Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 93 of 128

Melinda Dillon

Melinda Dillon was born in 1939 in Hope, Arknansas. Her first film was “The April Fools” with Jack Lemmon in 1969. She was terrific in two films with Paul Newman, “Slap Shot” in 1976 and in 1981 “Absence of Malice”. Other films include “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “The Prince of Tides” and “How to Make an American Quilt”. Melinda Dillon died in 2023 aged 83.

TCM Overview:

An original member of the Second City improv troupe, Melinda Dillon scored a Tony nomination for her supporting work as the vulnerable Honey in the original Broadway production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” After her Golden Globe-nominated turn in “Bound for Glory” (1976), she earned an Oscar nomination for one of her most famous roles, that of a mother in search of her alien-abducted child in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977). After roles in “Slap Shot” (1977) and “F.I.S.T.” (1978), she earned another Oscar nomination as a woman driven to suicide by the machinations of a reporter (Sally Field) in “Absence of Malice” (1981) and achieved pop cultural immortality as the sweet, slightly goofy mother in the ultimate holiday classic, “A Christmas Story” (1983). Dillon scored important roles as John Lithgow’s wife in “Harry and the Hendersons” (1987) and Nick Nolte’s troubled sister in “The Prince of Tides” (1991), but notched smaller supporting turns in the ensemble pieces “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995), “How to Make an American Quilt” (1995) and “Magnolia” (1999). Working steadily but quietly, the actress continued to pop up in character roles, including an uncredited turn in “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” (2012). Equally adept at comedy as well as drama, Melinda Dillon was an exceptionally gifted actress who brought a unique spark to any project in which she appeared.

Born Oct. 13, 1939 in Hope, AR, Melinda Rose Dillon began her career at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, IL and subsequently became an original member of the famed Second City improvisational company. She made her Broadway debut creating the role of Honey in the original production of Edward Albee’s classic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for which she won a New York Drama Critics Award as well as received a Tony nomination. She became a familiar face to audiences of that era with a string of TV guest spots on such popular programs as “Bonanza” (NBC, 1959-1973) and “The Jeffersons” (CBS, 1975-1985), while also making her film debut in “The April Fools” (1969), where she played an eccentric neighbor of Catherine Deneuve. Dillon’s greatest impact would come on the big screen, and she earned a Golden Globe nomination for playing the dual roles of Woody Guthrie’s abandoned wife and his singing partner in Hal Ashby’s biopic “Bound for Glory” (1976). Her career earned a major boost, elevating her to household name status when Steven Spielberg cast her in his extraterrestrial masterpiece, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) as a desperate mother coping with the alien abduction of her son. Her frantic search for her young son (Cary Guffey) as the aliens surround the family farmhouse, beaming otherworldly light through every crevice in the wall and floorboards, remained one of the most classic moments put to film. Her heartbreaking performance earned Dillon nominations for an Oscar and Saturn Award.

Dillon proved surprisingly sexy in the hockey comedy “Slap Shot” (1977) and flexed her dramatic chops as the lover of union organizer Johnny Kovak (Sylvester Stallone) in the drama “F.I.S.T.” (1978). After a sweet cameo in “The Muppet Movie” (1979), she starred in several made-for-TV movies, including “The Shadow Box” (ABC, 1980), before notching her most powerful dramatic film role in Sydney Pollack’s “Absence of Malice” (1981). As a loyal but emotionally fragile friend whose attempts to defend a businessman (Paul Newman) result in her own undoing and eventual suicide, Dillon delivered an unforgettable performance which earned her a second Oscar nomination. Dillon’s most iconic and most beloved role, however, came when she played the high-spirited but understanding mother of young Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) in “A Christmas Story” (1983). Although the film achieved a quiet, sleeper success at the box office upon its initial release, it was not until later in the decade that annual television airings and word-of-mouth propelled it into a beloved classic. By the 1990s, “A Christmas Story” was universally acknowledged as an annual holiday must-see and, for many viewers, an all-time favorite with oft-quoted lines and sequences immortalized in the popular imagination. Dillon herself provided many of the film’s best moments, showcasing her exceptional ability with comedy as well as drama, including her frazzled, one-sided battle with her husband’s (Darren McGavin) alluring leg lamp, her “mommy’s little piggy” eating lesson with finicky younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella), and a touchingly gentle sequence in which she gracefully defuses a potential dinner table fight between Ralphie and his father.

Dillon went on to anchor an especially memorable nuclear war-themed installment of “The Twilight Zone” (CBS, 1959-1964, 1985-89; UPN, 2002-03), earned another Saturn Award nomination as John Lithgow’s warm wife in the Bigfoot family favorite “Harry and the Hendersons” (1987), and essayed Savannah Wingo, Nick Nolte’s fragile poet sister whose attempted suicide serves as the catalyst for family redemption in Barbra Streisand’s masterful drama, “The Prince of Tides” (1991). Continuing her journey as an acclaimed character actress, Dillon notched a CableACE nomination for her work on the medical ethics drama “State of Emergency” (HBO, 1994) and took small roles in the ensemble films “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995), “How to Make an American Quilt” (1995) and “Magnolia” (1999). Although her professional output slowed in later years, the actress still managed to notch interesting character work, including supporting turns in the gay romance “Adam & Steve” (2005), the 9/11 drama “Reign Over Me” (2007), and the quirky apocalyptic romantic comedy “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” (2012).

By Jonathan Riggs

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

New York Times obituary in 2023:

Melinda Dillon, who shot to Broadway stardom at 23, withdrew from acting after a mental breakdown, and then, in her late 30s, staged a comeback, receiving best supporting actress Oscar nominations for her roles in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Absence of Malice,” died on Jan. 9. She was 83.

Her death, which was announced by a cremation service, came to public notice in recent days. The announcement did not specify the cause or location of her death.

Ms. Dillon was best known for playing mothers coping with grave or silly problems in popular movies of the 1970s and ’80s. In “Close Encounters,” the enduring Steven Spielberg hit from 1977, she played an artist and single mother living on a rural farm who watches her son get abducted by aliens.

She played more explicitly archetypal mothers in “Harry and the Hendersons” (1987), a family comedy about having Bigfoot as your pet, and “A Christmas Story” (1983), a series of vignettes depicting an all-American Christmas in midcentury Indiana.

The latter film, long a classic of the holiday season on television, inspired a 2020 tribute in The New York Times, which hailed Ms. Dillon’s character, a frazzled Everymom, as a “damn hero.”

In “Absence of Malice” (1981), Ms. Dillon played against maternal type as a Catholic woman who must admit to having an abortion.

Her star turn of that era came late for an actress — in Ms. Dillon’s late 30s and 40s — and it constituted an unexpected re-emergence, following a crisis that seemed to halt her promising career.

Melinda Ruth Clardy was born in Hope, Ark., on Oct. 13, 1939. Her father, Floyd, worked as a traveling salesman, and her mother, Noreen, was a volunteer at a U.S. Army hospital. Noreen fell in love with Wilbur Dillon, a wounded veteran, and Melinda’s parents divorced when she was 5.

She took her stepfather’s surname and had the peripatetic upbringing of a child of the military, living for a while in Germany. She left home at 16 and soon began pursuing an acting career.

She moved to New York City in 1962, fresh out of acting school. In just a matter of weeks, she landed one of four parts in the Broadway debut of Edward Albee’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

She played Honey, the wife in a young couple invited to the home of an older couple for a drink. The premiere, on Oct. 13, fell on her 23rd birthday.

“Critics unanimously hailed her performance as superb,” The Daily News announced in a profile published that month that described Ms. Dillon’s “overnight rise from obscurity to stardom.”

Her agent, Peter Witt, told The News, “What has happened to her is a one in a million shot paying off the first time out in the theater.”

In a 2014 New York Times review of a recording of the play’s original cast, the theater critic Charles Isherwood called the production “one of the seminal theatrical events of the 20th century” and said the actors’ performances, including Ms. Dillon’s, “still feel fresh, fierce and definitive.”

But as time went on, the pressure bore down on Ms. Dillon. Sometimes she would perform in a three-hour matinee in the afternoon, then study acting with Lee Strasberg for two hours, and then do another three-hour performance in the evening. Talking to sophisticated, powerful people in the New York theater world terrified her.

After nine months, she left the play and checked into the mental ward of Gracie Square Hospital in New York, where she found herself feeling suicidal.

“I had had the American dream — to go to New York and study with Lee Strasberg,” she told The New York Times in 1976. “I guess I just wasn’t prepared for it all to happen so quickly.”

After her release from the hospital, she took a few acting roles but then sought safe harbor in marriage, to the actor Richard Libertini, and in motherhood, raising their son, also named Richard.

But she did not find contentment in life away from the spotlight. By the mid-1970s, she was single and being cast in multiple major Hollywood productions, including “Slap Shot,” a 1977 film starring Paul Newman.

“I spent 10 and a half hours naked in bed with Paul and absolutely loved it,” she told People magazine in 1978.

After the apex of her Hollywood career, she continued acting, and into the 21st century she occasionally made appearances on television shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

Information about her survivors was not immediately available.

Ms. Dillon sang in the choir of a Methodist church as an adult, and she threw herself into film roles as mothers. But she came to reject what she had once sought in the life of a traditional suburban housewife.

“I left home so early that when I found somebody who wanted to take care of me, I just stopped everything; I could have soared ahead — I really know that — and I chose not to,” she told The Times. In marriage, “I got buried alive,” she continued. “That’s what got me to act again

Original Cinema 1-Sheet Poster – Movie Film Posters

Lyle Bettger was born in 1915 in Philadelphia. He was a very interesing character actor who specialised in villians in film noirs and westerns. His films include “No Man of her Own” with Barbara Stanwyck in 1950, “The Greatest Show on Earth” where he was mean to Gloria Grahame and “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”. He died in 2003 aged 88.

IMDB entry:

Handsome, blond-haired, steely-eyed villain in many film Westerns. He was never the grizzled outlaw, covered in trail dust. No, he was the immaculate-looking, “respectable” (but two-faced) dandy in silk damask vest, often puffing suavely on a cheroot, whose ashes he then might contemptuously flick in the hero’s face. He could confront an antagonist wearing a wry smile, even while neatly inserting his dirk between the latter’s ribs. One wonders why Bettger, with his Aryan looks and menacing sneer, never became typecast as the stereotypical Nazi SS officer or Gestapo interrogator. (Perhaps the man was just fortunate in that regard.)

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs <kinephile@aol.com>

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Grace Zabriskie was born in New Orleans in 1942. She came to prominence as Sally Field’s mother in the movie “Norma Rae” in 1979. Her other films include “An Officer and a Gentleman” as the mother of Debra Winger, “Drugstore Cowboy” and “The Burning Bed”.

TCM Overview:

A character actress given to tasty bit parts, Grace Zabriskie vacillates between erotic exhibitionists and colorful, brassy mothers. Since making her feature debut in “Norma Rae” (1978), the New Orleans-born actress has gone on to leave an indelible mark on both the small and big screens. She has been particularly effective in movies playing mothers, albeit not the kind that would be embraced by June Cleaver. In “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982), Zabriskie portrayed Debra Winger’s mom while in “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989), she was the rejecting parent of Matt Dillon. The actress drew on her roots as Dennis Quaid’s Cajun mom in “The Big Easy” (1986) and was another Southern mother, this time to Sissy Spacek, in “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” (1994). Two of her most memorable feature parts were as a crazed killer (in a role tailored specifically for her) in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” (1990) and as Malcolm McDowall’s wife in “Chain of Desire” (1993), for which she donned a maid’s uniform and wig for a softly sadistic sex scene. Aong with a steady string of low-profile indie filsm, Zabriskie has appeared in “A Family Thing” (1996), “Armageddon” (1998), “Gone In Sixty Seconds” (2001), “The House on Turk Street” (2002) and, in a particularly effective turn, as the near catatonic victim of “The Grudge” (2004).

On the small screen, the actress has lent her unique talents to a variety of memorable roles. Zabriskie was effective as a snake-handler who attempts to romance a detective in a two-part 1986 installment of NBC’s “Hill Street Blues” and as the supportive wife of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt in the CBS biopic “My Father, My Son” (1988). Zabriskie went on to play the grandmother of a child stricken with AIDS in “The Ryan White Story” (ABC, 1989), and the therapist of a sexually abused teen in “A Deadly Silence” (ABC, 1989). The following year, David Lynch tapped her to portray the excessively sobbing mother of murder victim Laura Palmer in the quirky primetime serial “Twin Peaks” (ABC), which she reprised in the confusing 1993 feature prequel “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”. Zabriskie had the recurring role of the mother of Susan Ross, George Costanza’s ill-fated fiancee in several episodes of “Seinfeld”. She also offered an effective supporting turn as Jennifer Jason Leigh’s mother in the controversial but critically-praised “Bastard Out of Carolina” (Showtime, 1996). She also had a recurring stint as Yellow Teeth on the sci-fi series “John Doe” (UPN, 2002-2003) and appeared as The Crone on the popular WB witchcraft-lite series “Charmed.”

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

“Kris Kristofferson was the first big male star to sport a beard – but then it suited the times, like his denims and open necked shirts and the guitar he carried. He was famous first as a singer-concert artist and recording star, a little bit older than most as these things go, but boyish-looking despite the beard. The background was impossibly romantic – Rhodes scholar and army officer on the one hand, and janitor and barman on the other, with stints as football-player, prize-fighter, helicopter pilot and writer. This was the ne lifestyle in excess: but had he not written ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’. Well this nice man shared his problems with us, we might help him, we might help him make it through the night but he looked so relaxed and relaxing, so confident and masculine in a profession of nonentities”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The Independent Years”. (1991).

Kris Kristofferson. IMDB

Kris Kristofferson was born in 1936 in Brownsville, Texas. He had a sterling career as a singer/songwriter before he ventured into films. His film debut came in “Blume in Love”. Other films include “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”, “Alice Dos’nt Live Her Anymore” with Ellen Burstyn, “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea” , “Heaven’s Gate” and “A Star is Born”.

IMDB entry:

Kris Kristofferson’s father was a United States Air Force general who pushed his son to a military career. Kris was a Golden Gloves boxer and went to Pomona College in California. From there, he earned a Rhodes scholarship to study literature at Oxford University. He ultimately joined the United States Army and achieved the rank of captain. He became a helicopter pilot, which served him well later. In 1965, he resigned his commission to pursue songwriting. He had just been assigned to become a teacher at USMA West Point. He got a job sweeping floors in Nashville studios. There he metJohnny Cash, who initially took some of his songs but ignored them. He was also working as a commercial helicopter pilot at the time. He got Cash’s attention when he landed his helicopter in Cash’s yard and gave him some more tapes. Cash then recorded Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, which was voted the 1970 Song of the Year by the Country Music Association. Kris was noted for his heavy boozing. He lost his helicopter pilot job when he passed out at the controls, and his drinking ruined his marriage to singer Rita Coolidge, when he was reaching a bottle and half of Jack Daniels daily. He gave up alcohol in 1976. His acting career nose-dived after making Heaven’s Gate (1980). In recent years, he has made a comeback with his musical and acting careers. He does say that he prefers his music, but says his children are his true legacy.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: John Sacksteder <jsack@ka.net>

The above entry from IMDB can also be accessed online here.

George de la Pena was born in 1955 and is an American ballet dancer and actor. He began acting when he was cast in the title role in 1980 in “Nijinsky”. His other films include “Personal Best” and “The Flamingo Kid”.

Hugh O’Connor was born in 1962 in Rome. He was the adopted son of actor Carroll O’Connor. He acted with his father in the television series “In the Heat of the Night”. He also acted in the film “Brass”. He died in Los Angeles in 1995.

JoBeth Williams was born in 1948 in Houston, Texas. She had a supporting part in “Kramer versus Kramer” with Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in 1979. Other films included “Stir Crazy”, “Poltergeist”, “The Big Chill”, and “Desert Bloom”. She is currently President of the Screen Actors Guild.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

The product of a musical family, Houston-born Jobeth Williams was the daughter of an opera-singing father who encouraged her early interest in theater during high school. She made her professional debut at age 18 in a Houston-based musical production, then studied at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, with the intentions of becoming a child psychologist. The acting bug hit her again, however, and she decided to pursue theater after receiving her B.A. in English in 1970. Working intensely to lose her Texas twang, her early training came as a member of the Trinity Repertory Company, where she stayed for two-and-a-half years.

In New York the lovely Jobeth became a daytime regular in the mid-1970s on bothSomerset (1970) and in a vixenish role on Guiding Light (1952) before making a brief but memorable impact in a highly popular film at the end of the decade. In the Dustin Hoffman starring film Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Jobeth plays Hoffman’s gorgeous sleepover who gets caught stark naked by his young, precocious son (Justin Henry) the following morning. She also impressed on the stage with major roles in “Moonchildren” and “A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking.”

Her star maker would could in the form of the strong-willed mother of three who fights to save her brood from home-invading demons in Steven Spielberg‘s humongous critical and box-office hit Poltergeist (1982), which also made a major star out of movie husbandCraig T. Nelson. Officially in the big leagues now, she joined the star ensemble cast ofThe Big Chill (1983), and appeared opposite Nick Nolte in Teachers (1984). Disappointing outcomes in the lackluster sequel Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) and the intriguing but overlooked American Dreamer (1984) prodded her to search for more challenging work on TV.

It is the small screen, in fact, that has particularly shown off the range of Jobeth’s talent over the years, particularly in domestic drama. Cast in some of the finest TV-movies served up, Jobeth won deserved Emmy nominations for her real-life mother of an ill-fated missing child in Adam (1983) and real-life surrogate mother in Baby M (1988). Other monumental mini-movie efforts include her nurse in the apocalyptic drama The Day After(1983); her magnetic performance opposite Terry Kinney as an adulterous worshiper and minister who carry out plans to kill their respective spouses in the gripping suspense show Murder Ordained (1987); alcoholic James Woods‘ long-suffering wife in My Name Is Bill W. (1989); a social worker trying to reach a deaf girl in Breaking Through (1996); and the overbearing mother whose son turns to drugs in Trapped in a Purple Haze (2000). She continues to balance both film and TV projects into the millennium.

Behind the scenes she was nominated for an Academy Award for her directorial debut of Showtime’s On Hope (1994)and continues to seek out other directing projects. It doesn’t hurt being married to a director for encouragement. She and John Pasquin, who directed her in the film Jungle 2 Jungle (1997) and on the short-lived TV series Payne (1999), have two children. More recent film roles include playing Drew Barrymore‘s mom in Fever Pitch (2005).

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

Gale Sondergaard was born in 1899 in Minnesota to parents of Dutch origin. She won an Oscar for her first appearance on film in “Anthony Adverse” in 1936 and had a very successful movie career until the early 50’s when it was stalled by the Hous of Un-American Activities Committee. In the 40’s she made such classic movies as “The Life of Emile Zola”, “The Letter” and “Anna and the King of Siam”. In the 50’s she returned to New York and the stage only returning to films in 1969 in “Slaves”. She was acting up to shortly before her death in 1985.

IMDB entry:

Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and later married director Herbert J. Biberman. Her husband went to find work in Hollywood and she reluctantly followed him there. Although she had extensive experience in stage work, she had no intention of becoming an actress in film. Her mind was changed after she was discovered by director Mervyn LeRoy, who offered her a key role in his film Anthony Adverse (1936); she accepted the part and was awarded the very first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. LeRoy originally cast her as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but she felt she was not right for that role. Instead, she co-starred opposite Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a film that won Best Picture in 1937. Sondergaard’s most-remembered role was that of the sinister and cunning wife of a husband murdered by Bette Davis‘ character in The Letter(1940). Sondergaard continued her career rise in films such as Juarez (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Black Cat (1941), and Anna and the King of Siam (1946). Unfortunately, she was blacklisted when she refused to testify during the McCarthy-inspired “Red Scare” hysteria in the 1950s. She eventually returned to films in the 1960s and made her final appearance in the 1983 film Echoes (1982). Gale Sondergaard passed away of an undisclosed illness at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 86.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Blythe379@cs.com

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

A poster for Roy William Neill’s 1944 Sherlock Holmes mystery, ‘The Spider Woman’, starring (top to bottom) Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Gale Sondergaard. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Juliet Prowse obituary in “The Independent” in 1996.

Juliet Prowse was a terrific dancer whose presence graced films of the early 60’s. She was born in Bombay, India in 1936 but raised in South Africa. Her first film was “Can-Can” in 1960 with Frank Sinatra and Louis Jourdan. She was Elvis Presley’s leading lady in “G.I. Blues” and in 1965 starred with Sal Mineo in the cult movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear”. Juliet Prowse had a very busy career on the music stage and in concert halls and Las Vegas. She died in 1996.

Her obituary by Tom Vallance in “The Independent” newspaper:A tall actress-dancer with red hair, pouting lips (she was once called “a trim Brigitte Bardot”) and a great high kick, Juliet Prowse appeared on screen with Frank Sinatra (who proposed marriage) and Elvis Presley during an all too brief film career, shocked Nikita Khrushchev with her dancing in Can-Can, became a London stage favourite (notably in Sweet Charity), and a sensational night-club performer, where her father worked as a travelling salesman.

Her father, an Englishman born in South Africa, died when she was three and her mother then took her to relatives in Durban, but finally settled in Johannesburg. “Juliet showed an aptitide for dancing from the time she could walk,” stated her mother, who enrolled her daughter in ballet school at the age of four. At 14 she was in the corps of Johannesburg’s Festival Ballet, dancing in Swan Lake, Coppelia and Les Sylphides. Two years later she played the Queen of the Wilis in Giselle – cast because of her outstanding elevation, she was the youngest dancer ever to play the role in South Africa. “I never graduated from college,” said Prowse, “because I became so interested in dancing that when I was 16 I quit to study with the ballet teacher Marjorie Sturmm in Johannesburg.”

Going to London two years later to continue her studies, she received the biggest disappointment of her life when turned down by Anton Dolin for the London Festival Ballet because she was too tall (nearly 5ft 8in).

Prowse turned to show dancing and successfully auditioned for Jack Cole, who was choreographing the film Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) in London. Though she appeared in only one of the film’s numbers, Cole was impressed and asked her to work with him again in the London production of Kismet. She played the role of Princess Samaris, with an impressive solo dance to “Not Since Nineveh”, then after a 20-month run accepted an offer to dance in La Nouvelle Eve night-club in Paris, an engagement terminated when she injured her ankle in a motor-scooter accident.

While touring Italy in a revue starring the comic Macario, she fell in love with another dancer, Sergio Fadini, and with a third dancer they formed an act, the Prowse Dancers, and toured the European night-club circuit. Ambitious for her, Fadini polished her acting, singing and dancing technique and when he heard that Hermes Pan was in Rome he arranged an interview for her.

Pan, about to return to Hollywood to work on Can-Can, recommended her to 20th Century-Fox, who assigned her to appear in the movie. Having been given her featured role in Kismet on stage when the previous dancer dropped out at the last minute, Prowse now had her role of Celestine expanded to include the part of Claudine when Barrie Chase suddenly withdrew from Can-Can. “I’ve always had it easy,” Prowse said later. “I’ve never had to fight to get parts.”

Her role now included two major dancing roles plus a prominent acting role as the girl to whom Frank Sinatra sings “It’s Alright With Me”. An overlong and dull version of Cole Porter’s stage hit, Can-Can was considered notable mainly for the dancing of Prowse, particularly her solo as the Snake in the “Adam and Eve Ballet”, sliding sensually down branches of the Tree of Life dressed in blue-green snakeskin, a big red apple in her hand.

Khrushchev, after his famous visit to the set during the film’s making, described the number as “lascivious, disgusting and immoral”, but Frank Sinatra described Prowse as “the sexiest dancer I’ve ever seen”. He began an affair with her and featured her in two of his television specials, the first of which (in December 1959) showcased Prowse in an enormous production number staged in the California desert.

Regarding the well- publicised relationship, Prowse stated, “Gossip doesn’t worry me – I’m an open person. I’ve mixed around in this business long enough not to be embarrassed by anything pertaining to sex.” Fadini, her former boyfriend, commented, “Juliet is a sweet, shy, reserved girl – I don’t see what she sees in a man like him.”

When Sinatra proposed marriage with the condition that Prowse give up her career, she refused. “I am ambitious and have possibilities to be great,” she said.

Prowse went straight from Can-Can to the starring role opposite Elvis Presley in G.I. Blues (1960), based on a play filmed several times before (notably as The Fleet’s In in 1942) about a military unit who bet their company Lothario that he cannot melt the heart of a haughty night-club star. As the cabaret performer, Prowse won praise from critics for her exciting dance routines and her pert performance, and the director Norman Taurog later recounted that he had to shout “Cut!” several times to sepaarate the two stars during their kissing scenes.

Of Presley, Prowse stated, “He would make a damn fine dancer – he’s got fabulous rhythm”, and she would later do a perfect impersonation of the rock star in her night-club act.

With the end of her relationship with Sinatra, Prowse’s film career faltered. Fox, who had signed her to a seven-year contract, put her only into a minor musical, The Right Approach (1961), with Frankie Vaughan, a routine adventure, The Fiercest Heart (1961), about battling Boers and Zulus in 1837 South Africa, and in support of Debbie Reynolds in the comedy The Second Time Around (1961) before letting her go. (Her description of Hollywood as “a demoralising hick-town” had not endeared her to the moguls.)

She returned to South africa in 1965 to film Jamie Uys’s Dingaka, and the same year starred as a discotheque dancer admired by both a voyeur/serial killer (Sal Mineo) and a lesbian (Eliane Stritch) in an exploitation movie made in New York, Who Killed Teddy Bear?, which has recently inexplicably been rediscovered and was hailed by some critics as a masterpiece of underground cinema when revived earlier this year at New York’s enterprising Film Forum cinema.

Prowse was now concentrating on television and the theatre. After touring in such shows as Damn Yankees, Irma La Douce and The Boy Friend, she was cast in the Las Vegas production of Sweet Charity and played there to capacity for six months. In 1967 she enchanted London in the same piece as the gullible dance-hall hostess, stopping the show nightly cavorting through “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, and touchingly conveying the heroine’s unshakeable faith in human nature.

She returned to London in 1969 to star in Mame at Drury Lane while Ginger Rogers took a holiday, again winning acclaim, and in 1976 starred opposite Rock Hudson in a limited season of the two-character musical I Do! I Do!, one critic commenting that “Juliet Prowse is fast enough on her feet to prevent any damage to her toes when Rock is called on to do an occasional stiff-backed military two-step”.

Although she often confessed an ambition to have an original stage musical written fo her, Prowse’s principal career was now in night-clubs. In 1971 she made a sensational success with an act at Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Produced by Tony Charmoli, it was praised for its simplicity and finesse compared to the usual brash glitter of Vegas revues. It was climaxed, after Prowse had danced variations on the charleston, cha-cha and jitterbug, performed comedy sketches and sung ballads, with a memorable 15-minute ballet to Ravel’s “Bolero”.

She did guest appearances on all the leading television shows, including those of Perry Como, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye and Ed Sullivan, had her own situation comedy show, Mona McCluskey, (produced by Geoge Burns) in 1965 and her own television special, The Juliet Prowse Show, in 1979. She loved her work, and put herself through a gruelling twice-nightly schedule during her days as a night-club star, but always referred wistfully to her biggest regret.

“I’ve never starved,” she once said, “and my family always encouraged me, as did everyone else. But my really big disappointment was beng told I was too tall for the ballet.”

Juliet Prowse, actress and dancer: born Bombay 25 September 1936; married 1969 Eddie James (marriage dissolved 1970), 1972 John McCook (one son); died Los Angeles 14 September 1996.

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed on-line here.

New York Times obituary in 1996:

Juliet Prowse Is Dead at 59; Star of Musicals and Clubs

By Robert Mcg. Thomas Jr.

Sept. 16, 1996

Juliet Prowse, the tall, leggy dancer with the sultry smile and the bee-sting lips who became a tabloid celebrity when she offended Khrushchev and captivated Frank Sinatra, died on Saturday at her home in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. She was 59 and had been a staple of Las Vegas nightclub acts, television specials and touring musicals for more than 30 years.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, a spokesman said.

Although Miss Prowse was an accomplished dancer who had been trained in classical ballet in London and South Africa and had had a successful career in Europe before being discovered in Italy by the choreographer Hermes Pan, she was an unknown in the United States when Mr. Pan recruited her to appear with Mr. Sinatra and Shirley Maclaine in the movie-musical ”Can-Can.”

Then came the day in 1959 when Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, visited the ”Can-Can” set in Hollywood during a celebrated state visit to the United States and pronounced the entertainment ”immoral.”

Within hours Miss Prowse’s scantily-clad image was in virtually every newspaper in America and she was being hailed by Hollywood as another Betty Grable.

Miss Prowse, who knew propaganda when she heard it translated (Khrushchev had been all smiles during the visit, she said), was nonplused. ”Let’s face it,” she said. ”The cancan is a pretty raucous number. It’s not exactly ‘Swan Lake.’ ”

Although she won enthusiastic praise for both her acting and her dancing in ”Can-Can,” Miss Prowse was two decades late for the era of the big Hollywood musical and she appeared in only a few, largely forgettable movies, among them, ”The Second Time Around,” with Debbie Reynolds; ”Who Killed Teddy Bear?” with Sal Mineo, and ”G.I. Blues,” with Elvis Presley.

But the Khrushchev remark, a romance with Mr. Sinatra (they were engaged for six weeks in 1962) and a simultaneous fling with Mr. Presley made her an enduring darling of the gossip columns and enhanced her popularity as a television and night club performer.

Juliet Prowse, whose father was a British manager for Westinghouse who died when she was 3, was born in Bombay, India, and grew up in South Africa, where she emerged as such a skilled dancer that at 14 she was the ”baby ballerina” star of the Festival Ballet in Johannesburg.

At 17 she was pursuing her career in London, but had to switch to modern dance when she grew too tall, 5 feet, 7 inches, for her partners. ”When I got on my toes,” she said, ”some of those male partners were way down there.”

A part in the London production of ”Kismet” led to an engagement at a celebrated topless dance club in Paris, but Miss Prowse was not allowed to appear uncovered.

”I was considered English,” she later said. ”In those shows, nudity was the guarded right of the French and German girls.”

She later appeared in Madrid, helped form what amounted to a traveling review and was dancing in Rome when she was spotted by Mr. Pan, Fred Astaire’s longtime collaborator, who told friends she was the best feminine dancer he had ever seen.

Miss Prowse never became a major movie star, but in the years after ”Can-Can” she was rarely out of work partly because, for all her gossip- column celebrity, she was a hard-working, disciplined professional whose performances were almost always well received.

She made a virtual career touring in ”Mame’ and won such acclaim for her Las Vegas performance in ”Sweet Charity,” in 1966, that the show was taken to London, where Miss Prowse won the British equivalent of a Tony Award.

After she broke off her engagement with Mr. Sinatra, Miss Prowse settled down to a series of long-term relationships but generally avoided matrimony. There was a brief early marriage she never talked about, and in 1980, just after giving birth to their son, she married John McCook, an actor. They were later divorced.

To those who worked with her, Miss Prowse’s most striking feature was neither her long, shapely legs nor her dancing skills, but her sunny disposition and her perpetual good cheer even in the face of one disaster or another, like the time in 1987 when she was mauled by a leopard while rehearsing for a television special called ”Circus of the Stars.”

As her longtime manager, Mark Mordoh, noted on Saturday, none of her friends were surprised that Miss Prowse was convinced that the same dedication and hard work that had brought her a successful show business career would lead to a victory over her cancer, discovered in 1994.

”Even while she was getting chemotherapy,” Mr. Mordoh said, ”she was teaching yoga classes.”

Miss Prowse is survived by her son, Seth McCook, of Los Angeles; her mother, Phylis Polte, and a brother, Dr. Clive Prowse, both of Vanderbijl Park, South Africa, and her companion, B. J. Allen

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New York Times obituary in 2023:

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Juliet Prowse obituary in “The Independent” in 1996.

New York Times obituary in 1996:

Juliet Prowse Is Dead at 59; Star of Musicals and Clubs

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