Coleen Gray

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Coleen Gray (born Doris Bernice Jensen ; born October 23, 1922 in Staplehurst , Nebraska ; † August 3, 2015 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American actress.

life and career

The farmer's daughter Coleen Gray was born in a small village in Nebraska under the name Doris Bernice Jensen. From an early age it was her desire to become a film star and so she studied acting at Hamline University in Saint Paul . In the following years she moved to California and played in smaller theaters, where she was discovered and signed by an agent of 20th Century Fox . Gray made her film debut in 1945 with a small supporting role in Walter Lang's musical Love Fair . Then they took over in 1946 turned, but only in 1948 published Western classics Red River of Howard Hawks 's roleJohn Wayne's lover, who dies early in the film in an Indian attack. Gray also impersonated female lead roles in several film noirs , including alongside Victor Mature in The Kiss of Death and as the rather simple-minded wife of Tyrone Power in The Charlatan . In 1950 she starred alongside Bing Crosby in Frank Capra's film Lach und Wein mit mir (1950), which, however, was a failure at the box office.

After her contract with Fox ended, Gray mostly had to be content with leading roles in B-movies in the 1950s . Most of these films, especially thrillers and westerns, were forgotten. An exception was the crime film The Bill did not work out (1956): It had a young Stanley Kubrick as director and showed Gray in the typical role of a lonely woman with no perspective, whose fiancé is planning a racetrack robbery. Until the early 1960s, Gray made mostly B-films like The Phantom Planet , after which she received only a few film offers. Instead, she made numerous guest appearances on television, such as Mrs. Clifford in four episodes of A Sheriff in New York . In 1986 she played her last role in the television series Tales from the Shadow World .

In his first marriage, Coleen Gray was married to the screenwriter Rodney Amateau between 1945 and 1949 , the marriage was divorced. She was then married to William Bidlack from 1953 until his death in 1978. Her third marriage was with Fritz Zeiser from 1979 until his death in 2012. The mother of four died of natural causes in August 2015 at the age of 92.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Coleen Gray  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Coleen Gray Dead at 92: Stanley Kubrick Leading Lady in Film Noir Classic. (English).
  2. ↑ Coleen Gray at Allmovie (English).
  3. ^ Obituary in Variety (English).
personal data
SURNAME Gray, Coleen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jensen, Doris Bernice (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Staplehurst , Nebraska , United States
DATE OF DEATH 3rd August 2015
Place of death Los Angeles , California , United States