Dianne Foster

Dianne Foster
Born	Olga Helen Laruska October 31, 1928 (1928-10-31) (age 80) Edmonton Alberta, Canada
Years active	1951–1966
Spouse(s)	Joel Murcott (1954-December 1959) (divorced)

Dianne Foster is a Canadian actress of Ukrainian descent who began her career at the age of thirteen in a stage adaptation of James Barrie's What Every Woman Knows. At fourteen, she began a radio career and subsequently moved to Toronto and became one of Canada's top radio stars. In 1951, she traveled to London, England, for a holiday, when she met and then married Andrew Allen, drama supervisor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In London, she appeared onstage in Agatha Christie's The Hollow and Orson Welles's Othello that same year. In March 1952 her husband returned to Canada while she stayed in London to honour her five-year contract with a British film company.

In 1953 she co-starred alongside Charlton Heston and Lizabeth Scott in the middling Bad for Each Other. In 1954 she was signed by Columbia Pictures and relocated to Hollywood, where her first appearance proper was the same year alongside Mickey Rooney in the well-received Drive a Crooked Road.

Foster's marriage was effectively over before she left for the United States, and in 1954, she married Joel A. Murcott, a Hollywood radio-television scriptwriter during location filming for The Kentuckian. At thirty-nine, he was fourteen years her senior and had also been married previously.

1955 was a big year for Foster, she appeared on the cover of Picturegoer and co-starred in two big films, Glenn Ford's The Bandits and Burt Lancaster's The Kentuckian.

On 14 February, 1956 she gave birth to twins, a son Jason and a daughter Jodi. Although her film career continued, it was not on the same upward trajectory as before. 1957 saw her co-star in the biopic Monkey on My Back about boxer Barney Ross, Night Passage with James Stewart and The Brothers Rico with Richard Conte. The same year she also filed for divorce from Murcott claiming he struck her in the face and kicked her in the stomach. She asked for custody and $1 token alimony. The couple reconciled but it proved to be temporary as they separated two more times before finally divorcing in 1959 with Foster being awarded $250 a month child support. It was the third time she had filed for divorce and she gave her age as twenty-four, though she was in fact thirty-one.

In 1958 she had starred with Alan Ladd in The Deep Six and that same year she appeared alongside Jack Hawkins in Gideon of Scotland Yard before her last really big picture The Last Hurrah. It featured an all-star cast including Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien and Basil Rathbone and was nominated for two BAFTA awards.

In 1960 Foster was the title guest star in the episode "Lawyer in Petticoats" on the short-lived NBC western series Overland Trail starring William Bendix and Doug McClure. Her fellow guest stars were Barton MacLane and Denver Pyle. Foster also appeared in the episode "The Mill" in the TV series Bonanza.

There was a three year absence before she returned to the screen for the next time in King of the Roaring 20's - The Story of Arnold Rothstein. In the meantime, she had married Dr. Harold Rowe, a Van Nuys dentist. On 14 November, 1963, her son Dustin Louis Rowe was born in Los Angeles. In the same year she made her last film appearance in the Dean Martin vehicle Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?.

Foster continued to appear in television programs, such as CBS's The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962-1963) and the ABC medical drama Breaking Point (1963-1964). She retired from show business in 1966 to concentrate on rearing her three children. She still lives in California and is an accomplished pianist and painter.

External links

• Dianne Foster at the Internet Movie Database