Eleanor Parker

Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Parker in Lizzie
Born	Eleanor Jean Parker June 26, 1922 (1922-06-26) (age 87) Cedarville, Ohio
Years active	1942–1991
Spouse(s)	Fred Losee (1943-1944) Bert E. Friedlob (1946-1953) Paul Clemens (1954-1965) Raymond Hirsch (1966-present)

Eleanor Jean Parker (born June 26, 1922) is a major American screen actress.^[1] Her versatile talent, one of the most interesting from the studio era of Hollywood, led to her being dubbed Woman of a Thousand Faces, the title of her biography by Doug McClelland.

Early life

Parker was born in Cedarville, Ohio. At an early age, her family moved to East Cleveland, Ohio and she attended public schools. She is a graduate of Shaw High School. After high school, she was signed by Warner Brothers in 1941, at the age of 18. She would have debuted that year in the film They Died with Their Boots On^[2], but her scenes were cut ^[3]. Her actual film debut was playing nurse Ryan in Soldiers in White in 1942.

Career

By 1946, she had starred in Between Two Worlds, Hollywood Canteen, Pride of the Marines, Never Say Goodbye and Of Human Bondage. She broke the champagne bottle on the nose of the California Zephyr train, to mark its inaugural journey from San Francisco, California on March 19, 1949^[4].

In 1950, she received the first of three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Caged^[5], in which she played a prison inmate. For this role, she won the 1950 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. She was also nominated for the Oscar in 1951 for her performance as Kirk Douglas's wife in Detective Story and again in 1955 for her portrayal of opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in the Oscar-winning biopic Interrupted Melody. Parker then performed with Charlton Heston as a 1900s mail-order bride in George Pal's The Naked Jungle.

That same year, Parker appeared in Otto Preminger's film adaptation of the National Book Award-winner The Man With The Golden Arm, in which she plays Zosh, the supposedly invalid wife of a morphine addicted, would-be jazz drummer Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra). In 1956, she was billed above the title alongside Clark Gable for the Raoul Walsh-directed western comedy The King and Four Queens. A year later, she starred in another W. Somerset Maugham novel, a remake of a The Painted Veil in the role originated by Greta Garbo, released as The Seventh Sin. She also appeared in Home from the Hill and Return to Peyton Place. Possibly her most famous screen role is as Baroness Elsa Schraeder, the second female lead in the 1965 Oscar-winning smash hit The Sound Of Music.

She played an alcoholic widow in Warning Shot in 1966, and a love-starved talent scout in the all-star but unsuccessful The Oscar. From then on, her big screen roles were less impressive, and television would occupy more of her energies.

In 1963, Parker appeared in the NBC medical drama about psychiatry The Eleventh Hour in the episode "Why Am I Grown So Cold?", for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. In 1964, she appeared in the episode "A Land More Cruel" on the ABC drama about psychiatry, Breaking Point. In 1968, she portrayed a sultry spy in How to Steal the World -- a film originally shown as a two-part episode on NBC's The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In 1969-70 she starred in the television series Bracken's World, for which she was nominated for a 1970 Golden Globe Award as Best TV Actress - Drama. She also appeared in several made-for-television movies.

Parker has also starred in a number of theatrical productions, including the Lauren Bacall role in musical Applause. In 1976, she quit the Circle in the Square Theatre revival of Pal Joey during previews. She wrote the preface to the book "How Your Mind Can Keep You Well", a meditation techniquedeveloped by Roy Masters.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Blvd.

Personal life

Parker has been married four times. She first wed Fred Losee in 1943, but the union was brief, ending in 1944. She then married Bert E. Friedlob in 1946, divorcing him in 1953. They had three children together. She had a son, Paul, with her third husband, American portrait painter Paul Clemens; she and Clemens married in 1954 and divorced in 1965. The following year, she married her current husband, Raymond Hirsch. With this she accepted two new children into her family, Laurey and Holly. Holly died at a young age leaving behind a son and daughter. Laurey followed in her stepmother's footsteps going through two marriages before resting with Bernard Fontaine.

Academy Award nominations

• 1950 - Caged
• 1951 - Detective Story
• 1955 - Interrupted Melody^[6]

Notes

External links

• Eleanor Parker at the Internet Movie Database
• Eleanor Parker at the TCM Movie Database
• Eleanor Parker reviews at The Stop Button
• Photographs and literature