Ann Gillis

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Ann Gillis (1966)

Ann Gillis (born Alma Mabel Conner on February 12, 1927 in Little Rock , Arkansas , USA ; † January 31, 2018 in Horam , East Sussex , England ) was an American actress .

life and career

Ann Gillis made her film debut at the age of seven. After a few minor roles, she made her first major appearance in King of Hockey in 1936 . In the following years, she took on minor supporting roles in important Hollywood productions such as The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Three Foreign Legionaries (1939) and Hell, where is your victory? (1940). The Warner Brothers film studio tried to turn Gillis into a child star similar to Shirley Temple , but this failed because she was usually only given stubborn or spoiled girls to play. So she was always denied the big breakthrough.

She had one of her few sympathetic roles as Becky Thatcher in Tom's Adventures from 1938, the lavish film adaptation of Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . In the casting for the film, Gillis prevailed against hundreds of competitors. In the same year as Tom's Adventure , she also played the title character in Little Orphan Annie , the film adaptation of a popular comic series. As she got older, her success waned in the early 1940s, her last significant work was the voice of the adult Feline in the English version of the Disney cartoon classic Bambi (1942). After nearly 40 films, Gillis largely retired from acting at the age of 20 due to lack of success.

In 1952 she married the British actor Richard Fraser , with whom she had two children and moved to England. Ann Gillis played a total of six roles on British television in the 1950s and 1960s. She ended her career in 1968 with the 2001 classic science fiction film : A Space Odyssey , in which she was the mother of Dr. Poole ( Gary Lockwood ) played, who congratulated her son on a television message on his birthday. Gillis separated from her husband Fraser in 1970 and lived from the 1970s in the province of Limburg in Belgium with her third husband, the Belgian René Van Hulst († 1999). In December 2014 she moved back to her family in England. Ann Gillis died there on January 31, 2018 at the age of 90.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ann Gillis page in Classic Movie Kids. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 22, 2017 ; accessed on December 16, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.classicmoviekids.com
  2. ↑ Ann Gillis | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Donna Magers: Ann Gillis Interview. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Ann Gillis | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Donna Magers: Ann Gillis Interview. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Mike Barnes: Ann Gillis, Young Leading Lady in 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' Dies at 90. In: The Hollywood Reporter . Prometheus Global Media , February 2, 2018, accessed February 2, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Gillis, Ann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Connor, Alma Mabel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American child actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Little Rock , Arkansas
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 2018
Place of death Horam , East Sussex