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Cara Williams

 
Actor: Cara Williams
 
  • Born: Jun 29, 1925 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '40s-'50s, '70s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
  • Career Highlights: The Defiant Ones, Boomerang!, The Happy Land
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Happy Land (1943)

Biography

The product of a broken home, Cara Williams was still a preteen when she was taken by her mother from her hometown of Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Williams' first professional acting job was supplying vocal impressions of famous movie stars for animated cartoons. At 17, Williams was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract, but few of her subsequent film roles were large enough to attract notice. Her fortunes improved when she replaced Judy Holliday in the Broadway production of Born Yesterday (1950); thereafter, her film and TV roles increased in size and prominence. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a sex-starved farm woman in The Defiant Ones (1958). By virtue of her flaming red hair and acute comic timing, Williams was touted as "the new Lucille Ball" on the CBS sitcoms Pete and Gladys (1961) and The Cara Williams Show (1964). Her TV efforts were not particularly popular, but she had a powerful ally in the form of actor/producer Keefe Brasselle -- who was the best friend of CBS programming head James Aubrey. When Brasselle fell out of favor and Aubrey's regime toppled, Williams' stardom diminished. She went on to play character roles on-stage and in films, and was briefly a regular on the late-'70s TV series Rhoda. From 1952 through 1959, Cara Williams was the wife of actor John Barrymore Jr., by whom she had a son. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Wikipedia: Cara Williams
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Cara Williams (born June 29, 1925, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American film and television actress.

Contents

Biography

Williams was born Bernice Kamiat. Her father was an Austrian immigrant, and her mother was the child of Romanian immigrants.[1] She began her screen acting career in 1941, and was initially billed as Bernice Kay. Williams earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination in 1959 for The Defiant Ones.

She starred opposite Harry Morgan in the CBS situation comedy Pete and Gladys (1960–1962), and earned an Emmy Award nomination in 1962 for Best Actress in a Series. She later had her own CBS sitcom, The Cara Williams Show (1964–1965), with costars Frank Aletter, previously the star of Bringing Up Buddy on CBS, and Jack Sheldon, later star of the short-lived 1966 series, Run, Buddy, Run, also on CBS. Williams and Aletter played a married couple trying to keep their union secret because company policy did not permit employees to marry within the company. The series was created by Keefe Brasselle's Richelieu Productions, along with two other programs that season, The Reporter starring Harry Guardino and Gary Merrill and Paul Ford's sitcom The Baileys of Balboa.

In Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) she played a redheaded dancer who performed a notable number, declaring she did not like rock 'n' roll. She played James Cagney's girl friend in the musical comedy Never Steal Anything Small (1959) and even had a duet with Cagney.

During the early to mid-1960s, CBS executives groomed Williams to be the next Lucille Ball, but these plans never materialized. After the demise of her show, she did guest roles on other shows, briefly appearing as a regular on Valerie Harper's CBS series Rhoda.

Personal life

Williams married John Drew Barrymore (later the father of Drew) in 1952. They divorced in 1959. Their son, John Blyth Barrymore, is also an actor.

Select filmography

External links

References

  1. ^ U.S. Census, 1 April 1930, State of New York, County of Kings, enumeration district 355, p. 12-B, family 248.

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Actor. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cara Williams" Read more