Grace Kelly‘s name is synonymous with beauty and elegance. Her looks were always simple and fresh, never gaudy or over embellished. Is it any wonder that she married a prince? She started out her life as one of four daughters in an affluent Philadelphia family that was filled with politicians, Olympians and showbiz players. Her life progressed through a line of prestigious schools ending in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She moved on from an early modeling career and straight into Theatre. Soon Kelly was a regular star of television which lead to the motion picture roles that we all know her for today, including her Academy Award winning performance in The Country Girl. In April of 1956 she became Princess Grace after marrying Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. Three children were soon to follow and in 1982, it was her daughter, Princess Stephanie, who was with her as she drove her car over a cliff after suffering a stroke. Both survived the crash, but Grace passed the following day as a result of the stroke. We not only remember her today for her effortless style and timeless beauty, but also for her many charitable efforts, including The Association Mondiale des Amis de l’Enfance and The Princess Grace Foundation.

12►

Loving Husband has a big old girl crush on Maureen O’Hara, so I decided to make a post about her this month! O’Hara was born as Maureen FitzSimons in a suburb of Dublin in 1920. She had a fairly normal early life, training in the dramatic arts while also learning business skills as a back-up should her ultimate goal of being an actress not come to fruition. After bombing her first screen test, it appeared that this would be the case until actor Charles Laughton saw the footage and was so impressed by her “large expressive eyes” that he convinced his partner to view it; their production company, Mayflower Pictures, immediately signed her to a 7 year contract. After a couple of large roles, her contract was sold to RKO Studios when Mayflower dissolved. RKO undervalued her, only casting her in smaller, low-budget films until director John Ford cast her in the Academy Award Winning film How Green Was My Valley. Six years later she was starring in one of the best-loved movies of all time: A Miracle of 34th Street. She is also well known for her 5 on screen collaborations with acting legend John Wayne. What she is less known for is her musical career. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an operatic contralto, so it only stands to reason that singing would be one of her many talents. She released two records, Love Letters from Maureen O’Hara and Maureen O’Hara Sings her Favorite Irish Songs. LH is an avid record collector; we have sifted through thousands of stack and boxes or records in our day and have NEVER seen a copy of either of these. Either they didn’t sell many of them or people played them out! I would love to have one though; they are not available on CD either.

O’Hara was married three times, the first marriage took place in secret when she was 19 and was quickly annulled. Her second marriage lasted over 10 years, but was also annulled. She then had a long relationship with Enrique Parra, a Mexican politician and banker, but they never married. Her third and final husband was a former Brigadier General of the U.S. Air Force and a chief pilot for Pan Am. She was widowed in 1978 when the engine of his plane exploded between St. Croix and St. Thomas, killing him. She made a comeback in the early 1990′s, starring in three films and has also written a book entitled ‘Tis Herself.

Yvonne De Carlo started her life as Margaret Yvonne Middleton. De Carlo was the maiden name of her mother, a teenage runaway and failed ballerina who married a salesman that abandoned the two of them when Margaret (Yvonne) was only 3 years old. She was sent to live with her grandparents. Her mother noticed that the young Margaret excelled in the performing arts and promptly left Canada to relocate her to Hollywood where she worked odd jobs to pay for their downtown apartment and dancing school for her daughter. Eventually their visas ran out and they were returned to Vancouver. After dropping out of high school, Margaret attended the B.C. School of Dancing where an instructor steered her toward acting. A year later she landed a job at the Palomar nightclub and decided that Yvonne De Carlo projected a more sophisticated image than Margaret Middleton. She and her mother returned to California several times, even being crowned first runner-up to “Miss Venice Beach” and working as a regular at the Florentine Gardens nightclub in Hollywood. It was while working at the Gardens that she was arrested by immigration officials and deported back to Canada. The owner of the club telegraphed Canadian immigration and pledged to sponsor De Carlo in this country, enabling her to return to the United States and to work for him.

She quit the nightclub shortly after her return and began looking for contract work with a studio; she did a few small parts before the outbreak of WWII. During the war she worked entertaining the troops and her career didn’t really take off until 1945 with her role as the title character in Salome. Previous to this she was signed to both Paramount and Universal, not for her own talents, but because she resembled other, more famous actresses of that time. They basically used her as a pawn to control the other actresses with threats of replacing them. In 1949 she became pregnant and walked off the set of The Gal Who Took the West with her fiancé’ Jock Mahoney. She miscarried soon after and they were never married. Her career continued to blossom with leading roles in many major films such as The Ten Commandments. Yvonne did eventually mother two children with her first husband, stuntman Robert Morgan. Morgan lost his leg in an accident on set in 1962 and they divorced in 1974. She acted in television as well, with many character actor parts and even displayed her talents on the stage, starring in several operas and pieces of musical theatre. She is probably best known to modern audiences for her role in the 60’s sitcom The Munsters as Herman Munster’s wife Lily. Her last film was in The Barefoot Executive (1995) for Disney.

Following the falling death of her mother and the possible murder of her son, she suffered a stroke in 1998. She recovered, but lived out the remainder of her life at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital, in Woodland Hills, California where she passed of natural causes in 2007. She lived a rather scandalous life for the time period, admitting to having 22 “intimate friends” during her lifetime, including Howard Hughes, Robert Stack, Billy Wilder, Burt Lancaster and Prince Aly Khan; the husband of Rita Hayworth.

12►

Jane Russell was named Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell at birth. I can see why she dropped the first part; she was far too sexy to be called Ernestine! Her life began in Minnesota with her 4 brothers; growing up in a house full of guys is it any wonder she had that great brassy personality? Her family moved to the West coast and she attended high school in California where she met her first husband, quarterback and head coach, Pro Football Hall of Famer Bob Waterfield. At the age of 19, before they were married, she became pregnant with his child and had a botched back-alley abortion which injured her terribly and left her permanently infertile. This experience lead to her life long view that abortion was wrong, under ANY circumstances. She didn’t let this setback stop her from becoming a mother however; she adopted and raised three children during her lifetime. She also founded the World Adoption International Fund, which places children with adoptive families and which pioneered adoptions from foreign countries by Americans.

Despite the image that her alcoholism and bawdy persona might project, Russell was a very devout and publically Christian person. She held a weekly bible study at her home, which was attended by many other Hollywood greats and she even tried to convert Marilyn Monroe, to no avail. She is remembered by modern audiences for her buxom figure above all else, a figure that was the main showcase of her first film, The Outlaw. Howard Hughes signed her to a seven year contract in 1940; the film was completed in 1941, but not released until 1943. Even then, the film only received wide release in 1946 because of censorship disputes over Jane’s display of cleavage. Bob Hope was once quoted as saying, “Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands.” Taking her figure out of the spotlight, she tried her hand at music a couple of times, producing records of torch songs and gospel tunes, with one collaborative gospel record selling over 2 million copies. The heyday of her film career came in the late 40’s and early 50’s with movies like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Las Vegas Story. Later in life she had a stage show at the Sands in Las Vegas and did some small time theatre around the country. She divorced her first husband in 1967 and married actor Roger Barrett in 1968, he died the same year. Her third and final husband was real-estate broker John Calvin Peoples whom she married in 1974. Peoples passed away from heart failure in 1999 and the following year Jane entered rehab and finally kicked her drinking habit, becoming a teetotaler until her death yesterday from a respiratory-related illness.

One of my all time favorite quotes and a statement that wish I more young ladies would take to heart, is one that she made when asked how she viewed her own sex appeal:

“Sex appeal is good—but not in bad taste. Then it’s ugly. I don’t think a star has any business posing in a vulgar way. I’ve seen plenty of pin-up pictures that have sex appeal, interest, and allure, but they’re not vulgar. They have a little art to them.”

12►

In 1929 one of the world’s most enduring symbols of elegance and beauty, Audrey Kathleen Ruston (better known as Audrey Hepburn)was born in Brussels, Belgium to wealthy British father and a Dutch Baroness. Sound like a fairytale so far? Maybe not exactly, both of her parents were declared fascists and her father was a full-on Nazi sympathizer. He left the family after her mother caught him in bed with the nanny. After this the family moved to the Netherlands. She left long enough to attend school in Kent England, but returned before the end of WWII. Her mother had thought that the Netherlands would remain neutral and untouched, but as we know it did not. Audrey had to assume the name Edda van Heemstra with doctored papers because an English sounding name would have exposed her to danger. Her uncle was executed for involvement with the resistance movement and her brother was deported to a work camp. The occupation stayed with her even into later life, she said

“I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child.”

This region suffered greatly under Nazi occupation, starvation and death from freezing were everyday occurrences. The cities were bombed out; the Germans had all of the supply routes blocked… It was desperate times. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. When help did finally come, she made herself sick from eating too much. It was during the time of occupation that she became proficient in ballet and would give recitals in secret to raise money for the resistance. After the war she moved to Amsterdam to further study ballet and then on to London where she supported herself by modeling. This is when she decided to drop Ruston from her name.

After the realization that her malnutrition during the war would keep her from ever becoming the Prima Ballerina that she dreamed of being, she turned her attentions to acting. She realized that she needed to find a paying job, since even her mother had turned to doing menial jobs to support the family, so she became a chorus girl. This lead to a scout from Paramount seeing her on stage, and soon several small parts in films followed. The French novelist Collette noticed her on the set of Monte Carlo, Baby and cast her as the lead in the stage play of Gigi, a role which earned her a Theatre World Award. That same year she broke off her engagement with her longtime fiancé’ because she felt that the constraints of her career would not allow her to spend enough time with him. In 1954 she married Mel Ferrer and had one child with him after the couple suffered two miscarriages, one when she fell from a horse during the filming of The Unfogiven and broke her back on a rock. Many brilliant performances in many great films and many awards began to pile up starting in 1953 with one of my personal favorites, Roman Holiday. There are just too many stellar performances to in the years between 53 and 68 to mention them all here, suffice to say that her career was booming. She became the muse of fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy who created the signature style that she is so renowned for to this day. By the end of the 60’s she was deciding to retire from acting and she also decided to retire her marriage by divorcing Mel in 1968.

The following year she met Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to Greek ruins. What could be more romantic than that? She would have one child with Dotti and they would be married for 13 years before she divorced him for cheating on her with multiple younger women. In her remaining years she would act occasionally, but nothing that measured up to her glory days of the 50’s and 60’s. She met Dutch actor Robert Wolders and they remained in love for the rest of their lives. Her main focus became her family and her work as a Goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, something she was truly passionate about. She dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. In late 1992, Hepburn began suffering from abdominal pains. It was discovered that she had a very rare form of abdominal cancer that forms as a film over the entire intestine instead of as a tumorous growth. After a surgical attempt to remove this film and chemotherapy treatments, she was in great pain with an obstruction. They operated a second time, but the cancer had spread too far to be completely removed. Her family decided to return her to Switzerland for one last Christmas. She was too ill to fly on a commercial plane, so Hubert de Givenchy arranged for a private Gulfstream jet full of flowers to fly her from Los Angeles to Geneva. She passed away in her sleep on January 20 1993.

123►

Gene Tierney was born to an Affluent Brooklyn, New York family and attended prestigious schools in Connecticut. After High School she then spent two years in Europe and attended the Brillantmont finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland. On a Trip to California while visiting Warner Bros., the director Anatole Litvak saw her and was so taken by the 17 year olds beauty that he told her that she should become an actress. Warner Bros. tried to hire her on contract, but her parents wanted more money. Gene was a debutante, but grew bored with society life and returned to the idea of becoming an actress. Her father thought she should be an actress in the “legitimate theatre” and so that is where she began her career. Her father set up a company just to promote her acting after she received some favorable mentions in reviews of plays in which she had small walk-on parts. As with so many parent-managers, he later uses this as a means to steal all of her money. She was soon signed by Columbia Pictures and was offered the lead role in National Velvet. During this time a cameraman told her that she needed a thinner face so she wrote to Harper’s Bazaar for a diet which she followed for the next 25 years saying; “I love to eat. For all of Hollywood’s rewards, I was hungry for most of those twenty-five years.”

She received no parts from Columbia and returned to the stage at the end of her 6 month contract. The head of 20^th Century Fox saw her on the dance floor of the Stork Club and signed her and boy did THEY find parts for her. She had solid roles in many notable films including The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Where the Sidewalk Ends and Heaven Can Wait. It was during this time that she married fashion designer Oleg Cassini and gave birth to two daughters. All was not roses and sunshine however, in 1953, Tierney’s mental health problems were becoming harder for her to hide; she was replaced in a movie and was having a lot of difficulty remembering lines and holding to her obligations. Tierney started seeing a psychiatrist and was admitted to Harkness Pavilion in New York. She switched institutions and was subjected to almost 30 rounds of shock treatments. After this, she tried to run away but was caught and brought back to receive more treatments.; this lead to her becoming an outspoken opponent of shock treatment therapy, claiming that it had destroyed significant portions of her memory. She was committed again two years later when a neighbor saw her on Christmas day as she was about to jump from a high ledge. It is thought that her depression stems from her daughter Daria being born premature, deaf, and blind with cataracts and with severe mental retardation.  All of this stemming from contracting rubella while she was pregnant after the only time that she volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen. A female fan, sick with rubella, had snuck out of her quarantine and gone to the canteen just to meet her, making HER sick in the process.  Tierney’s dear friend, Howard Hughes, made sure that the child received the best care possible and footed the entire bill.

After Gene’s treatment, she tried to return to acting, but became very stressed out and had to be recommitted again. She also became too stressed out with her marriage and invalid daughter and divorced her first husband. She then married oil baron W. Howard Lee immediately after he divorced Heddy Lamar. They had been seeing each other since 1958, two years before his divorce from Lamar. Tierney’s final attempt at a comeback was 5 years later. She starred in a few films sporadically, a television movie and her final appearance was in the mini-series Scruples in 1980. Ten years after her husband passed in 1981, Gene herself passed of emphysema at the age of 70. Ironically, she started smoking heavily to lower her voice after screening her first film and thinking that she sounded like an “angry Minnie Mouse”.

12►

Monetta Eloyse Darnell was born into a home full of unusual names like “Undeen” and “Monte Maloya”, her siblings. Is it any wonder that Linda Darnell chose something a little more simple and classic for her screen name? She was a shy child, probably due to having a typical stage mother. Her career started early with modeling, then stage acting and eventually culminating in a films; the first of which she made at age 16. Having decided that Monetta would be her star child, her mother focused all of her attentions on the girl and completely neglected the raising of all of her other 5 children. “Mother really shoved me along, spotting me in one contest after another. I had no great talent, and I didn’t want to be a movie star particularly. But Mother had always wanted it for herself, and I guess she attained it through me.” Darnell once said. After a screen test in Hollywood was arranged by her pushy mother, Darnell was sent packing back home to Dallas because she was said to be “too young”. She won a contract with RKO in a contest, but they never used her. 20th Century Fox wanted to sign her, but RKO would not let her go. She was eventually signed by 20th Century Fox and moved to Hollywood, without her “aggressive” and “downright mean” mother. It was as this time that she became known as Linda.

Despite her young age, she was given a role in her first film, Hotel for Women in 1939. Even though she was only 15, she posed as a 17-year-old and the studio listed her as a 19 year old. The truth eventually did come out and it was soon known that she was one of the few actresses under 16 to serve as a leading lady. The critics loved her and many good roles soon followed. She was described as, “the most physically perfect girl in Hollywood”. Apparently the man who discovered her, Darryl F. Zanuck agreed. He tried to put the moves on her; she refused and lost parts as a result of the refusal. This allowed her enough time to complete high school. WWII began at this time and she put all of her efforts into supporting the troops and contributing to the war effort. She was on bad terms with the studio, who was loaning her out to other studios for bit parts in B-movies. She had been removed from a couple of films and suspended. In 1942, when she was 19, she eloped with her first husband, 42 year old J. Peverell Marley, which sent Zanuck into a rage. She continued to be mistreated and over looked until Look Magazine named her one of Hollywood’s most beautiful women in 1944. Always lauded for her beauty, the recognition allowed her the small amount of clout that she needed to be cast in better roles. From there her career had resurgence and she did the majority of her best works. Soon she became one of the most in-demanded actresses in Hollywood, and she now had the freedom to select her own roles.

In her later years, the studios put her on severe diets and after she did not win an Oscar nomination for A Letter to Three Wives, her career locked into a downward spiral. On location in Jamaica in 1951 she fell ill and had to be quarantined for weeks. Her contract was dropped at this time and she tried to pursue an acting career in Europe. She re-signed with 20th Century Fox. This time with a mind set on television roles. She slowly faded out of site and continued to drink heavily. She had dated several men in which the relationships went nowhere, she had all of the previously mentioned problems with the studio and her mother’s antics had continued throughout her career, including a time when she went to the press and announced that her husband and daughter Evelyn were having an incestuous affair together. The great love of her life, director Joseph Mankiewicz backed out of leaving his wife at the last minute and abandoned Linda, calling her a “marvelous girl with very terrifying personal problems.” Due to the breakup she became very depressed and almost killed herself. All of this happened as her career was winding down and she found the sudden loss of a steady income hard to deal with and married for the second time, to Phillip Liebmann, who tried to get her to give up acting. They were only married a year before they divorced. Her third and final marriage was to a pilot named Merle Roy Robertson whom she divorced for fathering a child with a Polish actress. The end of her sad life came at the age of 41 at the home of a friend with whom she was staying while preparing to star in a stage play in Chicago. The house caught fire and Darnell tried to make it to the door, where she found the handle to be too hot to touch in order to open it. She suffered burns over 90% of her body and died.

12►