to the beginning of WWII in Europe, the family moved to Hollywood. By 1944, her parents had divorced and Venetia, eventually, decided to live with her father and new stepmother.

Venetia's photogenic beauty was apparent from the start. As part of the youthful Hollywood scene, she was quickly discovered and moved with ease into junior modeling work. This, plus her parents' obvious connections, led to a natural progression into acting. Self-admittedly, she was never a confidant actress. Making her TV debut playing a corpse on Matinee Theatre (1955), she also appeared with her mother and the husband/wife team of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl in a 1955 Arizona stage production of "Liliom", in order to gain experience. Signed with RKO, Venetia took acting lessons and posed for publicity stills but she made little progress there. Warner Bros. eventually took her on and she made several guest appearances on TV, including that of Ricky Nelson's girlfriend on the popular series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952). Other WB series work included roles on Cheyenne (1955) and 77 Sunset Strip (1958).

Venetia made her film entrance with a decorous, second-lead femme role in the WB war picture Darby's Rangers (1958), starring James Garner, Peter Brown and Edd Byrnes. As part of the Hollywood dating swirl, there were obvious set-ups with such big stars as Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins and, even, Elvis Presley. Such a set-up led to a 1956 marriage to up-and-coming actor/dancer Russ Tamblyn, but the bloom quickly fell off the rose and the couple divorced a year later.

For the most part. Venetia was cast as a beautiful distraction in action-adventure and crime movies. Her handful of hunky movie co-stars included Jeff Richards and Guy Madison. Such routine roles in Day of the Outlaw (1959), Island of Lost Women (1959), Studs Lonigan (1960), Seven Ways from Sundown (1960), The City of the Dead (1960), which was made in her native England and released here as "Horror Hotel", and The Sergeant Was a Lady (1961), her last, did little to boost her feelings of adequacy or her Hollywood ranking. Mother Anna Lee, who found renewed recognition as a daytime soap doyenne ("Lila Quartermaine" on General Hospital (1963)), appeared in support of her daughter in two films: Jet Over the Atlantic (1959) and The Big Night (1960). Divorced from Tamblyn, Venetia married one of The Everly Brothers, Don Everly, of "Wake Up, Little Susie" fame, in 1962. At this point, she had no qualms about retiring from the ever-competitive acting world and did so. The couple went on to have two daughters and a son. Stacy Everly and Erin Everly both dabbled in acting, and son Edan Everly delved into music as both a singer and guitarist. He also teaches music and produces/writes for other artists.

In later years, Venetia became a script reader for Burt Reynolds's production company and, subsequently, became vice-president of Cinema Group, a production company that made several films in the 1980s. Since her 1970 divorce from Everly, the still-beautiful lady, who enjoys horseback riding, has not remarried.

Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west. The move there encouraged her to consider acting as a vocation. By the time she was 13 she had already appeared in a stage production of 'Seen but Not Heard'", and had garnered rave reviews from the tough Broadway critics. The play helped her gain entrance to an exclusive acting school.

In 1937, Anne made her first foray into Hollywood to test the waters there in the film industry. As she was thought to be too young for a film career, she packed her bags and returned to the New York stage with her mother, where she continued to act on Broadway and summer stock up and down the East Coast. Undaunted by the failure of her previous effort to crack Hollywood, Anne returned to California two years later to try again. This time her luck was somewhat better. She took a screen test which was ultimately seen by the moguls of Twentieth Century-Fox, and she was signed to a seven-year contract. However, before she could make a movie with Fox, Anne was loaned out to MGM to make 20 Mule Team (1940). At only 17 years of age, she was already in the kind of pictures that other starlets would have had to slave for years as an extra before landing a meaty role. Back at Fox, that same year, Anne played Mary Maxwell in The Great Profile (1940), which was a box-office dud. The following year she played Amy Spettigue in the remake of Charley's Aunt (1941). It still wasn't a great role, but it was better than a bit part. The only other film job Anne appeared in that year was in Swamp Water (1941). It was the first role that was really worth anything, but critics weren't that impressed with Anne, her role nor the movie. In 1942 Anne played Joseph Cotten's daughter, Lucy Morgan, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The following year she appeared in The North Star (1943), the first film where she received top billing. The film was a critical and financial success and Anne came in for her share of critical plaudits. Guest in the House (1944) the next year was a dismal failure, but Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) was received much better by the public, though it was ripped apart by the critics. Anne starred with John Hodiak, who would become her first husband in 1947 (Anne was to divorce Hodiak in 1954. Her other two husbands were Randolph Galt and David Klee).

In 1946 Anne portrayed Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), a film that would land her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had come a long way in so short a time, but for her next two films she was just the narrator: Mother Wore Tights (1947) and Blaze of Noon (1947). It would be 1950 before she landed another decent role--the part of Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950). This film garnered Anne her second nomination, but she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950). After several films through the 1950s, Anne landed what many considered a plum role--Queen Nefretiri in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Never in her Hollywood career did Anne look as beautiful as she did as the Egyptian queen, opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. After that epic, job offers got fewer because she wasn't tied to a studio, instead opting to freelance her talents. After no appearances in 1958, she made one film in 1959 Season of Passion (1959) and one in 1960 Cimarron (1960).

After Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she took a hiatus from filming for the next four years. She was hardly idle, though. She appeared often on stage and on television. She wasn't particularly concerned with being a celebrity or a personality; she was more concerned with being just an actress and trying hard to produce the best performance she was capable of. After several notable TV appearances, Anne became a staple of two television series, East of Eden (1981) and Hotel (1983). Her final moment before the public eye was as Irene Adler in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984). On December 12, 1985, Anne died of a stroke in New York. She was 62.

Kentucky-born Marie McDonald, born Cora Marie Frye in 1923, was a leggy, voluptuous blonde starlet who pursued her career with a vengeance but found little reward in the end. Her mother was a former Ziegfeld girl and her grandmother an operatic singer. Her father, on the other hand, was not so artistically inclined, earning a living as a warden at Leavenworth Prison. Her parents divorced when Marie was just 6 years old. Marie's mother remarried and the new family moved to Yonkers, New York, where she attended Roosevelt High School and excelled in piano and wrote for the school newspaper.

Although Marie was offered a college scholarship by Columbia University in journalism, Marie's impressive beauty and physical assets propelled her to try a show business career. A Powers model at 15 (she lied about her age), she quit high school and started entering beauty contests, winning the "Miss Yonkers" and "The Queen of Coney Island" titles, among others. In 1939 she was crowned "Miss New York," but subsequently lost at the "Miss America" pageant.

The attention she received from her beauty titles, however, pointed her straight to the Broadway stage and the "George White's Scandals of 1939." This in turn led to her move to Los Angeles, finding work in the chorus line while trying to break into pictures. She found her first singing work with Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra on his radio show and eventually joined other bands as well. Although Universal signed her up, she couldn't get past a few one-line jobs. She knew publicity would have to be her mode of operation if she was to draw the necessary attention and advance her career.

Press agents dubbed Marie "The Body" and the tag eventually stuck. Though her physical attributes were impressive, her talent was less so. Managing to come her way were the films Guest in the House (1944), Living in a Big Way (1947) with Gene Kelly and Tell It to the Judge (1949). Marie was once in contention for the Billie Dawn role in "Born Yesterday," which could have been her big break, but she lost out to Judy Holliday. The audience simply didn't latch on to Marie and she ended up more on the road doing bus-and-truck shows than anything else.

Despite a plethora of tabloid attention, which included her seven marriages and numerous sex scandals in addition to the publicity hijinks she managed to muster up, notoriety that would have made the late Jayne Mansfield envious, Marie's career eventually stalled and she turned to drink, drugs and despair. This led to frequent skirmishes with the law and more than a few nervous breakdowns. Her last effective role was in the Jerry Lewis starrer The Geisha Boy (1958) where she gamely played a snippy movie star at the mercy of the comedian's outrageous slapstick. In 1965, at age 42, the never-say-die gal finally decided enough was enough and she ended it all with an overdose of pills.

Suzanne Pleshette achieved television immortality in her role as Bob Newhart's wife in the 1970s classic situation comedy, The Bob Newhart Show (1972). For her role as "Emily Hartley," wife of psychologist "Bob Hartley" (played by Bob Newhart), Pleshette was nominated for the Emmy Award twice, in 1977 and 1978. She was also nominated for an Emmy in 1962 for a guest appearance on the TV series, Dr. Kildare (1961) and, in 1991, for playing the title role in Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990) in a 1990 TV movie. Her acting career lasted almost 50 years.

Suzanne Pleshette was born on January 31, 1937, in New York, New York, to Gene Pleshette, a TV network executive who had managed the Paramount Theaters in Manhattan and Brooklyn during the Big Band era, and the former Geraldine Kaplan, a dancer who performed under the pseudonym Geraldine Rivers. Pleshette claims that she was not an acting natural, but just "found" herself attending New York City's High School of the Performing Arts. After graduating high school, she attended Syracuse University for a semester before returning to NYC to go to Finch College, an elite finishing school for well-to-do young ladies. After a semester at Finch, Pleshette dropped out of college to take lessons from famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

She made her Broadway debut in 1957 as part of the supporting cast for the play Compulsion (1959). Initially cast as "The Fourth Girl," she eventually took over the ingénue role during the play's run.

Blessed with beauty, a fine figure, and a husky voice that made her seem older than her years, she quickly achieved success on both the small and big screens. She made her TV debut, at age 20, in Harbourmaster (1957), then was chosen as the female lead opposite superstar Jerry Lewis in his 1958 comedy, The Geisha Boy (1958). On Broadway, she replaced Anne Bancroft in the Broadway hit The Miracle Worker (1962).

Once Pleshette started acting, her career never lagged until she was afflicted with cancer.

Her most famous cinematic role was in Alfred Hitchcock's classic, The Birds (1963), as the brunette schoolteacher jilted by the hero of the film, "Mitch Brenner" (played by Rod Taylor). Pleshette's warm, earthy character was a perfect contrast to the icy blonde beauty, "Melanie Daniels" (Tippi Hedren).

Frankly, it is hard to understand how Taylor's Mitch would jilt Pleshette's Annie, other than to work out Hitchcock's dark vision of society and psychosexual relations between the sexes, in which amoral blondes triumph for aesthetic rather than moral reasons.

Still, it is for Emily Hartley she will always be remembered, for both the original show and her part in another show that had the most clever sign-off episode in TV series history. Bob Newhart had enjoyed a second success during the 1980s with his TV sitcom Newhart (1982), and when he decided to end that series, he asked Suzanne Pleshette to come back. She did, reprising her tole of Emily in a final episode of Newhart, where Newhart woke up as Bob Hartley from "The Bob Newhart Show" in the bedroom of the Hartley's Chicago apartment, Pleshette's Emily at his side. Bob Hartley then told his wife Emily of a crazy dream he'd just had, where he was the proprietor of a Vermont inn overrun with eccentrics, the premise of the second show.

After "The Bob Newhart Show" ceased production, Suzanne Pleshette worked regularly on television, mostly in TV movies. Although she was a talented dramatic actress, she had a flair for comedy and, in 1984, she headlined her own series at CBS. She helped develop the half-hour sitcom, and even had the rare honor of having her name in the title. Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs (1984), however, was not a success. She co-starred with Hal Linden in another short-lived CBS TV series, The Boys Are Back (1994), in the 1994-95 season, then had recurring roles in the TV series Good Morning, Miami (2002) and 8 Simple Rules (2002).

Pleshette was married three times: In 1964, she wed teen idol Troy Donahue, her co-star in the 1962 film Rome Adventure (1962) and in 1964's A Distant Trumpet (1964), but the marriage lasted less than a year. She was far more successful in her 1968 nuptials to Texas oil millionaire Tommy Gallagher, whom she remained married to until his death in 2000. After becoming a widow, she and widower Tom Poston (a Newhart regular) rekindled an old romance they had enjoyed when appearing together in "The Golden Fleecing," a 1959 Broadway comedy. They were married from 2001 until Poston's death, in April 2007.

Pleshette was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent chemotherapy in the summer of 2006; she rallied, but in late 2007, she barely survived a bout of pneumonia. She died of respiratory failure on January 19, 2008, a few days shy of her 71st birthday.

Suzanne Pleshette was remembered as a gregarious, down-to-earth person who loved to talk and often would regale her co-stars with a naughty story. Newhart and his producers had picked her for the role of Emily in "The Bob Newhart Show" after watching her appearances with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), where she showed herself to be a first-rate raconteuse. Because she could hold her own with Newhart's friend Carson, it was felt she would be a perfect foil as Newhart's TV wife.

She accepted the part, and TV history was made.

No shrinking violet this one, but despite her talent, vivacity and sheer drive, lovely and alluring blonde Evelyn Keyes would remain for the most part typed as a "B" girl on the silver screen. In spite of her ripe contributions to such superior pictures as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), The Jolson Story (1946), Mrs. Mike (1949), The Prowler (1951) and 99 River Street (1953), she received no significant awards during her career. In fact, film-goers seem to remember her best not for one of these exceptional co-starring parts, but for her bit role as Scarlett O'Hara's kid sister in Gone with the Wind (1939), American's most beloved epic film. Evelyn also kept Hollywood alive and kicking with two sensationalistic memoirs that chronicled her four dicey marriages, numerous affairs with the rich and famous, and negative takes on the Hollywood studio system.

Evelyn Louise Keyes was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on November 20, 1916 (for decades she would deceive the public as to her real age). Her father died when she was two, and she and her only brother and three sisters grew up living with her mother and her grandmother in Atlanta, Georgia. Taking voice, dance and piano lessons, she was hopeful of becoming a ballerina. Instead, she entered a beauty pageant or two and worked as a chorus girl before relocating to California at age 20. Shortly after her arrival in Los Angeles, a chance meeting with the legendary Cecil B. DeMille led to a Paramount Pictures contract. Stories differ as to how she met De Mille. Hollywood folklore has it that she was "discovered" by a talent scout in true Lana Turner fashion while eating at a restaurant. Another, more believable story has it that she hooked up with one of De Mille's former writers, which led to an introduction.

Nevertheless, she was groomed as a starlet and initially placed in bit and/or unbilled roles. De Mille first gave her a small part in his pirate epic The Buccaneer (1938), then placed her rather obscurely in his sprawling railroad saga Union Pacific (1939). It was David O. Selznick who gave her the bit part of whiny, bratty Suellen O'Hara, who loses her beau to the more calculating Scarlett in "Gone with the Wind". This led directly to her signing with Columbia Pictures. In 1938, just prior to the filming of GWTW, she married businessman Barton Bainbridge, her first of four. The marriage soured within a year or so, however, after she took up with Budapest-born director Charles Vidor, who directed three of her pictures: The Lady in Question (1940) (her first at Columbia), Ladies in Retirement (1941) and The Desperadoes (1943). This second marriage lasted about as long as the first (1943-1945), supposedly due to Vidor's infidelities.

At Columbia Evelyn hit pin-up status and sparked a number of war-era pictures. She played Boris Karloff's daughter in the crime horror Before I Hang (1940) and a blind woman who befriends the hideously scarred Peter Lorre in the excellent The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Still, she could not rise above her secondary status. For every one nifty "B" picture that could propel her into the higher ranks, such as Dangerous Blondes (1943), there was always a low-caliber western (Beyond the Sacramento (1940)), adventure (A Thousand and One Nights (1945)) or musical (The Thrill of Brazil (1946)) lurking about to keep her humble.

In the post-war years, a third tempestuous but highly adventurous marriage (1946-1950) to Hollywood titan John Huston made the tabloid papers practically on a weekly basis. They divorced after four years. She did some of her best work during this period, particularly as the wife of Al Jolson opposite Larry Parks' splendid impersonation. She also showed she had a strong range and earned snappy notices alongside Dick Powell in the film noir Johnny O'Clock (1947) as well as the title comedy character in The Mating of Millie (1948) co-starring Glenn Ford.

Her last (and just as questionable) marriage was to another "father figure" type, musician Artie Shaw, a womanizer if ever there was one who had already had been discarded by trophy wives Ava Gardner and Lana Turner (and five others) by the time he and Evelyn married in 1957. She had pretty much put her career on the back burner by this point. Surprisingly, this marriage lasted longer than any of their previous ones. The couple separated in the 1970s but did not divorce until 1985.

Evelyn returned to the acting fold every once in while. Scarcely on stage (she once played Sally Bowles in a theatrical production of "I Am a Camera" in 1953), she joined up with Don Ameche in a 1972 tour of the musical "No, No, Nanette". She also would show up on an episode of The Love Boat (1977) or Murder, She Wrote (1984) every now and then. She remained childless (there was one adopted child, Pedro, by Huston, but they were estranged).

Very much the traveler, Evelyn lived sporadically all over the world, including France, England and Mexico, and spoke Spanish and French fluently. She was also a writer and published a Hollywood-themed novel in her later years. Her GWTW association and tell-all memoirs in 1977 and 1991 kept her a point of interest right up until the end. Not surprisingly, this firecracker of a lady passed away on the 4th of July -- at age 91 of uterine cancer at an assisted-living residence in Montecito, California.

Gorgeous was too tame a word for this foreigner stunner. Glamorous brunette beauty Ursula Thiess was born Ursula Schmidt in Hamburg, Germany on May 15, 1924, the daughter of Hans Schmidt, who managed a printing company, and Wilhelmine Lange, her turbulent childhood including working as compulsory farm laborer on the orders of the Nazi government when the teen refused to join the paramilitary Hitler Youth Movement. She later began her entertainment career in her native homeland appearing on the stage and dubbing female voices in American films.

Married to director Georg Thieß, the couple's marriage was a relatively unhappy one and they eventually divorced. With two children (Manuela and Michael) in tow, she found work in the late 1940s/early 1950s as a fashion model in Berlin. She left postwar Germany at the urging of Howard Hughes and signed up with his RKO company for film representation.

Billed as "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" during her initial build-up, her debut movie was as a mixed-race English/Indian girl in the outdoor drama Monsoon (1952) opposite the handsome, frequently bare-chested George Nader. While she failed to weave the same kind of foreign magic as that of Marlene Dietrich, she was far more beautiful and was voted "Most Promising Star of 1952" by Modern Screen Magazine and a Golden Globe the next year. This exotic temptation remained a fetching distraction amid the rugged scenery where, percentage-wise, the story and action remained strongly focused on her handsome he-man co-stars: Robert Stack in The Iron Glove (1954); Rock Hudson in Bengal Brigade (1954); and Glenn Ford in The Americano (1955); Robert Mitchum in Bandido! (1956), among others. Her Hollywood career wound up very short but sweet.

During her brief peak, Ursula met and eventually married the exceedingly handsome film star Robert Taylor (in 1954) and she subsequently abandoned her film career. Outside of her two children by her first marriage, Ursula had two more children (Terrance in 1955 and Tessa in 1959), by Taylor. Though she seemed quite content to be out of the limelight, she did appear with some regularity on her husband's TV series The Detectives (1959) during its first season, playing a police reporter who has a brief affair with Taylor's character. While raising her children was her prime job, she also became an active volunteer at a children's hospital.

Following her son Michael's tragic suicide from a drug overdose and husband Taylor's death shortly thereafter from lung cancer, both in 1969, Ursula was glimpsed here and there in a light sprinkling of film and TV appearances before bowing out completely. .

Surviving an operation for a benign brain tumor in 1979, the former actress married wealthily for a third time and lived in Hawaii during part of that marriage, but would find herself widowed again in 1987 after 12 years. Known to be an excellent home decorator and gourmet cook, she eventually wrote an autobiography entitled "But I Have Promises to Keep" in 2003. Living in the Los Angeles area for the remainder of her life, she eventually entered an assisted facility in Burbank and died on June 19, 2010, at the age of 86, survived by her three remaining children.

The less famous, but still undeniably talented, of the "Marilyn" sex symbols of the 1940s/'50s was born Marvel Marilyn Maxwell in Clarinda, Iowa on August 3, 1920 (she later began using her middle name professionally at the suggestion of Louis B. Mayer). As a teenager, she worked as an usher at the Rialto Theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and later as a radio singer.

In 1942, Maxwell signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, appearing on such radio shows as "The Abbott and Costello Show", "Beat the Band", and "Stars Over Hollywood". That same year, she made her movie debut in the star-studded World War II propaganda film Stand by for Action (1942). She went on to star in such popular movies of the 1940s/50s as Thousands Cheer (1943), Lost in a Harem (1944), Champion (1949), Key to the City (1950), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) (in which she introduced the carol "Silver Bells"), and Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). Throughout World War II, and later the Korean War, she accompanied three-time co-star (and off-screen lover) Bob Hope on USO tours to entertain troops.

Throughout the 1950s, Maxwell directed her focus to television, with guest appearances on such series as The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), General Electric Theater (1953), The Red Skelton Hour (1951), The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (1956), and Playhouse 90 (1956). This continued into the '60s, as Maxwell appeared on Wagon Train (1957), The Danny Thomas Show (1953), Burke's Law (1963), The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), and The Bob Hope Show (1950), and even game shows such as I've Got a Secret (1952) and Stump the Stars (1947). Her most prominent part in this period was that of diner owner Grace Sherwood on Bus Stop (1961), a series she left after one season after becoming bored of "doing nothing but pour a second cup of coffee and point the way to the men's room".

Maxwell was married three times - to actor John Conte, restaurateur Anders Nylund McIntyre, and producer Jerry Davis - each marriage ending in divorce. She had one son with Davis, Matthew (b. 1956). On March 20, 1972, 15 year-old Matthew returned home from school, only to find his mother dead from an apparent heart attack. Maxwell was 51 at the time of her death.

Marla English was born Marlene Gaile English in San Diego, Califonia, on January 4, 1935. She was the daughter of Bertha Lenore and Arthur H. English, and Marla was the nickname given to her by friends of the family who took care of her when her mother fell ill in 1939. She began modeling at the age of 12, and became a member of San Diego's Globe Theatre while a sophomore in high school, and played roles in their productions of "Mad Woman of Chaillot" and "Cricket on the Hearth" while continuing her modeling career. Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract in the fall of 1952, and she had parts in five Paramount films.

Lizabeth Scott was born Emma Matzo in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the oldest of six children of Mary (Pennock) and John Matzo, who were Slovak immigrants. Scott attended Marywood Seminary and the Alvienne School of the Theatre in New York City, where she adopted the stage name of "Elizabeth Scott." After doing a national tour of Hellzapoppin, she was discovered by Broadway producer Michael Myerberg in 1942. Scott was the understudy for Tallulah Bankhead in the original Broadway production of "The Skin of Our Teeth." Later in 1943, a Warner Brothers producer, Hal B. Wallis, discovered Scott at her 21st birthday party held at the Stork Club in New York. Wallis scheduled an interview with Scott the following day, but Scott canceled it when a telegram asked her to replace Miriam Hopkins at the Boston production of The Skin of Our Teeth.

In 1944, Scott was invited to Los Angeles by agent Charles K. Feldman, who saw her photos in "Harpers Bazaar." After failed screen tests at Universal, International, then Warner Brothers, Scott again met Wallis, who said he would hire her if he had the power. Scott mistakenly believed that Wallis was as powerful as Jack L. Warner, and did not believe him. The day Scott left for New York, she read in Variety that Wallis resigned from Warner and formed his own production company, releasing films primarily through Paramount. A few months later, she returned from New York and was finally signed to Paramount. Scott appeared in 21 films between 1945 and 1957, though loaned out for half of her films to United Artists, RKO and Columbia. When Scott was introduced to the public in 1945, Paramount publicity releases, exaggerating her background, claimed Scott was a debutante, that her grocer father was an English-born, New York banker, and that her mother was a White Russian aristocrat.

Scott's first film was You Came Along (1945), with Robert Cummings as the leading man. This Ayn Rand scripted film introduced the 23-year old smoky blonde to the American public. In a role originally intended for Barbara Stanwyck, Scott played a US Treasury PR flack that falls in love with an Army Air Force officer, who tries to hide his terminal leukemia. Despite Scott's difficulties with director John Farrow, who lobbied for Teresa Wright, the film remains one Scott's favorites.

On the strength of her first performance, Wallis starred Scott in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) over Stanwyck's protests. Scott ended up in third place at the top behind Stanwyck and Van Heflin, with Kirk Douglas, in his film debut, billed below the three stars. The film is actually two in one, with Stanwyck and Scott inhabiting two parallel worlds, both linked by Heflin. The female leads have only one brief scene together. The director, Lewis Milestone, swore never to work with Wallis again, who wanted to re-shoot all of Scott's scenes, which Wallis had to do personally. The film boasts an Oscar nominated screenplay by screenplay by Robert Rossen, music by Miklós Rózsa, art direction by Hans Dreier, and costumes by Edith Head.

In Scott's third film, she is cast with Humphrey Bogart in Dead Reckoning (1946). It is Scott's first crack as the archetypal femme fatale. In Dead Reckoning she lures Bogart into a web of lies, and deceit. As is typical in the noir genre, her power is rooted in her beauty and sexual allure. In a departure from his tough guy roles, Bogart plays a wronged man (a noir hero), who struggles to learn the fate of a missing army buddy. Scott is the ex-girlfriend who knows more than she lets on. To keep Bogart from learning the truth about his lost friend and his mysterious double life, Scott seduces him into believing she loves him.

In her fourth film, Scott appeared in the second noir to be shot in color, Desert Fury (1947), a coming-of-age story scripted again by Robert Rossen, based on the novel "Desert Town" by Ramona Stewart. Mary Astor is Fritzi Haller, a casino and bordello owner who runs the corrupt town of Chuckawalla, Nevada. She controls everyone in town, including the judge and sheriff's office. The only one who dares defy Fritzi is her rebellious daughter Paula (Scott), who returns home after being expelled from another private school. When John Hodiak, a professional gambler, comes to town, Paula falls in love with him and trouble ensues. Then newcomers Burt Lancaster, and Wendell Corey also appear.

In 1947, Scott was again cast with Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in I Walk Alone (1947), a story of betrayal and vengeance. Scott plays a nightclub singer who provides sympathy and support to Lancaster, recently released from prison to collect a debt, but is double-crossed by the Douglas character. Scott rises above it all and is completely convincing in her portrayal. Scott's character provides a degree of romanticism and humanism usually lacking in film noir.

Film number seven was Pitfall (1948). Dick Powell played a middle-level insurance investigator, married to his high school sweetheart, Jane Wyatt. They living out a comfortable but boring existence in a post-war Los Angeles suburb. Powell is restless and unfulfilled ("I feel like a wheel within a wheel within a wheel") when he receives what at first seems like a routine assignment to recover goods that have been bought with stolen money, a claim paid off by Powell's firm. The items are traced to Mona Stevens (Scott), a model living in Marina Del Rey. Powell is attracted to her, and what starts out as innocent flirtation ends up in a passionate love affair. Powell's journey into a daydream turns into a nightmare as he becomes a prisoner in his own home and kills an assailant, who has been set on his trail by a jealous private investigator, played by Raymond Burr. Meanwhile, the Burr character also blackmails Mona into doing private "fashion shows."

In Too Late for Tears (1949), Scott played an avaricious Jane Palmer, a wife who goes to any length to keep $60,000 that is accidentally thrown in the back of her husband's car. She eventually leaves behind a string of bodies in an effort to keep the money. This film is widely regarded by critics and viewers alike as Scott's best performance and film. Don DeFore, Arthur Kennedy, and Kristine Miller also star.

Also of interest is 1949's Easy Living (1949), an intelligent, well-written film about an aging football star, played by Victor Mature, who struggles to adjust to his impending retirement, as well as the pressures brought on by an ambitious and defiant wife (Scott). Lucille Ball is commendable as the sympathetic team secretary and director Jacques Tourneur is first-rate. One of Scott's finest roles, it is a favorite of many of her fans.

By the end of 1949 Scott appeared in nine films, but did not achieve the level of stardom and clout that was needed to maintain her popularity at the box-office. From 1950 on, she and Hal Wallis passed up numerous opportunities to maintain her stardom. Wallis passed up a chance to star Scott in Lillian Hellman's Broadway play "Another Part of the Forest" (1946), later to made into the 1948 film. Scott herself passed up the lead in "The Rose Tattoo (1955), a decision she publicly regretted. She continued to make films such as Dark City (1950), Red Mountain (1951), Two of a Kind (1951), Scared Stiff (1953), and Bad for Each Other (1953). In February 1954, Scott did not renew her contract with Paramount and became a freelancer. She went on to make the western noir Silver Lode (1954) and The Weapon (1956).

In 1957 she retired from the big screen by starring with Elvis Presley in Loving You (1957), Presley's second film. Also starring is newcomer Dolores Hart and veteran Wendell Corey. Since 1957 Scott appeared on a few television shows in the 1960s, during which time she attended the University of Southern California. She eventually became involved in real estate projects. Her legacy lives on, however, in the growing popularity of classic movies sparked by DVDs and movie channels such as AMC (American Movie Classics) and TCM (Turner Classic Movies).

Irene Papas was born on 3 September 1929 in Chilimodion, Corinth, Greece. She was an actress and director, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Message (1976) and Electra (1962). She was married to José Kohn and Alkis Papas. She died on 14 September 2022 in Chiliomodion, Corinthia, Greece.

Born in Boise City, Oklahoma, Vera Miles attended school in Pratt, Kansas and Wichita, Kansas. The patrician beauty of Miss Miles won her the title of "Miss Kansas" in 1948, leading soon to small roles in Hollywood films and television series. Fame came to the forthright, spirited Miles when she attracted the attention of two master directors, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford. Ford cast her in the classic western The Searchers (1956) and Hitchcock, who put her under personal contract and hailed her as his "new Grace Kelly", paired her with the great Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man (1956). Hitchcock cast Miles in the potentially star-making role of Judy Barton in Vertigo (1958), but Miles withdrew from the film when she became pregnant. Hitchcock gave Miles a supporting role in another masterpiece Psycho (1960), as did Ford when he cast her opposite John Wayne and James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), She also starred in such films as Beau James (1957) opposite Bob Hope, The FBI Story (1959) opposite Stewart, Back Street (1961) opposite Susan Hayward and John Gavin and Sergeant Ryker (1968) opposite Lee Marvin, as well as showing her consistently remarkable and versatile talent on dozens of popular television movies and series including The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962), The Twilight Zone (1959), The Outer Limits (1963), The Fugitive (1963), My Three Sons (1960), Bonanza (1959), Columbo (1971) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). In 1983, she reprised her role as "Lila Crane" in the film sequel Psycho II (1983), starring Anthony Perkins. Although, too often, the stunningly beautiful Miles' gifts were underutilized, before her retirement in 1995, hers was a most intriguing and enduring Hollywood career.

Gallic Actress Anne Vernon, who was born Edith Antoinette Alexandrine Vignaud in Saint-Denis, France, in January 1924, is not well known outside of Europe. Following graduation from the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts, she found work as a model and apprenticed with an advertising designer. Developing an interest in acting, she subsequently toured with a French theatre group before embarking on a movie career. Glamorous leading lady roles came her way beginning in 1948, particularly in light post-war romantic souffles and farcical comedies where she sweetly played ingénues both English-speaking (Warning to Wantons (1949)) and non-English speaking (Edward and Caroline (1951)). Capable of tense dramatic roles as well, she made only one Hollywood film during her career, playing second femme lead in the film noir Shakedown (1950) with Howard Duff and Peggy Dow.

Audiences might recognize her from the British films Terror on a Train (1953) [aka Terror on a Train] as a bomb defuser Glenn Ford's wife, and the mild comedy The Love Lottery (1954), as part of a love triangle with David Niven and Peggy Cummins. For the most part, however, Anne stayed on French/Italian soil appearing opposite such dashing leading men as Daniel Gélin, Vittorio Gassman and Jean Marais. In the 1960s she matured into chic, maternal roles, most noticeably as Catherine Deneuve's cautious, concerned mother in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) [The Umbrellas of Cherbourg]. Surprisingly, she also had a role in the notorious soft-core lesbian flick Therese and Isabelle (1968). Following some TV work in the early 1970s, she gently phased out her career.

In a world weary of war and dispirited by the ravages of the Great Depression, Hollywood at the turn of the 1940s concocted a wildly popular, effective lot of escapist fare (though often cheaply made) to regale the sick at heart worldwide. Universal Pictures, more often than not, led in producing such films. We know about the monster movies: wolf men, invisible men -- and invisible women too, for that matter. We know about Sherlock Holmes chasing not killer hounds in 1890 but chasing killer Nazis a half- century later. Such were among typical Universal "B" productions. Enter Maria de Santo Silas -- Maria Montez. This daughter of a Spanish diplomat traveled extensively after being educated in the Canary Islands and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to establish herself as a stage actress in Europe. In 1940 she found herself in New York City, a model. Her screen career began in 1941, with Universal casting her in bit parts. On account of her strikingly exotic looks and her exotic accent, the studio soon paired her with other "exotics" (Sabu and Turhan Bey), and usually with a more "home-style" hero (Jon Hall), in a series of low-budget adventures, filmed in Technicolor and situated in fantasy lands, with Montez herself often situated in revealing dress. With Montez threatened by all manner of nastiness -- from evil caliphs to man-eating sharks to her own cobra-worshipping twin sister (!) -- her pictures soon became immensely popular, even though she could not really act, could not dance and could not sing. Audiences flocked to see her films, just to witness the trials and endurance of an alluring beauty in distress (as well, perhaps, as to glimpse some scantily clad, beauteous flesh). The Depression having long since passed, the end of World War II meant also the end of flying carpets and sand dunes and deadly reptiles as potential subjects for attracting moviegoers. That bit of history, plus a bit of girth added to Montez's frame, led her and her husband, the actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, to abandon Hollywood for Europe, where she would appear in a handful of French and Italian adventure films. On 7 September 1951 Maria Montez was discovered drowned in her bath, possibly having first suffered a heart attack.

Anyone who loves B-movies of the 1950s appreciates this lovely actress Allison Hayes. She was born Mary Jane Hayes on March 6, 1930 in Charleston, West Virginia. The auburn-haired beauty was the 1949 Washington, D.C. entry into the Miss America pageant. Shortly afterwards, Mary Jane adopted the familiar first name of Allison. She got her start on local Washington television before heading to Hollywood in the early 1950s. Allison began her career with Universal Pictures; the studio groomed her, but only on the path of B-movies. In her film debut, Francis Joins the WACS (1954), she was a supporting actress to the speaking mule, which had the title role. She played the devilishly alluring "Livia" in The Undead (1957), and co-starred with B-movie legend Tor Johnson in The Unearthly (1957).

Allison achieved film immortality in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), in which she tore the roof off the place, and killed rival Yvette Vickers. After that, Allison was a staple in classic B-grade horror films. She was in the exploitation classic The Hypnotic Eye (1960), which had a trailer showing an alleged hypnotist mesmerizing a volunteer as he stuck long needles in her arms (this was some of the typical ballyhoo going on at the time). However, Allison was a versatile actress; she did drama very well, as when she guest-starred on the television series The Untouchables (1959), in the highly-rated episode, The Rusty Heller Story (1960).

Allison had a flair for comedy, which she demonstrated when she appeared in the Dean Martin film, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963). Her last film appearance was with "The King", himself, Elvis Presley in Tickle Me (1965), with a hilarious script by the legendary writer Elwood Ullman. However, Allison's health declined steadily throughout the 1960s. Her death on February 27, 1977 was due either to leukemia or lead poisoning (due to doctor-prescribed calcium supplements). Allison Hayes died far too young; her fans will forever remember her legacy in films.

Joan Blackman was born on 17 May 1938 in San Francisco, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Blue Hawaii (1961), Kid Galahad (1962) and Visit to a Small Planet (1960). She was previously married to Rockne Tarkington and Joby Baker.

Gorgeously svelte and classy redhead stunner Helga Line was born as Helga Lina Stern on July 14th, 1931 in Berlin, Germany. Helga began her career as a dancer and acrobat in circus performances in Portugal. She also later worked as a model. Line began acting in movies in the early 40s. Helga moved to Madrid, Spain in 1960. Line immediately established herself as a hugely popular and prolific actress in a large volume of horror pictures, spy films, thrillers and Westerns made throughout the 60s and 70s. Best known as the alluring spy Natasha in the terrific period Gothic fright feature treat Horror Express (1972), her other memorable roles include an enticing sea siren in the immensely enjoyable The Loreley's Grasp (1973), a predatory vampire countess in the terrifically trashy _The Vampires' Night Orgy (1972)_ *qv), and the seductive middle-aged leader of a Satanic cult in the steamy _Black Candles (1982)_. Line starred with Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy in two entertaining offerings: Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973) and The Mummy's Revenge (1975). Helga was especially impressive in the Pedro Almodovar pictures Labyrinth of Passion (1982) and Law of Desire (1987). More recently Helga Line has done guest spots on a couple of Spanish TV shows.

Heidi Brühl was born on 30 January 1942 in Gräfelfing, Bavaria, Germany. She was an actress, known for Hochzeit auf Immenhof (1956), Der Zigeunerbaron (1962) and Ferien auf Immenhof (1957). She was married to Brett Halsey. She died on 8 June 1991 in Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany.

Eclectic is the qualificative that best defines the career of Yvonne Furneaux. Born in Roubaix (a big industrial town in the North of France) in 1926, the little girl was immediately placed under the sign of bilingualism, her father being English and her mother French. As a result, once this alluring brunette had become an actress, she could as easily play in an English or a French film, which did not prevent her from being a regular in Italy and in West Germany, with a foray into Spain. Likewise, she could appear in any film genre, from psychological dramas (Affair in Monte Carlo (1952), her film debut) to adventure yarns (The Master of Ballantrae (1953)), from war films (Il carro armato dell'8 settembre (1960)) to films noirs (Enough Rope (1963), The Champagne Murders (1967)), from sword & sandal movies (Slave Queen of Babylon (1963), The Lion of Thebes (1964)) to horror movies (The Mummy (1959)), from comedies (Versuchung im Sommerwind (1972) to chillers (Repulsion (1965)). The same is true for the quality of her films, ranging from bombs (Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie (1984), mediocre run-of-the mill products (The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse (1964)), average works (Slave Queen of Babylon (1963)), quite good (Lisbon (1956)), good (The Beggar's Opera (1953)), very good (In the Name of the Italian People (1971)), excellent (Polanski's Repulsion (1965), as demented Catherine Deneuve's normal sister), to an unclassifiable masterpiece (Fellini's immortal La Dolce Vita (1960), in which she is Mastroianni ex-wife). Such heterogeneity more or less put Yvonne Furneaux at a disadvantage, despite an undeniable acting talent and her having been chosen by great directors (Peter Brook, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Claude Autant-Lara, Roman Polanski, Claude Chabrol and Dino Risi. Another reason why she is not remembered as she should be, is the fact she gave up appearing on the screens little time after marrying cinematographer Jacques Natteau in the late sixties. One should not however dismiss or forget what I would call her cold beauty, which particularly worked wonders when she played haughty women of power such as Princess Ananka (in the classic of the genre,Terence Fisher's The Mummy (1959)), Semiramide or Cleopatra. Without a doubt, Yvonne Furneaux needs better than oblivion.

Ella Raines was born in Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, in 1920. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the University of Washington as a drama student and participated in many plays. Following graduation, she traveled to New York and the lights of Broadway. She was eventually signed by Howard Hawks and played in Corvette K-225 (1943) as the love interest of Randolph Scott. She appeared in many A pictures very quickly, including Tall in the Saddle (1944) opposite John Wayne. She co-starred in many other films opposite such stars as Vincent Price, William Powell and Brian Donlevy (turning in a good performance as a spunky garage owner in director Arthur Lubin's underrated Impact (1949)). In the early 1950s she had her own TV series, Janet Dean, Registered Nurse (1954), and also had a short-lived recording career during that period. She died in 1988.

Rosanna Yanni was born on 27 February 1938 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is an actress and producer, known for War Goddess (1973), Sonny and Jed (1972) and Fangs of the Living Dead (1969).

The early film career of Stella Stevens could be said to mirror that of Marilyn Monroe. She began by playing a succession of sensuous, blond glamour girls, from naïve virgins and funny coquettes to precocious or briny-tongued floozies. Her early maturity on screen may have reflected her own turbulent private life: she was pregnant at 15, married had a child (Andrew Stevens) at 16, and was divorced a year later. At 21, having a child to support and no money, she posed as a celebrated Playboy centerfold. She was Playmate of the Month for January 1960, which did her subsequent movie career no harm whatever. She was voted by Playboy as one of the 100 Sexiest Women of the 20th century and became one of the most photographed stars of the 1960s.

The voluptuous, blue-eyed Stella was born Estelle Caro Eggleston to one of the oldest families in Yazoo City, Mississippi. A myth which had her hailing from the quaintly named area of Hot Coffee was purely an invention by Hollywood publicists. Her father, Thomas Ellet Eggleston, was an insurance salesman, her mother, Estelle (nee Caro), a nurse. The family moved to Memphis when she was four.

During her early childhood, Stella was nicknamed "Bootsie". Precocious and impatient to grow up, she took to watching movies at every opportunity. It became her main passion. Graduating from high school in 1955, she spent two years attending Memphis State University where she was 'discovered' during a production of Bus Stop in the role of aspiring nightclub singer Chérie (famously played by Marilyn in the film version). Borrowing some money, Stella made her way to the bright lights of Los Angeles and was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1959. She made only three films for the studio during a six months spell before her contract was dropped, her debut being a bit part in Frank Tashlin's saccharine comedy-drama Say One for Me (1959).

Her role won her a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer. That same year, she was picked up by Paramount and made her first breakthrough on the screen as the vampish Apassionata von Climax in the film version of the hit Broadway musical Li'l Abner (1959), based on Al Capp's comic strip.

She alternated motion pictures with television appearances, displaying a perhaps unexpectedly wide range as an actress in both dramatic and comedic roles. She stood out in films like Too Late Blues (1961) and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), both under greatly contrasting directorial styles.

Above all, she saw herself not as a sex icon but as a comedienne. She once said "I want to be remembered for whatever made people laugh the most." Unafraid to do physical comedy in the manner of Lucille Ball she was also often lauded for her comic timing in films like The Silencers (1966) (a James Bond-style spoof, co-starring a sleepy-eyed Dean Martin) and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968). In the 1970s, her best role was as a warmhearted prostitute in Sam Peckinpah's seminal western The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970). Writer and critic Roger Ebert wrote of her performance "There are few enough actresses who can be funny and feminine at the same time, but she is certainly one of them." Conversely, in the classic disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she played a former hooker with a heart closer to tin.

Like many film careers, hers too experienced a fair share of hiccups along the way, often due to typecasting: duds like Slaughter (1972), Stand Up and Be Counted (1972), Las Vegas Lady (1975), The Manitou (1978), and others. However, Stella proved resourceful enough to diversify and go behind the camera, both as producer and director of a feature-length documentary, The American Heroine (1979). She co-authored a novel entitled 'Razzle, Dazzle' (published in 1999), about the rise and fall of a glamorous rock star. She unveiled her own range of women's and men's fragrances, called 'Sexy'.

During the 1980s and 1990s, she concentrated primarily on television and enjoyed lengthy tenures on the glossy soaps Flamingo Road (1980) and Santa Barbara (1984), in addition to many guest appearances in shows as diverse as Police Story (1973), Hotel (1983), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). In 1976, she briefly forsook the glamour of Beverly Hills and set up home on a 27-acre ranch on the edge of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State and then proceeded to operate an art gallery and bakery in a nearby town.

By 1983, she had returned to her Beverly Hills home where she lived with her partner (rock guitarist Bob Kulick), until the home was sold in 2016. Afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, Stella Stevens spent her remaining years in an assisted living home in California and passed away in Los Angeles on February 17 2023 at the age of 84.

A native of Flint, Michigan, Nancy Kovack was a student at the University of Michigan at 15, a radio deejay at 16, a college graduate at 19 and the holder of eight beauty titles by 20. Her professional acting career began on television in New York, first as one of Jackie Gleason's "Glea Girls" and then, more prominently, on The Dave Garroway Show (1953), Today (1952) and Beat the Clock (1950). A stage role opened Hollywood doors for Kovack, who signed with Columbia. She later racked up an impressive list of episodic television credits, and was Emmy-nominated for a 1969 guest shot on Mannix (1967). The wife of world-renowned maestro Zubin Mehta of New York Philharmonic fame, Kovack publicly alleges that she was recently bamboozled (to the tune of $150,000) by Susan McDougal, a central figure in the Whitewater scandal.

Another gorgeous "B" movie blonde who came and went uneventfully in the 1940s, the beautiful Tulsa-born Martha O'Driscoll started off modeling as a child. Her parents were nonprofessionals. Trained in singing and dancing, Martha was discovered by choreographer Hermes Pan in a local theater production in Phoenix, AZ, which led to unbilled bits in musical movies from 1935. Once she had her foot in the door, she was groomed in more visible parts and began pitching products for Max Factor makeup and Royal Crown Cola, among others, in magazine ads while such endorsements promoted her upcoming pictures in return.

Martha attracted film offers from both Paramount and Universal studios in her 12-year Hollywood career, which included musicals, silly slapstick and horror films. She appeared as "Daisy Mae" in Li'l Abner (1940) -- the first screen version of the famous comic strip -- and proved a sexy foil for the teams of Bud Abbott & Lou Costello and Ole Olson & Chic Johnson in their comedy vehicles. She played the pretty prairie flower to a couple of notable western film stars including Tim Holt, and was terrorized by the Wolfman, Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster in her most notable feature, House of Dracula (1945).

In 1943 Martha married a US Navy lieutenant commander but they separated ten months later. Following her last film, Carnegie Hall (1947) and a divorce decree from her first marriage, she married a second time to Chicago businessman Arthur Appleton, heir to an industrial empire, and retired completely (at age 25), In Chicago she became one of the city's more civic-minded leaders, an interest that would last for more than four decades. She also served as an executive for many committees, including the Sarah Siddons Society, and was on the Board of Directors for a few of her husband's companies. From time to time she even appeared in nostalgia conventions. Martha died on November 3, 1998, in Miami.

Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944) was auspicious, but her first public recognition came on loan-out in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although her talent and sex appeal were of star quality, she did not fit the star pattern at MGM, who sold her contract to RKO in 1947. Here the same problem resurfaced; her best film in these years was made on loan-out, In a Lonely Place (1950). Soon after, she left RKO. The 1950s, her best period, brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and typecast her as shady, inimitably sultry ladies in seven well-known film-noir classics.

Rumors of being difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma! (1955) helped sideline her film career from 1956 onward. She also suffered from marital and child-custody troubles. Eight years after divorce from Nicholas Ray, who was 12 years her senior (and reportedly had discovered her in bed with his 13 year old son), and after a subsequent marriage to Cy Howard ended in divorce, in 1960 she married her former stepson Anthony Ray (who was almost 14 years younger than she was.) This led former husbands Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to sue Grahame; each man seeking custody of his respective child, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Grahame herself underwent electroconvulsive therapy after the ensuing stress caused a nervous breakdown. Surprisingly, however, Grahame and Anthony "Tony" Ray proved a happy couple. The union would be Grahame's longest marriage, lasting almost 14 years (10 years longer than her previous union with Ray's father); the couple had two children, Anthony Jr. and James.

In 1960, Grahame resumed stage acting, combined with TV work and, from 1970, some mostly inferior films. She was described as a serious, skillful actress; spontaneous, honest, and strong-willed; imaginative and curious; incredibly sexy but insecure about her looks (prompting plastic surgery on her famous lips); loving appreciative male company; "a bit loony." In 1975, she was treated for breast cancer. Five years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again, although it is unclear if this was a new cancer or a metastasis of her breast cancer. Grahame eventually moved to England in 1978. Her busiest period of British and American stage work ended abruptly in 1981 when she collapsed from cancer symptoms during a rehearsal. She wished to remain in Liverpool with her partner, Peter Turner (almost 30 years her junior), but after Turner notified her children of her health condition and impending death, two of her children flew to England to retrieve her, insisting she return to the United States. She died a few hours later that same day of stomach cancer and peritonitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on October 5, 1981 at age 57.

Marcia Henderson was born on 22 July 1929 in Andover, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for All I Desire (1953), The Wayward Girl (1957) and Matinee Theatre (1955). She was married to Robert Ivers and Robert Brodsky. She died on 23 November 1987 in Yakima, Washington, USA.

Marga López was born on 21 June 1924 in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina. She was an actress, known for El privilegio de amar (1998), Salón México (1949) and Lazos de amor (1995). She was married to Carlos Amador. She died on 4 July 2005 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Danielle De Metz was born on 27 July 1938 in Paris, France. She is an actress, known for The Party (1968), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965). She has been married to Samuel Yale Kupper since 4 January 1972. She was previously married to Lanny Sher, Alan Jeffrey Luber and George Joseph deMetz.

Armed with an entrancing whiskey-like voice that complemented her stunning, creamy blonde looks, Southern-bred beauty Joanna Moore had so much going for her when her film and TV career first took off in the late 1950s. Sadly, what began as an exciting Hollywood carnival ride would all too soon careen out of control and turn into a dangerous and tragic rollercoaster ride filled with personal and professional ups and downs.

Born Dorothy Joan Cook on November 10, 1934 in Americus, Georgia, Joanna was the elder daughter of Dorothy Martha (née English) and Henry Anderson Cook III. A fatal car accident in 1941 took the lives of both her mother and her baby sister. When her father died from his severe injuries a year later, 7-year-old Joanna lived with her grandmother; when the lady grew too feeble to look after her, Joanna was adopted locally by a well-to-do family who changed her name from Dorothy to Joanna. In June 1953, the 18-year-old girl married another teenager, Willis Moore, and divorced him within the year. She later enrolled at Agnes Scott, a women's college in Decatur, Georgia (near Atlanta).

Around this time, Joanna won a local Georgia beauty contest that would take her straight to Hollywood. Spotted at a party by a Universal producer, the actress was tested and quickly signed. A brief, impulsive marriage (1956-1957) to minor actor Don Oreck also occurred during this early career stage. She began as a lovely presence on such TV anthologies as "Lux Video Theatre," "Goodyear Theatre," "Studio One in Hollywood" and "Kraft Theatre," and also found work in top female lead and second lead roles in "B" movies. She started out promisingly as handsome George Nader's love interest in the film noir Appointment with a Shadow (1957), directed by Richard Carlson wherein both play crime reporters--he with an alcohol problem. She followed this with second femme roles in both the western comedy Slim Carter (1957) starring Julie Adams and Jock Mahoney as the title country singer, and the romantic drama Flood Tide (1957), which reunited her with Nader.

After Orson Welles gave her a small cryptic role in his classic film noir Touch of Evil (1958), Joanna went on to a secondary femme role in the Audie Murphy western Ride a Crooked Trail (1958) and co-starred as Arthur Franz's fiancée in the cult sci-fi horror programmer Monster on the Campus (1958) with Franz playing a Jekyll-and-Hyde college professor who turns ape caveman-like thanks to his radioactive exposure. She ended the decade with another second femme role in an "A" picture--The Last Angry Man (1959) starring Oscar-nominated Paul Muni as a Jewish doctor and featuring Joanna in a romantic subplot involving married TV producer David Wayne.

In the early 1960s, Joanna suffered severe auditory nerve loss (otosclerosis) to the point of having to read lips. An operation thankfully restored her hearing (in one ear) in 1962. By this time, Joanna had moved more towards TV and enjoyed guest parts on such dramatic shows as "Bourbon Street Beat," "Maverick," "The Rifleman," "Bat Masterson," "Tales of Wells Fargo," "The Rebel," "Adventures in Paradise" and "The Untouchables," with a few comedy shows such as "Bachelor Father" and "The Real McCoys" thrown in for good measure.

Joanna went on to portray more than a few wily females on screen as she did with her neurotic "Miss Precious" in the drama Walk on the Wild Side (1962), sexy "Alisha Claypoole" in the Elvis Presley vehicle Follow That Dream (1962), and Southern belle "Desiree de La Roche" in the light-hearted Disney comedy Son of Flubber (1962). She played the same kind of crafty gals on such TV shows as "Perry Mason," "Route 66," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Bewitched", and "The Wild Wild West." She is perhaps best remembered, however, for her down-home benevolent role of Peggy, the four-episode girlfriend of Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) in the third season of TV's The Andy Griffith Show (1960).

At the peak of her career, Joanna married her third husband, "Prince Charming" actor Ryan O'Neal, on April 3, 1963. O'Neal would soon make a huge TV impact as handsome but troubled "Rodney Harrington" on the prime time soaper Peyton Place (1964). The exceptionally good-looking couple became a popular Hollywood twosome and went on to have two children who also became actors: Tatum O'Neal and Griffin O'Neal. Joanna's marriage to O'Neal was stormy, to say the least, and they divorced in February 1967.

Joanna went into a gradual, deep decline after her divorce from O'Neal. Depression set in and she developed a severe amphetamine and alcohol addiction. Multiple arrests over time for drunk driving (one much later resulted in the loss of three fingers) led to her losing custody of her children in 1970. That same year she checked into a state hospital for psychiatric treatment. Sadly, both her children, Tatum and Griffin, would battle similar substance abuse problems as adults. There was also talk that Joanna was growing more and more bizarre, living in self-styled communes and isolating herself from any Hollywood contact. She went on to marry and divorce a third and fourth time.

For awhile Joanna managed to stay afloat on both film with such occasional second-string offers as the sci-fi chiller Countdown (1967); the comedy caper Never a Dull Moment (1968); the "bikersploitation" yarn J.C. (1972) and the all-star thriller The Hindenburg (1975). She also co-starred in the TV adaptation of Three Coins in the Fountain (1970) with Yvonne Craig and Cynthia Pepper and was seen fairly regularly on such late 1960's TV programs as "The Virginian," "Judd for the Defense," "The High Chaparral," "The F.B.I.," "The Name of the Game," "The Waltons," "Kung Fu," "Bronk," "Police Story," "Petrocelli", and "The Blue Knight."

After this, however, Joanna's personal life unravelled dramatically, which spilled into her professional career. By the late 1970s, Joanna, still abusing drugs and alcohol, had to be supported financially by daughter, Tatum, now an Oscar-winning film star. Little was heard for nearly a decade when it was learned that the actress was living in the Palm Springs area (Indian Wells) involving herself in small theater projects.

A long-time smoker, Joanna was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1996 and died a year later on November 22, 1997, age 63, with Tatum by her side. She was interred at Oak Grove Cemetery in her hometown of Americus, Georgia. In 2015, grandson Kevin Jack McEnroe (son of Tatum and her then-husband/tennis star John McEnroe) published a gripping novel entitled "Our Town," a "fictionalized account" of the damaging effects of substance abuse on a family. It is said to be strongly based on his own grandmother's devastating struggles.

Jane turned down a full scholarship to study violin at Juilliard, opting to spend four years studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. She got her acting start in radio, working on Lux Radio Theatre and the Whistler. Her first brief marriage to a Navy pilot ended when he was killed in action during World War II. Shortly after marrying Tom Turnage, she retired from acting, returning briefly to television roles in the early '50s when her husband was sent to Korea.

With classic patrician features and an independent, non-conformist personality, Capucine began her film debut in 1949 at the age of 21 with an appearance in the film Rendezvous in July (1949). She attended school in France and received a BA degree in foreign languages. Married for six months in her early twenties, she never remarried. In 1957, she was discovered by director Charles K. Feldman while working as a high-fashion model for Givenchy in Paris and was brought to Hollywood to study acting under Gregory Ratoff. She was put under contract by Columbia studios in 1958 and had her first leading part in the movie Song Without End (1960). She made six more major movies in the early to mid 1960s, two of which (The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964)) starred William Holden, with whom she had a two-year affair. Moving from Hollywood to a penthouse apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1962, she continued making movies, mostly in Europe, until her suicide in 1990.

Brigid Bazlen was born on 9 June 1944 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, USA. She was an actress, known for How the West Was Won (1962), King of Kings (1961) and The Honeymoon Machine (1961). She was married to Marlin Greene and Jean-Paul Vignon. She died on 25 May 1989 in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Discovered by a talent scout at Northwestern University in 1958, Paula Prentiss was signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and teamed with Jim Hutton in a string of comedies. She rapidly became one of the best American comediennes of the 1960s. Her funny voice inflections, free acting style and brunette good looks established her as a leading lady in comedies of the screwball type, although she was very good in dramatic roles, too. Not much attracted to the Hollywood scene, she retired from films on several occasions, due also to illness and motherhood, but she was always admired and welcome whenever she made a comeback. She and her husband, the actor and director Richard Benjamin, are the parents of Ross Benjamin and Prentiss Benjamin.

The scintillating, sultry-eyed blonde (formerly a redhead) star of screen, TV and award-winning stage went on to become best known, however, for her sensual delivery pitching cigars in taunting '60s ads and commercials with her Mae Westian come-on line "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?" This, of course, was at a time when smoking was considered quite sexy and fashionable, and Edie Adams went above and beyond the call of duty in making these ads legendary.

Edie had her hand dipped in all pools of entertainment. She was a singing siren, an award-winning Broadway musical entertainer, a deft impressionist and comedienne, a serious dramatic actress, a commercial saleswoman and a viable TV celebrity. Off-stage, she showed remarkable poise and resourcefulness when her famous first husband, landmark TV comic Ernie Kovacs, was tragically killed in a January 1962 car crash in Los Angeles and she found her family finances in dire straits.

She was born Edith Elizabeth Enke on April 16, 1927, in the relatively small town of Kingston, Pennsylvania, but moved while fairly young to Grove City. Her family relocated again, this time to Tenafly, New Jersey, where she grew up. Following her graduation from high school, Edie aspired to become an opera singer and studied voice and piano at New York's Juilliard School of Music. She then went on to take acting classes at the Columbia School of Drama.

Her theatrical debut occurred with a 1947 production of "Blithe Spirit", and a year later she appeared in the stage show "Goodnight Ladies". Gradually building up her singing reputation via the nightclub circuit, her big break came when Arthur Godfrey booked her on his "Talent Scouts" show. She didn't come out the winner, but a TV director who caught sight of her performance envisioned in her a seductive "straight man" who could mesh well with a certain zany comedian. In 1951, Edie (then known as Edith Adams) was signed up as a featured singer on Ernie Kovacs's comedy show that originated in Philadelphia. The show, live and unrehearsed, became an innovative, groundbreaking effort in the relatively new medium. Outrageous and even incomprehensible at times, his comedy was deemed way ahead of its time and, as a result, had problems reaching mainstream audiences who didn't "get it", and the programs were short-lived. Various Kovacs platforms that included Edie were Ernie in Kovacsland (1951), "Kovacs on the Korner" (1952), and, of course, The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952). She and Kovacs eloped to Mexico City in 1954 and their union produced a daughter, Mia Kovacs. The duo were a popular couple in the Hollywood social circuit (moving there from New York in the late '50s) and the connections she developed out there were quite valuable in furthering her career.

Early '50s TV opened many doors for Edie and she waltzed right through them. Her New York stage debut in the popular musical "Wonderful Town" in 1952 had her walking away with the Theatre World Award for "Best Newcomer". A few years later, she slithered away with a supporting Tony Award for her bodacious take on the "Daisy Mae" character in the musical "Li'l Abner" (1956). Following that were more musical and dramatic ventures on the stage, including "The Merry Widow" (1957) (a show she would return to more than once), "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1960) and "Free as a Bird" (1960). On film, Edie showed the public that she wasn't just a pretty face with her sharply unsympathetic supporting performance in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) and a funny, sexier one in the second of Rock Hudson and Doris Day's three battle-of-the-sexes romps, Lover Come Back (1961). Surprisingly, Edie and Ernie never appeared together in a film. Edie remained primarily a TV fixture and, outside of her Emmy-nominated coupling with Kovacs, winningly played the Fairy Godmother in Julie Andrews' popular TV version of Cinderella (1957), appeared regularly with Jack Paar and Dinah Shore on their respective variety shows, acted on various prime-time shows, and graced a number of celebrity game and talk show panels.

One of Edie's last pairings with Kovacs was in 1960 when they appeared as guests on the very last episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957). The pair appeared as themselves, with one of the highlights being Edie crooning the lovely ballad "That's All". Kovacs' sudden 1962 death was a terrible reversal of fortunes for Edie. An inveterate gambler, he left her owing much money to the IRS. Instead of filing bankruptcy, however, she worked her way out of debt. In the process, her career received a second wind. Perhaps it didn't hurt that the public adored Edie and that she was a genuinely sympathetic figure in the wake of her private tragedy.

She returned to the nightclub circuit from whence she came, recorded albums, and also toured the country in various dramatic and musical comedy vehicles, including "Rain" (as Sadie Thompson), "Bells Are Ringing", "Annie Get Your Gun" (as Annie Oakley), "I Do! I Do!", "Anything Goes" and "Bus Stop". She also received outstanding notices in a few of her films, whether dramas (Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), The Best Man (1964)) or frivolous comedies (Call Me Bwana (1963), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), The Honey Pot (1967)). Moreover, she was handed her own musical variety show Here's Edie (1963) (aka "The Edie Adams Show") and received a couple of Emmy nominations for her efforts. She also took advantage of her famous impressions of Zsa Zsa Gabor and others, appearing in various TV comedy formats.

More than anything, however, it was her come-hither temptress pitching Muriel cigars that had TV audiences' tongues wagging. It was a smashingly successful and highly profitable coup for Edie professionally. Her late husband, a notorious cigar smoker, at one time sold Dutch Master cigars on TV. The idea then for Edie to pitch a competing slimmer cigar on TV was only natural. She had much to do with the direction of the commercials, which ran throughout the 1960s, providing them with a perfect blend of class, glamour and sensuality.

While growing noticeably heavier in later years, she never lost her trademark humor and sex appeal. Edie could still be seen from time to time on the stage in such shows as "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", the female version of "The Odd Couple", "Hello, Dolly!" and "Nunsense". She remained committed to the end to restoring/preserving her late husband's videotapes and kinescopes of his ground-breaking '50s TV work. She also recalled her offbeat life with Kovacs in the book "Sing a Pretty Song", which was published in 1990.

Edie got married again in 1964, to photographer Marty Mills, with whom she had a son, Josh Mills. That union ended in divorce in 1971. The following year, Edie married jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli. She and Candoli, who died in January of 2008, divorced in 1989. In another eerie, tragic circumstance, daughter Mia Kovacs was killed in a 1982 Los Angeles auto accident at age 22 -- 20 years after her father's similar demise. Suffering from cancer and losing weight in her latter years, the beloved Edie died of complications from pneumonia at age 81 in Los Angeles.

Barrie Chase was born on 20 October 1933 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Cape Fear (1962), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Mardi Gras (1958). She is married to Richard Kaufman. They have one child. She was previously married to Jan Malmsjö and Gene Shacove.

Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema. Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, tied with Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, all three of them second only to Katharine Hepburn.

Ingrid Bergman was born on August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden, to a German mother, Frieda Henrietta (Adler), and a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman, an artist and photographer. Her mother died when she was only two and her father died when she was 12. She went to live with an elderly uncle.

The woman who would be one of the top stars in Hollywood in the 1940s had decided to become an actress after finishing her formal schooling. She had had a taste of acting at age 17 when she played an uncredited role of a girl standing in line in the Swedish film Landskamp (1932) in 1932 - not much of a beginning for a girl who would be known as "Sweden's illustrious gift to Hollywood." Her parents died when she was just a girl and the uncle she lived with didn't want to stand in the way of Ingrid's dream. The next year she enrolled at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm but decided that stage acting was not for her. It would be three more years before she would have another chance at a film. When she did, it was more than just a bit part. The film in question was The Count of the Old Town (1935), where she had a speaking part as Elsa Edlund. After several films that year that established her as a class actress, Ingrid appeared in Intermezzo (1936) as Anita Hoffman. Luckily for her, American producer David O. Selznick saw it and sent a representative from Selznick International Pictures to gain rights to the story and have Ingrid signed to a contract. Once signed, she came to California and starred in United Artists' 1939 remake of her 1936 film, Intermezzo (1939), reprising her original role. The film was a hit and so was Ingrid.

Her beauty was unlike anything the movie industry had seen before and her acting was superb. Hollywood was about to find out that they had the most versatile actress the industry had ever seen. Here was a woman who truly cared about the craft she represented. The public fell in love with her. Ingrid was under contract to go back to Sweden to film Only One Night (1939) in 1939 and June Night (1940) in 1940. Back in the US she appeared in three films, all well-received. She made only one film in 1942, but it was the classic Casablanca (1942) opposite Humphrey Bogart.

Ingrid was choosing her roles well. In 1943 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the only film she made that year. The critics and public didn't forget her when she made Gaslight (1944) the following year--her role of Paula Alquist got her the Oscar for Best Actress. In 1945 Ingrid played in Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), for which she received her third Oscar nomination for her role of Sister Benedict. She made no films in 1947, but bounced back with a fourth nomination for Joan of Arc (1948). In 1949 she went to Italy to film Stromboli (1950), directed by Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him and left her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, and daughter, Pia Lindström. America's "moral guardians" in the press and the pulpits were outraged. She was pregnant and decided to remain in Italy, where her son was born. In 1952 Ingrid had twins, Isotta and Isabella Rossellini, who became an outstanding actress in her own right, as did Pia.

Ingrid continued to make films in Italy and finally returned to Hollywood in 1956 in the title role in Anastasia (1956), which was filmed in England. For this she won her second Academy Award. She had scarcely missed a beat. Ingrid continued to bounce between Europe and the US making movies, and fine ones at that. A film with Ingrid Bergman was sure to be a quality production. In her final big-screen performance in 1978's Autumn Sonata (1978) she had her final Academy Award nomination. Though she didn't win, many felt it was the most sterling performance of her career. Ingrid retired, but not before she gave an outstanding performance in the mini-series A Woman Called Golda (1982), a film about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. For this she won an Emmy Award as Best Actress, but, unfortunately, she did not live to see the fruits of her labor.

Ingrid died from cancer on August 29, 1982, her 67th birthday, in London, England.

Barbara Werle was born on 6 October 1928 in Mount Vernon, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Battle of the Bulge (1965), Seconds (1966) and Charro! (1969). She was married to Jerry Max Waters, Paul Gerard Griesgraber and John Ralph Branca. She died on 1 January 2013 in Carlsbad, California, USA.

American actress Emily Ann Banks was born in Norfolk, Virginia, but spent much of her childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father served in the military (he later found work as a graphic artist). After high school, Emily graduated from Simmons University in Boston and then embarked on a brief career as a model. This culminated in her election as 'Miss Rheingold' in 1960. She made several ads for the beer brand and featured as a model on a game show in 1963. On screen from 1966, Emily featured rarely on the big screen. She had a small part as a receptionist in an Elvis Presley vehicle, Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), played Buffalo Bill's wife Louisa Maud Frederici in The Plainsman (1966) and essayed the nominal female lead in a minor western, Gunfight in Abilene (1967), opposite Bobby Darin (who also wrote the theme song).

Better utilised in TV roles, Emily Banks became perhaps best known for her small role as Yeoman Tonia Barrows in the episode 'Shore Leave' of Star Trek (1966). In addition to assorted guest spots, she finally achieved star billing herself in a short-lived (though possibly underrated) sitcom, The Tim Conway Show (1970), as the girlfriend of a charter line pilot. Ironically, in real life, one of her main aspirations had been to become a pilot. A sporty type, Emily's preferred pastimes at this time in her career were said to have been swimming, diving, horseback riding and baseball.

Peggy Maley was born on 8 June 1923 in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for The Wild One (1953), Human Desire (1954) and Climax! (1954). She was married to Donald Schonbrun and Richard Eugene (Ricky) Rafeld. She died on 1 October 2007 in Hatfield, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, USA.

This actress' two-decade career produced only one single stand-out film role but that one role as the "good girl" who redeems "bad boy" Marlon Brando's tough biker in the cult flick The Wild One (1953) put Mary Murphy at the head of the acting class for one brief shining moment. In others, she proved a lovely distraction amid the male action surrounding her and also, given the right material, displayed obvious talent in both Grade "A" and "B" drama as the feminine co-star or second lead.

The beautiful blue-eyed brunet stunner was born on January 26, 1931, in Washington D.C. but quickly moved with her family six months later to Cleveland, Ohio. Her father, James, a businessman, died there in 1940, and her mother eventually moved Mary and her two brothers and sister (she was the youngest of the four) West to Southern California where Mary went on to attend University High School in the Los Angeles area, graduating in 1949. A one-time employee of Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, the fresh-faced beauty was "discovered" at a café and signed by Paramount Studios.

Following insignificant bit/extra work in such movies as the Bob Hope's vehicles The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) and My Favorite Spy (1951), the sci-fi feature When Worlds Collide (1951), and "Best Picture" The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Mary won the female lead opposite relative newcomer Tommy Morton in the show business drama Main Street to Broadway (1953). The film was ill-received and both stars were rather dwarfed by the huge names that surrounded them -- Tallulah Bankhead, Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Shirley Booth, Mary Martin and even Rodgers and Hammerstein. Her second lead in a film was a different story. the legendary The Wild One (1953) opposite Marlon Brando. Mary managed to hold her own in this biker classic but it did not, however, necessarily lead to better films. She continued in the demure ingénue mode in the Vincent Price sub-horror The Mad Magician (1954) and the routine western Sitting Bull (1954) which starred future husband Dale Robertson. The June 1956 marriage to Robertson was very short-lived; it was annulled by Christmas time.

Mary went on, however, to give earnest leading lady perfs opposite Tony Curtis in Beachhead (1954), Ray Milland's debut as a director, A Man Alone (1955) and Hell's Island (1955) with John Payne. She also appeared to good advantage in The Desperate Hours (1955) but was slightly overshadowed by powerhouse star cast of Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy, Gig Young and Martha Scott. From then on it was fairly dismal for Mary in such lesser features as The Maverick Queen (1956), The Electronic Monster (1958) and Live Fast, Die Young (1958), a lowbudget "Wild Ones" delinquent crimer as a girl who tries to save her sister from a life of crime.

Mary left the screen for a time but resumed her career in the 60s and early 70s primarily on TV with a number of episodics and mini-movies playing matronly wives and mothers and had a small but noticeable role in the film Junior Bonner (1972).

Remarried in 1962, Mary retired completely by the late 70s and turned to environmental causes. She also worked in a Los Angeles art gallery for a time and has been seen on occasion in nostalgia conventions. She died on May 4, 2011, of heart disease, in Beverly Hills.

A pert, vivacious and absolutely stunning brunette, the former Kathryn Grant (nee Olive Kathryn Grandstaff) is now known publicly as Kathryn Crosby. She was born in Houston, Texas in 1933 and appeared on stage from age 3. A graduate of the University of Texas and a student nurse at one point, she found her way into films via the beauty pageant circuit. She soon rose through the standard starlet ranks from unbilled parts to chipper "sis" types and decorative love interests alongside filmdom's top male stars.

She appeared opposite Richard Kiley in The Phenix City Story (1955), Tony Curtis in Mister Cory (1957), Jack Lemmon in Operation Mad Ball (1957), James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Victor Mature in The Big Circus (1959), among others. Her best known role, however, was as the princess-in-distress in the special effects-laden epic fantasy The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), which has since reached semi-cult status. For the most part, she felt unchallenged as an actress and retired rather uneventfully after marrying Bing Crosby in 1957. They had three children, including actress Mary Crosby of Dallas (1978) fame. Seemingly content with family life, she, along with her children, dutifully appeared opposite her husband singing and lightly joking in his many popular Christmas-special presentations and even hosted a couple of syndicated TV series, but that was about it.

After Bing's death in 1977, however, she slowly involved herself in acting again, appearing every now and then on stage in such productions as "Same Time, Next Year", "Charley's Aunt" and a Broadway revival of the musical "State Fair" in 1996. In addition to publishing two sets of memoirs ("Bing and Other Things" and "My Life with Bing"), she annually hosts the Crosby Gold Tournament in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

A reliable featured player and occasional co-star, actress Jeff Donnell was born Jean Marie Donnell in a boys' reformatory in South Windham, Maine in 1921, the younger of schoolteacher Mildred and penologist Howard's two daughters. She took piano and dance lessons during her childhood in Maryland; she loved the popular "Mutt and Jeff" cartoon strip so much that she gave herself the nickname "Jeff."

She studied at the Yale School of Drama and performed briefly in summer stock before marrying her first husband at 19: Bill Anderson, a drama teacher from her Boston alma mater, Leland Powers Drama School. Together they started the Farragut Playhouse in Rye, New Hampshire. Almost immediately a Columbia Studios talent scout noticed her in a play there and quickly signed her.

Whisked to Los Angeles, Jeff made her first appearance in the war-era movie My Sister Eileen (1942) while husband Bill was hired on as a dialogue director. Hardly the chic, glamour-girl type, Jeff possessed a perky, unpretentious, tomboyish quality that worked comfortably in unchallenging "B" escapism --usually the breezy girlfriend or spirited bobbysoxer. Typical of her movie load at the time were the fun but innocuous Doughboys in Ireland (1943), What's Buzzin', Cousin? (1943), Nine Girls (1944), A Thousand and One Nights (1945), Carolina Blues (1944), and Eadie Was a Lady (1945). She also enlivened a number of musical westerns that prominently featured Ken Curtis (Festus of "Gunsmoke").

On a rare occasion, Jeff found herself in "A" pictures, most notably the Bogart film noir classic In a Lonely Place (1950), but more often than not she played the obliging or supportive friend of the leading lady. Unable to break away from her established "B" ranking, she later tried a move to RKO Studios (1949) but fared no better or worse. She did make a successful move to TV in the early 50s and was seen in a number of comedy and dramatic parts.

Long separated from and finally divorcing her first husband in 1953 (they had one son, Michael, and an adopted daughter, Sarah Jane), she married rising film actor Aldo Ray in 1954, but the marriage crumbled within two years, beset by drinking problems; she also suffered a miscarriage. She went on to marry and divorce twice more. As the 1950s rolled on, she earned steady work on TV, bringing to life comedian George Gobel's often-mentioned wife Alice on the sitcom The George Gobel Show (1954) for four seasons. She also had the opportunity to play Gidget's mom in a couple of the popular lightweight movies of the early 1960s -- Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963).

Most daytime fans will remember Jeff's long-running stint on the soap drama General Hospital (1963) as Stella Fields, the Quartermain housekeeper, which started in 1979 and lasted until her death in 1988. Dogged by ill health in later years (including a serious bout with Addison's disease), Jeff died peacefully of a heart attack in her sleep at age 66.