Joanne Dru

Joanne Dru was born in Logan, West Virginia in 1922. She was a very popular leading lady in many genres of Hollywood movies of the late 1940’s up to the mid 1950’s. She came to attention in both “Abie’s Irish Rose” and “Red River” opposite Montgomery Clift in 1948. She was also very effective in John Ford’s “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon”. One of her later movies was “Sylvia” in 1965 which starred Carroll Baker. Joanne Dru died in 1996.

Tom Vallance’s obituary in “The Independent”:

In 1948-50 Joanne Dru starred in three of the finest Hollywood westerns and an Academy Award-winning drama. Though never a major star, her work in these films – Howard Hawks’s Red River, John Ford’s cavalry western She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and his elegiac Wagonmaster, plus Robert Rossen’s powerful political drama All the King’s Men – has ensured her a permanent place in film history. A beautiful brunette with high cheekbones and a provocative personality, she provided the sort of feistiness that both Hawks and Ford sought in their leading ladies.

Her real name was Joanne LaCock and she was born in West Virginia in 1923. She entered show business via a modelling career and was performing in a night-club chorus when she met the crooner Dick Haymes, who took her to Hollywood when he was signed for movies and helped her start an acting career. She made her screen debut inauspiciously as star of Abie’s Irish Rose (1946). Based on a 1922 play which had confounded critics by running for five years, its tale of Jewish and Irish families trading racial insults while feuding over the romance of their son and daughter was hopelessly old-fashioned and tasteless and the film received limited distribution. Two years later she was luckier when Hawks chose her to play opposite John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in his western classic Red River. In this sprawling saga which dramatised the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift (in his first film) played a ruthless rancher and his rebellious adopted son whose tempestuous relationship climaxes with a violent brawl in which they almost kill one another. Dru was the resolute pioneer who refuses to be separated from Clift whatever the hardships. After the climactic fight, Dru delivers an emotional tirade rebuking the two men and provoking a reconciliation, an ending despised by Clift “because Joanne Dru settles the matter and it makes the showdown between me and John Wayne a farce”.

Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) was another classic in which Wayne poignantly played an ageing cavalry officer unable to come to terms with a changing way of life. As a young woman being escorted across country by the military troupe, Dru was courted by two of the officers (John Agar and Harry Carey Jnr). The same year she starred in Robert Rossen’s Oscar-winning All the King’s Men, based on the life of the former Louisiana governor Huey Long (here called Willie Stark) and an uncompromising portrait of an initially idealistic politician who turns corrupt and fascistic. Dru was a respectable girl who is blackmailed into becoming Stark’s mistress then abandoned, provoking Stark’s assassination by her brother. The story was seen through the eyes of a reporter played by John Ireland, who became Dru’s second husband. (The writer of Red River, Borden Chase, once recounted that he had been told to reduce Ireland’s role in that film because he was “messing with Hawks’s girl”.)

Both her marriages were reportedly stormy, and she continued to fight Haymes for alimony throughout his ensuring courtship of Rita Hayworth. John Ford’s Wagonmaster (1950; the director’s favourite of his films) was shot in Monument Valley and beautifully depicted the journey of a group of Mormons being guided by a tough cowboy (Ben Johnson) to their “promised land” in the unexplored west. Dru was a spirited medicine-show performer who becomes part of the wagon train in the film, which was a financial failure but is now regarded as a masterpiece.

None of Dru’s subsequent films approached the quality of these four, but Joseph H. Newman’s 711 Ocean Drive (1950) was an efficient film noir (allegedly shot under police guard) exposing gambling syndicates. Dru was the wife of a syndicate boss who falls in love with a former telephone engineer who has ruthlessly risen to be head of the gang. Rudolph Mate’s Forbidden (1953) was a sleek thriller in which a hoodlum (Tony Curtis) journeys to Macao to find Dru, a racketeer’s widow, and bring her back to the US with the incriminating evidence she possesses.

Many of Dru’s roles were, though, becoming blander – she was a social worker whose fiance takes her for granted in Mr Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951), a schoolteacher who brings a father and son closer in My Pal Gus (1953), the sweetheart of an oil-man prospecting in the Gulf of Mexico in one of Anthony Mann’s lesser pieces, Thunder Bay (1953), a nurse taming a troublesome convict in Duffy of San Quentin (1954), and a faithful secretary to Liberace as a concert pianist stricken deaf in the disastrous Sincerely Yours (1956).

She continued to appear in westerns – Vengeance Valley (1951), Return of the Texan (1952), Outlaw Territory (1953) and The Siege at Red River (1954), but these were routine affairs. The best of her later journeys west was Hall Bartlett’s Drango (1957), an interesting account of the reconstruction period after the Civil War, made by the star Jeff Chandler’s own production company and superbly photographed by James Wong Howe, with Dru effective as a Union sympathiser whose father is lynched by a Southern mob. She was active in television throughout the Fifties, guesting on many anthology shows including Wagon Train and Lux Video Theatre.

In 1981 she returned to the screen after a 16-year absence to star in Super-Fuzz, a low- budget action comedy, but she did not do it for the money. Since 1972 she had been married to C.V. Wood Jnr, a Texas multi-millionaire, the owner of an oil company and the Silver Lakes Nightclub, and a prime investor in the original London Bridge which was profitably reconstructed at Lake Havasu in Arizona.

Tom Vallance

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Joanne Dru (1922–1996) was the “Gentle Matriarch” of the classic American Western. While her contemporaries were often relegated to being the damsel in distress or the dance-hall floozy, Dru carved out a niche as the resilient, intelligent woman of the frontier. She possessed a grounded, earthy beauty—dark hair, high cheekbones, and a steady gaze—that made her the perfect cinematic anchor for the era’s most legendary directors, particularly John Ford and Howard Hawks.

Career Overview: From Showgirl to Frontier Icon

1. The New York Beginnings (1940s)

Born Joan Letitia LaCock, she began her career as a “Samba Siren” in the Copacabana nightclub and a model in New York. This background gave her a physical poise that translated well to the screen. She was “discovered” and brought to Hollywood, making her debut in Abie’s Irish Rose (1946).

2. The Western Trilogy (1948–1950)

Dru’s career reached its zenith through a trio of landmark Westerns that redefined the genre:

“Red River” (1948): Directed by Howard Hawks, where she famously took an arrow to the shoulder and kept talking.
“She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” (1949): Directed by John Ford, where she played the romantic interest caught between two cavalry officers.
“Wagon Master” (1950): Again with Ford, playing a more cynical, weary traveler.

3. The Noir and Melodrama Shift (1950s)

As the Western craze evolved, Dru moved into contemporary dramas and noirs. She delivered a sharp, cynical performance in the Academy Award-winning All the King’s Men (1949) and starred in the gritty 711 Ocean Drive (1950).

4. The Television Transition (1960s)

Like many of her peers, she found a second life in television, starring in her own sitcom, Guestward, Ho!(1960), and making guest appearances on shows like The Green Hornet and Marcus Welby, M.D.

Detailed Critical Analysis: The “Pragmatic” Beauty

1. The “Hawksian” Woman

In Howard Hawks’ Red River, Dru delivered a performance that epitomized the “Hawksian Woman”—someone who is as tough, witty, and capable as the men.

Analysis: In the famous scene where she is wounded by an Indian arrow, she remains remarkably stoic. Critics have noted that Dru didn’t play “feminine vulnerability”; she played competence. She was one of the few actresses who could trade barbs with John Wayne or Montgomery Clift without losing her screen authority. Her chemistry with Clift was praised for its modern, intellectual edge.

2. The “Fordian” Muse

In John Ford’s cavalry trilogy, Dru occupied a different space. She was the “Civilizing Influence.”

Critical Insight: Ford used Dru’s face as a symbol of the home the men were fighting to protect. However, Dru brought a layer of “spunk” to these roles. In She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, her character, Olivia Dandridge, isn’t just a prize to be won; she is a playful, observant participant in the military life. Critics noted her ability to convey nostalgia and longing through a simple glance, a key requirement for Ford’s sentimental visual style.

3. The “Cynical Modernist” in All the King’s Men

Playing Anne Stanton, Dru showcased her range outside of the saddle.

Technical Analysis: As the daughter of a prestigious family seduced by the power of a corrupt politician, Dru utilized a refined, tragic dignity. Critics hailed her for showing the “slow rot” of idealism. She moved away from the “outdoorsy” energy of her Westerns to a more constricted, interior style that reflected the film’s noir sensibilities.

4. The “Stately” Physicality

Dru had a specific way of moving—shoulders back, head high—that suggested an aristocratic background even when she was playing a pioneer.

Critical View: This “stature” allowed her to play characters who were morally upright but never “boring.” She had a low, resonant voice that carried a sense of history and experience. Critics often remarked that Dru felt like a “real woman” rather than a Hollywood construction; she looked like someone who could actually survive a trek across the plains.

Key Filmography & Critical Milestones

Year	Title	Role	Significance
1948	Red River	Tess Millay	Her breakout; defined her “Tough-Girl” persona.
1949	All the King’s Men	Anne Stanton	Proved her dramatic weight in a Best Picture winner.
1949	She Wore a Yellow Ribbon	Olivia Dandridge	Iconic role in one of the most beautiful Westerns ever filmed.
1950	Wagon Master	Denver	A more gritty, nuanced performance in a Ford cult classic.
1955	The Dark Avenger	Lady Joan Holland	Showcased her “Stately” grace in a medieval setting.

Joanne Dru brought an intelligence and a sense of humor to the Western that helped the genre transition from simple “oaters” into psychological dramas. While she may not have had the explosive fame of a Marilyn Monroe, her work remains the gold standard for the Western heroine: a woman who could handle a rifle, a romance, and a rainstorm with equal parts grace and grit

Fiona Lewis. TCM Overview.

Fiona Lewis is a beautiful British actress who has starred in Hollywood movies. She was born in Westcliffe-on-Sea, Essex in 1946. Among her early credits is an episode of “The Saint” with Roger Moore in 1966. Her UK films include “Dance of the Vampires”, “Otley” with Romy Schneider and “Villian” in 1970 with Richard Burton. In Hollywood she was featured in “Wanda Nevada” and “Strange Invaders”.

TCM overview:

This pretty British actress got her start being menaced and looking attractively frightened in low-budget horror films. She was first seen as a busty serving girl in Roman Polanski’s ambitious “The Fearless Vampire Killers” (1967), then went on to lend an unwonted grace to such blood-soaked fare as “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” (1972), and “Blue Blood” (1973).

It wasn’t all blood and guts, however. Lewis had a supporting role in the slapstick spy comedy “Otley” (1969), played a highwayman’s wench in “Where’s Jack?” (also 1969), was Ian McShane’s girlfriend in the Richard Burton vehicle “Villain” (1971) and dallied with Liszt in Ken Russell’s bizarre, over-the-top “Lisztomania” (1975).

Dismayed by the way her career was going in England, Lewis ventured to the US. She appeared in the Dino De Laurentiis potboiler “Drum” (1976), played a journalist in “Stunts” (1977), and had a few good moments in Brian De Palma’s “The Fury” (1978), as a sexy government agent who comes to a very unhappy end. She showed up in the unsuccessful Western “Wanda Nevada” (1979), was a deliciously evil nurse in the Australian “Strange Behavior/Dead Kids” (1979), had a nice bit as an alien in “Strange Invaders” (1983) and played a doctor in Joe Dante’s sci-fi adventure “Innerspace” (1987).

Although Lewis has been seen on British TV (and was made sport of on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”), her lone American appearance was as Lucy in the CBS version of “Dracula” (1974). Between film roles, Lewis has scripted a number of screenplays, worked as a journalist and has had her artwork exhibited.

Article from 1986 in “The New Yorker”:

PERSONAL HISTORY by Fiona Lewis about about her career as a B-movie actress. Fiona Lewis, a British upper-class girl, arrived in Los Angeles, from London, in the early ’70s. She slipped easily into modeling and acting. The story of her rise to semi-fame is simply this: she was willing to take her clothes off. In L.A., she dated Cary Grant for a while until she realized that it was his daughter, not him, who actually required a date. …She had never taken acting classes, but she was selected by Roman Polanski to play a bawdy maid in his film “The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, but Your Teeth Are in My Neck.”

In California, she was picked by Dino De Laurentiis to be in her first Hollywood film, “Drum”–two hours jampacked with sadism, depravity, and melodrama… She starred in Michael Laughlin’s “Strange Behavior,” playing a diabolical scientist. During the ’70s, Lewis also had liasons with at least 4 writers, under the false impression that with them she would be allowed to reveal her secret intellectual self.

She lived with a Chicago screenwriter named John until he seduced the leading lady in his directorial debut. Meanwhile, Lewis spent a lot of time at Tony Richardson’s home, where she met writers Nos. 2 and 4… Next, Lewis posed for “Playboy.”

By 1977, she had made a few forays into journalism, freelancing for the L.A. “Times.” In between writing assignments and unsatisfactory affairs with writers, she hung out with her girlfriends: women also negotiating the end of their 20s…

After her 4th affair, with a writer named Douglas, Lewis decided to end her infatuation with writers. One of her last acting attempts was “The Fury,” a flashy terrorist yarn of psychic horror, with nudity and oceans of blood.

The movie featured a particularly gruesome sex scene, which was later cut, but still photos from the omitted scene turned up years later, after Lewis had spent 10 years as a screenwriter and had written her first novel.

At a reading she was giving in an L.A. bookstore, a man asked her to sign one of those photos from the film. Whether she liked it or not, she was still in show business.The above “New Yorker” article can be also accessed online here.

TCM overview:

Gaunt, wiry, prolific supporting player with a piercing stare, familiar from the hundreds of films in which he played mean or menacing characters in the course of a seven-decade career. After appearing on the Broadway stage, Wolfe made his film debut in his late 30s and, already balding, quickly won notice as Captain Bligh’s cruel storekeeper and stool pigeon Maggs in “Mutiny in the Bounty” (1935). Wolfe went on to make more than 150 film appearances, often playing English or clerical characters, in films including the horror comedy “Homebodies” (1974, a starring role); Mike Nichols’ “The Fortune” (1975, as the dithery old justice of the peace); “Creator” (1985); “Checking Out” (1988); and “Dick Tracy” (1990). Wolfe also played Wizard Tranquil on the 1983 TV series, “Wizards and Warriors”.

Betty Grable, the Force’s Sweetheart was born in 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was a supporting player in Hollywood films of the 1930’s bu came into her own in the early 1940’s in a series of 20th Century Fox musicals including “Down Argentine Way”, “Tin Pan Alley” and in 1941, “Moon Over Miami”. She starred with Victor Mature in the film noir “I Wake Up Screaming”. She was one of the most popular of stars during World War Two. Her film career lasted until the 1950;s when she made “How to Marry A Millionaire” with the up and coming repacement Marilyn Monroe. Betty Grable continued her career on the stage and in supper clubs. She died in 1973.

TCM Overview:

The biggest box office star of the 1940s and the most desired WWII pin-up girl, acting-singing-dancing triple-threat Betty Grable became the stuff of Hollywood legend after her studio reportedly insured her famously gorgeous legs for $1 million with Lloyd’s of London – the same legs that were captured in one of the most iconic photographic images of the 20th century. After a decade of toiling with minor roles in dozens of films, Grable rose to fame with the musical “Down Argentine Way” (1940). From there it was on to a string of hits alongside leading men that included Victor Mature, Cesar Romero and Dan Dailey in such films as “I Wake Up Screaming” (1941), “Coney Island” (1943) and “Mother Wore Tights” (1947), respectively. So desired was the bubbly blonde that bandleader Harry James became the most envied man in America when he famously wed the pin-up queen in 1943. Grable single-handedly caused Twentieth Century stock to soar for a solid decade before the girl-next-door’s Technicolor reign began to wind down. Even as the sun was setting on Grable’s movie career by the early 1950s – as had her desire to continue to make movies – she enjoyed one final hit as she passed the torch to her successor and fellow Fox contract player, Marilyn Monroe, in “How to Marry a Millionaire” (1953). Grable gracefully retired from film two years later and enjoyed a brief run in a hugely successful Broadway mounting of “Hello, Dolly!” in 1967 before her untimely passing six years later. While some of the films in her incredibly prolific canon may not have stood the test of time, there was no denying the joy Betty Grable brought to many fans, both at home and abroad, during that pivotal decade in American history.

Born Elizabeth Ruth Grable on Dec. 18, 1916 in St. Louis, MO, she was the youngest of three children born to parents Lillian Rose Hofmann and John C. Grable. Having set her sights on stardom for young “Betty” early on, formidable stage mom Lillian enrolled her daughter in ballet and dance lessons at the age of three. Ten years later, Lillian took Betty out West in search of fame, soon securing her 13-year-old a job as chorus girl in the musical “Happy Days” (1929). Being a minstrel show, the blackface Betty wore in her film debut helped to cover her age. However, after a forged identification card was discovered by the producers of her next film, Betty was let go. In a further effort to mask her underage daughter’s youth, the wily Lillian dyed Grable’s brown hair a striking platinum blonde. It was a signature look the entertainer would maintain throughout her entire career. Soon, more jobs came her way, with work as a Goldwyn Girl for producer Samuel Goldwyn in the Eddie Cantor Western musical “Whoopee!” (1930) – in which she led the film’s opening number “Cowboys” – and “Kiki” (1931), starring former silent film star Mary Pickford. After being assigned the stage name of Francis Dean, Grable went on to sing and dance in a series of short projects that included “Crashing Hollywood” (1931) and “The Greeks Had a Word for Them” (1932).

Grable at last appeared under her own name with a small role in the film “Probation” (1932), and continued to appear in small roles for various studios in such projects as “What Price Innocence?” (1933) and the Academy Award-winning Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical “The Gay Divorcee” (1934). Broad acclaim and recognition eluded her, however, and during a period in which she continued to toil away with small roles in unremarkable productions, a 21-year-old Grable married former child star Jackie Coogan. Fortune smiled on the young actress, who at the time was considering an early retirement from show business, when her role in the 1939 Broadway production of Cole Porter’s “Du Barry Was a Lady” brought Grable the acclaim she had doggedly pursued for so long. After the short-lived marriage to Coogan – with who she appeared in the aptly-titled “Million Dollar Legs” (1939) – ended in 1940, the actress’ disappointment was counterbalanced by a leading role in “Down Argentine Way” (1940). A Technicolor musical extravaganza co-starring Don Ameche and Carmen Miranda, it became a smash hit and turned Grable into a bona fide movie star. Musical comedies like “Tin Pan Alley” (1940) and “Moon Over Miami” (1941) capitalized on her success, while projects such as the noir “I Wake Up Screaming” (1941) gave her the rare opportunity to tackle dramatic material.

Over the following decade, Grable became the top female star of the 1940s – and third overall, behind Bing Cosby and Bob Hope – in films that accentuated her hard-earned ability and fan appeal. “Song of the Islands” (1942), “Springtime in the Rockies” (1942) and, of course, “Pin Up Girl” (1944) capitalized on the star’s iconic status as a photo favorite of millions of servicemen during the Second World War. It was during her reign that Grable posed for her famous bathing suit pin-up photo, which was taken by studio photographer Frank Powolny in 1943. It was later rumored that the particular pose and angle from behind were chosen to hide the fact that Grable was pregnant at the time by the most “envied man in America.” That same year, she married for a second time to popular bandleader and trumpeter Harry James. Although this union would last for a substantial 22 years and produce two children, it was, by all accounts a marriage fraught with strife and infidelities.

Even in peacetime, Grable’s success continued apace, with popular fare such as “Mother Wore Tights” (1947) – featuring her favorite co-star, Dan Dailey – “That Lady in Ermine” (1948) and “My Blue Heaven” (1950). Despite having fallen off the box office exhibitors list for the first time in 10 years two years earlier, Grable was still more than capable of holding her own on screen opposite cinema sirens Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall in “How to Marry a Millionaire” (1953). As her once irresistible box office draw began to wane, so too did Grable’s relationship with studio executives at 20th Century Fox, and by the mid-1950s she began a transition to television and stage work. Her final big screen appearance came in the form of the forgettable crime comedy “How to Be Very, Very Popular” (1955), a film most notable as being the picture Marilyn Monroe refused to take part in. It also gave Grable the excuse to retire from movies. She would go on to make a smattering of appearances on television programs such as “Star Stage” (NBC, 1955-56), and in 1967 took over for Carol Channing in the long-running hit Broadway musical “Hello, Dolly!” Having divorced from James in 1965 after years of heavy drinking, gambling and infidelity on both their parts, Grable entered into a relationship with Bob Remick, a dancer several years her junior. Although never married, the two remained together until Grable’s death from lung cancer in 1973 at the age of 56.

By Bryce Coleman

TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

George Grizzard was born in North Carolina in 1928. He won critical acclaim for his performance in the political drama “Advise & Consent” in 1962. Other films include “From the Terrace” and “Comes A Horseman”. He died in 2007.

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:

The actor George Grizzard made more than 40 films and countless television appearances, but it was in the theatre that he had his greatest triumphs. He created the role of Nick, the young newlywed academic who finds himself and his wife subject to an evening of malicious teasing by an older couple, in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), which heralded a particular association with the playwright.

The dapper, personable Grizzard was praised for his ability to switch moods swiftly and orchestrate the emotional climaxes characteristic of Albee’s work. He won a Tony award as best actor for his performance in the 1996 revival of Albee’s A Delicate Balance, in which he, his wife (Rosemary Harris) and his heavy-drinking sister-in-law (Elaine Stritch) find their home invaded by two married friends fleeing an unidentified terror. In 2005 Grizzard starred with Frances Sternhagen in a revival of Albee’s Seascape, in which a married couple find their peaceful beach-side abode disrupted by the arrival of two inquisitive amphibians.

On screen, he had what was arguably his finest movie role in Otto Preminger’s superb study of American politics, Advise and Consent (1962), and on television he had an intermittently recurring role for several seasons as Arthur Gold, a defence attorney, in the crime series Law and Order.

The son of an accountant, George Cooper Grizzard was born in North Carolina in 1928, and acquired a BA degree at the University of North Carolina. He had his first taste of theatre in 1945 when he played a miner in Emlyn Williams’s The Corn is Green at the Crossroads Theatre in Virginia, but he was working at an advertising agency in Washington when he decided to audition for the city’s newly established Arena Stage company. He later explained his urge to act, stating: “I was an only child and probably very lonely. I made up children to play with . . . I guess that kind of developed into wanting to create people.”

After studying with Sanford Meisner in New York, he returned to the Arena, then made his Broadway dbut in The Desperate Hours (1955), Joseph Hayes’ tense thriller about a family imprisoned in their home and terrorised by escaped convicts. Grizzard was one of the convicts, with Paul Newman playing his older brother. “When we were on stage together, he was the best thing around,” Newman said. He then played the juvenile lead in another hit play, The Happiest Millionaire (1956), Kyle Chrichton’s light-hearted look at the life of the eccentric millionaire Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, played by Walter Pidgeon.

Grizzard received his first Tony nomination (as best featured actor) for his performance in The Disenchanted (1958), based on Budd Schulberg’s biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and he received a second nomination in 1961 for his work in Hugh Wheeler’s wry comedy, Big Fish, Little Fish. The following year he was cast in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a four-character play set on a college campus, which caused a sensation with its lacerating barrage of invective, cursing and emotional game-playing. Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill starred as the unhappy, battling spouses, browbeaten history professor George and Martha, daughter of the university’s president, with Grizzard and Melinda Dillon as Nick and Honey, a couple new to the campus, who find themselves cast as foils in the older couple’s sparring and baiting.

Grizzard won praise as a self-confessed ladies’ man who admits that he was trapped into marriage with his mousy wife. Three months into the sell-out run of the play, however, he withdrew, stating that he thought the play “brilliant on so many levels”, but he found the role of Nick a trying one to sustain. “That’s the guy Edward wanted destroyed, and he did a pretty good job of doing just that,” he recalled. “And the audience, every time George and Martha stuck another knife in, they laughed and clapped.”

What lured him away was the possibility of playing Hamlet in a modern-dress production being planned by Tyrone Guthrie at his new theatre in Minneapolis. Grizzard successfully auditioned for the part, and stayed at the Guthrie Theater for two years.

He returned to Broadway to give a moving performance as Tom in a revival of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1965), and he was winningly brash as a young play director Bernie Dodd in a revival of Clifford Odets’ The Country Girl (1972), repeating the role in a television movie version in 1974. He was a somewhat petulant King Edward VIII in the unsuccessful Broadway production of Crown Matrimonial (1973), Royce Ryton’s account of the royal family’s private drama in the days leading up to Edward’s abdication, but he gave a sparkling performance in Ellis Rabb’s hit revival of George Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s satire on the Barrymore clan, The Royal Family (1975). As Tony Cavendish, the heavy-drinking, womanising actor (based on John Barrymore) he was flamboyantly charismatic, and his byplay with co-stars Eva Le Gallienne and Rosemary Harris was a joy to see and hear.

He worked extensively in regional theatres, in such plays as A Life in the Theatre, A Touch of the Poet, and Tonight at 8.30, and in 1996 he finally won a Tony Award, for A Delicate Balance. London audiences saw him briefly in 1998 when a revival of Show Boat (in which he was Cap’* Andy) had a disappointingly short run at the Prince Edward Theatre. The critic Michael Billington, praising Grizzard’s “effortless timing,” concluded: “It is, in fact, Grizzard’s performance that holds this exuberant, three-hour spectacle together.”

Grizzard made his film dbut with a role in From the Terrace (1960), starring his old friend Newman, then made an indelible impression in Advise and Consent (even when up against such scene-stealers as Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton) as the ruthless, power-seeking senator who blackmails a young politician (Don Murray) about his homosexual past. He appeared in Buzz Kulik’s lively thriller Warning Shot (1967), as an airline pilot who secretly ferries drugs, and in Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks (2000). His last screen role was in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers (2006), in which he was John “Doc” Bradley, an old man haunted by memories of his younger self (played by Ryan Phillippe) fighting in the battle of Iwo Jima.

On television Grizzard won an Emmy for his supporting role in The Oldest Living Graduate (1980), which starred Henry Fonda, and over a period of eight years he played Arthur Gold in several episodes of Law and Order (1992-2000). In one of the finest segments of the cult series The Twilight Zone, titled “In His Image” (1963), Grizzard gave a tour de force performance in a dual role as a shy, lonely and bitter man and the suave, intelligent and personable robot he has made in his image in the split-screen sequences featuring both men, Grizzard presents two totally different personalities, each equally convincing.

Grizzard played Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Kennedy Center in 2004. He was a long-time resident of New York, where he lived with his companion William Tynan, and his last Broadway play was Paul Rudnick’s comedy Regrets Only (2006), in which he played a fashion designer campaigning for gay rights.

Tom Vallance

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Janet Munro.

Janet Munro star shone brightly but sadly all to briefly. For a period in the late 1950’s until the very early 1960’s she starred in some very popular and then interesting movies.

She was born in Blackpool in 1934. In 1958 she had a leading role in “The Young and the Guilty” opposite Andrew Ray.

Shortly afterwards she went to Hollywood where she signed a Walt Disney contract and starred opposite Sean Connery in “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” and opposite James MacArthur in both “Swiss Family Robinson” and “Third Man on the Mountain”.

She was leading lady to Tommy Steele in “Tommy the Toredor”, John Stride in “Bitter Harvest” and opposite Edward Judd in the cult classic “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”.

Her film career fizzled out somewhat afterwards and she died at a young age in 1972. She was married to actor Tony Wright and then Ian Hendry who survived her

His biography features Janet Munro extensively.

The onscreen chemistry between Edward Judd and Janet Munro in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) is frequently cited by critics as the gold standard for adult, naturalistic romance in science fiction. At a time when the genre was often populated by wooden scientists and screaming damsels, Judd and Munro delivered a relationship defined by intellectual friction and sexual maturity.

Critical Analysis: The “Sweat and Nicotine” Romance

1. Subverting the “Meet-Cute”

In most 1960s films, the leading man and woman met under idealized circumstances. In The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Judd (Peter Stenning) and Munro (Jeannie Craig) meet in the sterile, high-pressure environment of a government switchboard and a newsroom.

Analysis: Their chemistry is built on adversity. Stenning is a washed-up, cynical journalist; Jeannie is a professional woman guarding state secrets. Critics note that their attraction isn’t “love at first sight” but rather a mutual recognition of loneliness. They are two people trying to maintain their dignity while the world literally heats up around them.

2. The “Fast-Talking” Rhythm

Director Val Guest utilized a “Pre-Noir” pacing for their dialogue.

Technical Detail: Judd and Munro engage in overlapping, staccato dialogue. This technique, reminiscent of His Girl Friday, creates a sense of intellectual parity. Munro’s Jeannie doesn’t just listen to Judd; she challenges him, mocks his cynicism, and matches his wit. This verbal “sparring” serves as a sophisticated form of cinematic foreplay.

3. Physicality and the “Heat” Metaphor

As the film progresses and the Earth’s temperature rises, the physical chemistry between the two becomes increasingly visceral.

Visual Analysis: The film famously uses yellow and orange filters to simulate the rising heat. Judd and Munro are often depicted drenched in sweat, their clothes disheveled. Critics have argued that this “environmental pressure” acts as a catalyst for their intimacy. They aren’t just falling in love; they are clinging to each other for survival.
The “Apartment” Scenes: The scenes in Stenning’s cramped, sweltering apartment are remarkably frank for 1961. There is a “lived-in” quality to their interactions—the way they share a drink or navigate the small space—that suggests a deep, immediate physical connection that bypassed the censors of the day.

4. The Tragedy of Timing

The ultimate power of their chemistry lies in its transience.

Critical View: Because the film ends on an ambiguous note (with two versions of the front page prepared: “World Saved” or “World Doomed”), their romance feels incredibly precious. Critics point out that Judd’s performance softens significantly when he is with Munro; she is the only element in the film that makes his cynical character care if the world actually survives. She is his “Humanity Anchor.”

Janet Munro (1934–1972) remains one of the most poignant “what-if” stories in British cinema. A performer of luminous intelligence and a raspy, sophisticated vocal delivery, she spent her early career as the “Queen of Disney Live-Action” before staging a radical, critically acclaimed breakout into “Kitchen Sink” realism and psychological drama.

She was an actress who successfully transitioned from a wholesome archetype to a mercurial modern woman, though her career was tragically cut short at the age of 38.

Career Overview: From Disney Darling to Fleet Street

1. The “Contract Girl” Era (1957–1960)

After a childhood in the theater (her father was Scottish comedian Alex Munro), Janet was signed to a five-film contract by Walt Disney. She became the studio’s premier leading lady for live-action adventures, starring in Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959), and Swiss Family Robinson(1960). In these roles, she was the “spunky,” outdoorsy ingenue—wholesome but possessing a noticeable spark of independence.

**2. The Adult Pivot: The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)**

Seeking to shed her “Disney Girl” image, Munro took a massive professional risk by starring in Val Guest’s gritty, apocalyptic thriller. As Jeannie Craig, she displayed a sexual maturity and professional cynicism that shocked audiences who only knew her from Swiss Family Robinson.

3. The “Social Realism” Peak (1962–1964)

Munro moved into the “British New Wave” with force. She delivered a devastating, BAFTA-nominated performance in “Life for Ruth” (1962), playing a mother torn between her religious convictions and her child’s life. She followed this with the bitter, sharp-edged comedy “Bitter Harvest” (1963), playing a small-town girl corrupted by the city.

4. The Transition to Prestige TV

In the late 60s, as her film roles slowed due to personal health struggles, Munro became a fixture of “Play for Today” and other prestigious BBC/ITV dramas. Her final roles were characterized by a haunted, fragile dignity.

Detailed Critical Analysis: The “Luminous Realist”

1. Deconstructing the “Disney Spunk”

Even in her early Disney roles, Munro was technically superior to the standard “damsel.”

Analysis: In Darby O’Gill, Munro utilized a “Feisty Naturalism.” While the film was a fantasy, her performance was grounded in a very real, tactile Irish earthiness. Critics noted that she had a “modern face”—one that didn’t quite fit the Victorian settings, suggesting a woman who was ahead of her time. This “internal modernism” is what eventually allowed her to escape the Disney mold.

2. The “Jeannie Craig” Transformation

In The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Munro performed a masterclass in “rebranding through technique.”

Technical Detail: She lowered her vocal register and adopted a “clipped,” professional cadence. She portrayed Jeannie as a woman who had seen the darker side of government and journalism.
Critical Insight: Critics hailed her for her unfiltered physicality. In the film’s sweltering heat, she didn’t try to look “pretty”; she looked exhausted, sweaty, and desperate. She proved that she could carry the emotional and intellectual weight of a high-concept “adult” film.

3. The Emotional Depth of Life for Ruth

This remains Munro’s most technically demanding performance.

Analysis: Playing Pat Harris, a woman watching her daughter die because her husband refuses a blood transfusion on religious grounds, Munro utilized “Micro-Expressionist” acting.
Critical View: She avoided the “hysterical mother” tropes. Instead, she portrayed a woman in a state of intellectual and spiritual paralysis. The conflict played out entirely in her eyes—the battle between her loyalty to her husband and her instinct as a mother. It is a performance of immense restraint and remains a benchmark for British social realism.

4. The “Voice of Experience”

Munro’s voice was a critical component of her late-career appeal.

Technical Analysis: She possessed a distinctive, slightly “whiskey-toned” rasp. This gave her characters an immediate sense of lived-in history. In her later TV work, she used this vocal quality to project a “shattered elegance”—playing women who were beautiful but had been significantly “marked” by life.

Key Credits & Critical Milestones

Year	Title	Role	Significance
1959	Darby O’Gill…	Katie O’Gill	Won the Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer.”
1960	Swiss Family Robinson	Roberta	Her peak as a global Disney icon.
1961	The Day the Earth…	Jeannie Craig	Her successful “Adult Breakthrough” role.
1962	Life for Ruth	Pat Harris	BAFTA Nominee for Best British Actress.
1963	Bitter Harvest	Jennie Jones	A gritty, “Kitchen Sink” tragedy that pushed her range.

Janet Munro was the “Bridge to the Modern Heroine.” She was one of the first British actresses to successfully navigate the chasm between the “Studio System” and the “Indie Realism” of the 1960s. She possessed a translucence on screen; you could see her thoughts as clearly as her face. Though her light was extinguished early, she left behind a body of work that proved a woman could be both a “Disney Princess” and a “Realist Icon”—provided she had the technical courage to burn the old image down.

Would

Dina Merrill obituary in “The Guardian” in 2017.

There has seldom been more closeness between an acting career and a lifestyle than that of Dina Merrill, who has died aged 93. As an heiress, socialite and philanthropist, Merrill had little trouble portraying upper-crust women in films and television.

Her patrician allure led her to be proclaimed “Hollywood’s new Grace Kelly” in 1959. Alas, Merrill was seldom given the chance to shine as much as the star who became a princess. Nevertheless, she had a long career in films from the mid-50s to the mid-60s, and appeared regularly on television from 1955.

Perhaps she was best known on the big screen as Tony Curtis’s love interest in Blake Edwards’ Operation Petticoat (1959). The action comedy starred Cary Grant, who had been married to Merrill’s cousin, the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. Almost as celebrated was her role as the love rival of Elizabeth Taylor’s character in Butterfield 8 (1960). Despite having won the best actress Oscar for her role, Taylor herself referred to the melodrama as “a piece of shit”. Merrill, who often brought class to tawdry material, was far too ladylike to use such language.

She was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton in New York City, the only child of Marjorie Merriweather Post (owner of the Post cereal firm, which became General Foods) and her second husband, the Wall Street stockbroker EF Hutton.

Post built the Palm Beach estate Mar-a-Lago a few years before her daughter’s birth, and it was where the family would spend the winter until Post’s death.

The estate was bought by Donald Trump in 1985 after the National Park Service, to which Post left the property, could no longer afford its upkeep.

“Deenie” attended George Washington University, in Washington, DC, for one term, then dropped out and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. “Of course my parents’ eyebrows shot up when I said I wanted to be an actress. And I guess they said, really between themselves, ‘Let the dear girl try, and fall on her face.’ Because it never occurred to me to ask my father or mother to pay for something they didn’t believe in, I did some modelling while acting off-Broadway.”

Adopting a stage name borrowed from Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch, a well-known stockbroker like her father, she made her Broadway debut (with three lines) as Dina Merrill in John Van Druten’s play The Mermaids Singing in 1945. She made her feature film debut in Desk Set (1957), as the assistant to a librarian (Katharine Hepburn), one of the staff afraid of losing her job to two giant computers brought in by an efficiency expert (Spencer Tracy). She then brought some dignity to Don’t Give Up the Ship (1959), an asinine comedy in which she co-starred with Jerry Lewis, helping him search for a destroyer he lost during the second world war.

In the same year, Merrill was one of a group of stranded army nurses rescued (reluctantly) by a US submarine captain (Grant) during the second world war in Operation Petticoat. Her presence distracts one of his officers (Curtis) from his duties as he persuades her to let off steam – signified by a whistling kettle after they kiss.

Merrill exuded elegance in the thankless role of the wife of a wealthy businessman (Laurence Harvey) in Butterfield 8, ultimately willing to forgive his philandering with a high-class hooker (Taylor). The wife is actually more concerned that the woman took her $7,000 mink coat after a night with her husband.

In Vincente Minnelli’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), as a socialite, Merrill, in a black wig, is among the leading contenders to marry the widowed father (Glenn Ford) until rejected by his young son (Ron Howard) because “she has skinny eyes” like the villainesses in his comic books. Back to cool blondeness, Merrill co-starred with Bob Hope in a weary generation gap comedy, I’ll Take Sweden (1965). With a rather wonky Swedish accent, Merrill, who is mainly called upon to laugh at Hope’s wisecracks, portrays an interior decorator whom Hope, playing a businessman, falls for in Stockholm (cue stock shots).

Given her underused and misused talents in Hollywood, it was no wonder that Merrill preferred a career in television. Name any series of the 60s and 70s – Dr Kildare, Bonanza, Rawhide, Mission Impossible, The Love Boat – and Merrill was bound to have appeared in it. She was even in several Batman episodes in 1968, as Calamity Jan opposite her second husband, Cliff Robertson, as Shame.

She returned only rarely to the big screen, working with Robert Altmantwice, in A Wedding (1978), as the bridegroom’s bossy aunt, and as a Hollywood denizen in The Player (1992). Less prestigious was her role as a snobbish society woman in Caddyshack 2 (1988) trying to stop a vulgar nouveau riche tycoon (Jackie Mason) from joining an exclusive golf club. Good sport that Merrill was, she allowed herself the indignity of having Mason chase her with a bulldozer.

Mainly, however, she was involved in numerous charitable and artistic causes. Her son David’s diabetes inspired her to establish the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation; and she served for 12 years as presidential appointee to the board of trustees of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Merrill’s first two marriages ended in divorce. David died in 1973, and the daughter of her second marriage, Heather, also predeceased her. She is survived by her third husband, the film producer Ted Hartley, whom she married in 1989, and by a son, Stanley, and daughter, Nina, from her first marriage, to Stanley Rumbough Jr.

• Dina Merrill (Nedenia Marjorie Hutton), actor, born 29 December 1923; died 22 May 2017

Vogue magazine tribute in 2017.

That famous fur coat in Butterfield 8 (the one that Elizabeth Taylor steals from a swanky Upper East Side closet) belonged to the frustrated Park Avenue wife played to perfection by Dina Merrill.

If Merrill, who passed away today at the age of 93, was so convincing as that character, it was a role she came by naturally. Unlike the hardscrabble past of many actors, hers was a strikingly different back story: Born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton, she was the daughter of Post Cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and Wall Street stockbroker Edward Francis Hutton.

Merrill enjoyed a childhood of almost unimaginable privilege. She summered on the Sea Cloud, her family’s sumptuous yacht; she wintered at the family’s Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago.

When she decided to pursue acting, she didn’t ask her parents for any money. Instead, she took $10 an hour modeling jobs (including for Vogue.) Though she was over 30 by the time she got her first role, Merrill had a long and varied career—at one point starring with Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat. (Among that actor’s many wives was Merrill’s cousin, Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton.)

But she didn’t always play the moneyed ice princess: cast against type, Merrill appeared with her second husband, Cliff Robertson, on the TV show Batman, as the villainous Calamity Jan. And in 1979, she even deigned to set sail on the Love Boat, a vessel far from the Sea Cloud, but just as American, and just as iconic.

Jane Greer was one of the best of femme fatales. She was born in 1924 in Washington D.C. She made her movie debit in “Pan-Americana” in 1924. She was splendid opposite Robert Mitchum in “Out of the Past” in 1947 and “The Big Steal” in 1949. Her other films include “Down Among the Sheltering Palms” and “Man of A Thousand Faces”. She died in 2001.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Independent”:

Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire, could make and break any actress’s career on a whim and often did. In 1943, when Hughes saw a reproduction of a second world war recruitment poster in Life magazine of the petite, almond-eyed, 18-year-old Bettejane Greer, posing in a smart new WAC uniform, he told one of his acolytes to “find this girl as soon as possible and sign her up.” Jane Greer, who has died aged 76, was whisked by Hughes from Washington DC, where she was born, to Los Angeles, and although she eventually became one of the leading actresses in film noir , she had to wait two years to appear on screen.

Her mother, who wrote children’s stories and traced her family back to the poet John Donne, worked in the US war department’s public information office and got her daughter the job modelling the uniform. And it was her mother who accompanied the young Bettejane to Los Angeles. Even so Hughes managed to keep Greer under a kind of house arrest for five months. “Hughes was obsessed with me,” she said many years later. “But at first it seemed as if he were offering me a superb career opportunity.”

As soon as she could manage to evade Hughes and his spies, Greer met Rudy Vallee, the former crooner turned comic supporting actor, and they married a few weeks later. Hughes was enraged and warned her that unless she divorced Vallee, he would drop her. He had signed her to a seven-year contract, but failed to find any roles for her. Frustrated, Greer managed to get out of her contract and join RKO.

However, Hughes continued to pressure Greer and, as a result, her marriage suffered. Soon after her divorce from Vallee in 1944, Greer moved in with Hughes as his lover. At first, RKO gave her bit parts as show girls in three films under her real name of Bettejane Greer. She had taken part in many beauty and talent contests as a child, and began modelling professionally at the age of 12. She dropped out of her senior year at high school to work as a vocalist with a nightclub band, though she only had a chance to sing in her first few films. One of these was The Falcon’s Alibi (1946), in which Greer played a lively band singer who is murdered by crazed disc jockey Elisha Cook Jr. Her first decent role was as one of the three women betrayed by murderous cad Robert Young in They Won’t Believe Me (1947). Chic in a wardrobe of trim suits and hats, she coolly seeks her revenge. In the same year, she came into her own as one of the great two-timing dames in Jacques Tourneur’s superb film noir Out of The Past, a part that was enough to make her one of the icons of the genre.

As the femme fatale who coldly seduces Robert Mitchum in his first starring role, Greer changes character expertly to suit her particular needs, remote one moment, charming the next. “I had never read a part like that,” Greer recalled. “All through the picture they talk about you, so that by the time you come on screen, everyone thinks you’re going to be nine feet tall.”

Of Tourneur, she commented, “He did not tell his actors very much. He said to me, ‘First half of picture, Good Girl. Last half of picture, Bad Girl. No big eyes’.”

She followed this by playing a tough but beautiful gambling house owner in Station West (1948) responsible for the killing of two soldiers. Naturally, Dick Powell, who is on her trail, falls for her before bringing about her demise.

Despite the fact that Greer was now married to an attorney, Edward Lasker, Hughes, in a noirish twist of fate, had just bought RKO, and was still interested in her romantically. When Greer resisted him, Hughes barked out, “As long as I own the studio, you won’t work.” However, he relented and cast her to co-star once again with Mitchum, this time in Don Siegel’s fast-paced The Big Steal (1949).

Greer’s last film for RKO was The Company She Keeps (1950). In it, she was a deceitful ex-con, making a play for the boyfriend of her parole officer (Lizabeth Scott). In one scene, the baby in her arms is Jeff Bridges, making his screen debut.

Thereafter, Greer never again had the chance to use her sassy, sensual charms to full advantage. At MGM, there was not much to get her teeth into, except as the plotting Antoinette de Mauban in the Technicolor remake of The Prisoner Of Zenda (1952), though she was billed sixth.

In 1953, Greer retired to raise her family of three boys, all of them later taking up careers in the movie and music industries. Subsequently, she made only sporadic appearances on screen: in John Boulting’s sluggish Run for the Sun (1956), with Richard Widmark and Trevor Howard, and as the second wife of Lon Chaney (James Cagney) in Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957).

In 1964, she joined two other aging drama queens, Susan Hayward and Bette Davis, in the soap operatics of Where Love Has Gone in which she played a sympathetic probation officer. One of her last appearances was in Against All Odds (1984), a remake of Out of the Past, Greer’s best film. She was given the small part, not in the original, of Rachel Ward’s mother, only as a reminder to cinephiles of the great days of the 1940s when Jane Greer entered the film noir hall of fame.

She is survived by her sons.

Jane Greer, actor, born September 9 1924; died August 24 2001

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

The Prisoner Of Zenda, poster, Stewart Granger, Jane Greer, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, 1952. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Helen Reddy was born in 1941 in Melbourne, Australia. She began her show business career in her home land and achieved national there with her appearances on the popular television programme “Bandstand”. She came to New York in 1965 to pursue her career in the U.S. She won a recording contract with Capitol Records and in 1972 she had a massive popular hit with the song “I am Woman”. Her other hits include “Delta Dawn” and “Angie Baby”. In the mid 1970’s she starred in such movies as “Airport 1975” and Walt Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” with Jim Dale. More recently she has starred in such stage shows as “Shirley Valentine”, “Blood Brothers” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. Helen Reddy died in 2020 at the age of 77.

Helen Reddy obituary

Australian singer who enjoyed huge success with her 1972 feminist anthem I Am Woman

Accepting the 1973 Grammy award in the best female pop vocal category, Helen Reddy rubbed salt into her critics’ wounds by saying: ‘I would like to thank God, because she makes everything possible.’ Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

Caroline Sullivan

Wed 30 Sep 2020 17.44 BST

Every social movement has its definitive song, and feminism got its anthem in 1972, when the Australian singer Helen Reddy released the single I Am Woman. In three elegant minutes, it hewed a portal through which schoolgirls and their mothers saw an empowered future. Reaching No 1 in the US and selling 1m copies there, it also established Reddy, who has died aged 78, as one of the top-selling female vocalists of the decade.

In her pomp during the early to mid-1970s no woman sold more records or scored more No 1 singles in a row (six) on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart; nor did any other female vocalist excite quite such opposing views among the public. Hipsters were repelled by her silky vocal style and smooth arrangements, with Alice Cooper dubbing her “the queen of housewife rock”; conservatives, on the other hand, were unsettled by I Am Woman’s call to arms.

Accepting the 1973 Grammy award in the best female pop vocal category, Reddy rubbed salt into the wound by saying: “I would like to thank God, because she makes everything possible.” For her part, Reddy concurred with Cooper: “[Queen of housewife rock] means I’ve reached a lot of people in a simplistic manner who would never go to a lecture or read an article on women’s lib.”

Helen Reddy performing in London in 1974. Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

She had not expected the song to become a hit, let alone a cultural touchstone. She wrote the lyrics (the music was composed by an Australian guitarist friend, Ray Burton) on impulse, having lain in bed one night and taken stock of the grinding struggle to break through in the music business.

As a jobbing singer in Australia and then Los Angeles, she had been belittled and harassed by male executives and performers, and consequently became part of a Hollywood women’s discussion group. What emerged the day she wrote I Am Woman was effortlessly, unequivocally anthemic: “I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore … I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman.”

It caught the mood of what was then called the women’s liberation movement just as it was becoming an unstoppable wave; nearly 50 years later, the phrase “hear me roar” is part of the lexicon.

Helen Reddy in California last year. Photograph: John Sciulli/Getty Images

Yet Reddy did not fancy its chances in the chart. And, initially, events bore her out. The tune was tucked away on her 1971 debut album, I Don’t Know How to Love Him, which had been hastily recorded after the title track, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar the previous year, became a medium-sized hit.

For commercial purposes I Am Woman, the fourth song on side one, was just another album track. Though Reddy opened her live shows with it, she maintained that it was “clearly not hit single material”, and if it had not fortuitously been used in the soundtrack of a 1972 Jacqueline Bisset comedy, Stand Up and Be Counted, Reddy would have been proved right.

The exposure in the film persuaded her label to put it out as a single, and her then husband and manager, Jeff Wald, arranged performing slots on nearly 20 American TV programmes. After six months’ slow progress up the chart, I Am Woman finally reached No 1. In Australia, it was No 2; the UK, however, took no notice until the 1974 single Angie Baby became her sole British hit.

For the purveyor of a highly influential song, Reddy herself presented the mildest of figures. Restraint in both performance and appearance was her trademark. In an era when pop-star fashion ran to road-worn denim or glam-rock frippery, Reddy took the middle path: stylish but toned down.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

The #1 Grammy-winning “I Am Woman” became not only THE anthem of the feminist movement during the radical 1970s, but also the signature song for its crop-haired composer and singer Helen Reddy. Three decades later this is the hit people still remember her for, despite the fact she had an abundance of other “top ten” records over the course of her long career.

Helen was born to Australian show-biz parents (comedy actor/producer/writer Max Reddyand singer/soap opera actress Stella Lamond) and began performing at the age of four at the Tivoli Theatre in Perth, Australia, touring much of her native country with her parents. She left boarding school at age 15 to work on the road singing and acting. Her musical style is best described as a light amalgam of rhythm and blues, easy rock and jazz. Her soothing, quivery vocals and equally warm appeal was instantly embraced, eventually earning her own Australian radio show. “Helen Reddy Sings” aired twice weekly on the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

In 1966 Helen won a trip to New York in an Austalian Bandstand International contest and, though she met with little success during this excursion, did meet and marry second husband Jeff Wald, a manager and an agent with the William Morris talent agency. They married the following year and went to Los Angeles. Wald worked Helen into a few performances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), fifteen appearances total, and the resulting attention earned her her first hit with a top version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from the Broadway rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” in February 1972. Signed by Capitol Records, she enjoyed hit after hit throughout the early 70s, with “Delta Dawn” (1973) and “Angie Baby” (1974) also reaching #1. In 1973 Helen had her own summer-replacement variety show and was a popular hostess for a time on NBC’s late-night variety show The Midnight Special (1972). She tried to parlay her singing success into a film career but the pretty, wholesome-looking entertainer received only a mild reception for the Disney children’s film Pete’s Dragon (1977) and it went no further.

In 1982 she divorced Wald and married a third time the following year to drummer Milton Ruth. Helen has ventured on into the concert and symphony orchestra forums as well as becoming a popular cabaret and nightclub attraction. In recent years she has graced a number of musical theater productions both on Broadway and in London’s West End. Over the years she has been considered a primary interpreter of English playwright Willy Russell, having appeared in four productions of his one-woman show “Shirley Valentine.” Other live musical productions have included “Anything Goes,” “Call Me Madam,” “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and Russell’s “Blood Brothers”, in which she made her Broadway debut. Lately she is living again in her native Australia and retired from the business in 2002. These days she is a practicing hypnotherapist and motivational speaker.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors