Vanessa Brown
Vanessa Brown | |
|---|---|
 Brown in 1951 | |
| Born | Smylla Brind March 24, 1928 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | May 21, 1999 (aged 71) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1944–1991 |
| Spouses | Robert Alan Franklyn
(m. 1950; div. 1957)Mark Sandrich Jr.
(m. 1959; div. 1989) |
| Children | 2 |
Vanessa Brown (born Smylla Brind, March 24, 1928 – May 21, 1999) was an Austrian-born American actress who worked in radio, film, theater, and television.
Early life
[edit]Born in Vienna, Austria, to Jewish parents (Nah Brind, a language teacher, and Anna Brind, a psychologist[1]), Brown and her family fled to Paris, France, in 1937 to escape persecution by the Nazi regime.
Within a few years, the family had settled in America, and Brown auditioned for Lillian Hellman for a role in Watch on the Rhine. Fluent in several languages, the youngster impressed Hellman, and she was signed as understudy to Ann Blyth,[2] eventually doing the role of Babette on Broadway and in the touring production. In high school, she wrote and directed school plays. She graduated from University of California, Los Angeles in 1949, having majored in English. While there, she was movie critic and feature writer for the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper.[3]
Career
[edit]Radio
[edit]Brown's IQ of 165 led to two years of work as one of the young panelists on the radio series Quiz Kids. She specialized in literature and language.[4] In her adult years, she had an interview program on the Voice of America.[5]
She was heard on Lux Radio Theatre, Skippy Hollywood Theatre, NBC University Theatre, and Theatre Guild on the Air.[4]
Film
[edit]Brown was a junior member of the National Board of Review,[6] the critical panel serving the motion picture industry. RKO Radio Pictures brought her family to Los Angeles, and Brown made her film debut (as Tessa Brind) in Youth Runs Wild (1944).[7] RKO changed her screen name to Vanessa Brown and assigned her to a series of ingenue roles over the next few years. In the late 1940s, she was featured in The Late George Apley (1947), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) as Mrs. Muir's grown daughter Anna, Big Jack (1949; Wallace Beery's last movie), The Heiress (1949) and other films. She was the eighth actress to play the role of Jane, appearing in Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950) opposite Lex Barker, followed by a role in Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Her last film appearance was playing Millie Perkins's sister in the horror film The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976).
Television
[edit]In the 1950s, Brown was a regular panelist on I'll Buy That on CBS.[8] She acted in live television dramas of the early 1950s, including Robert Montgomery Presents and The Philco Television Playhouse, and she appeared on Pantomime Quiz and Leave It to the Girls. She later appeared on the television series The Wonder Years and Murder, She Wrote. She played the title role on the television series Wagon Train S1E28 “The Sally Potter Story”, airing April 9, 1958, where her love interest was a young Martin Milner. She had a guest appearance on Perry Mason as Donna Kress in the episode "The Case of Paul Drake's Dilemma" (1959).
Stage
[edit]Back on Broadway, she originated the role of "The Girl" in The Seven Year Itch, the character portrayed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 film version. She continued to do much television through the 1950s, and was one of the narrators of the United World Federalists documentary Eight Steps to Peace (1957), along with Vincent Price and Robert Ryan.
Brown ventured into writing for the stage. She was the author of Europa and the Bull, based on the legend of Europa.[9]
Painting
[edit]In 1959, Brown was described in a newspaper article as "a promising artist whose oil paintings hang in the homes of top film colony personalities."[10] She signed her paintings with her birth name, Smylla.[10] A gallery in Beverly Hills, California held a one-woman show of her work in 1958.[1]
Personal life and political views
[edit]Brown was married to Dr. Robert Alan Franklyn, a plastic surgeon, from 1950 to 1957. In 1959, she married television director Mark Sandrich, Jr. – son of director Mark Sandrich – and they had two children, David Michael and Cathy Lisa.[5]
Upon her death, she was cremated and her ashes returned to her son, David.[11]
Brown has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a motion pictures star at 1621 Vine Street and a television star at 6528 Hollywood Boulevard.[12]
Brown was active in the Democratic Party, serving as a delegate to the party's national convention in 1956.[13] In 1962, she was a member of a committee that promoted a write-in campaign for Adlai Stevenson as governor of California.[14]
Works
[edit]Filmography
[edit]| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1944 | Youth Runs Wild | Sarah Taylor | |
| 1945 | The Girl of the Limberlost | Helen Brownlee | |
| 1946 | Margie | Wanda | Uncredited |
| I've Always Loved You | Georgette 'Porgy' Sampter at 17 | ||
| 1947 | The Late George Apley | Agnes Willing | |
| The Ghost and Mrs. Muir | Anna Muir as an Adult | ||
| Mother Wore Tights | Bessie | ||
| The Foxes of Harrow | Aurore D'Arceneaux | ||
| 1949 | Big Jack | Patricia Mahoney | |
| The Secret of St. Ives | Floria Gilchrist | ||
| The Heiress | Maria | ||
| 1950 | Tarzan and the Slave Girl | Jane | |
| Three Husbands | Mary Whittaker | ||
| 1951 | The Basketball Fix | Pat Judd | |
| 1952 | The Fighter | Kathy | |
| The Bad and the Beautiful | Kay Amiel | ||
| 1967 | Rosie! | Edith Shaw | |
| 1971 | Bless the Beasts and Children | Mrs. Goodenow | |
| 1976 | The Witch Who Came From the Sea | Cathy |
Radio appearances
[edit]| Year | Program | Episode/source |
|---|---|---|
| 1946 | Hollywood Star Time | The Song of Bernadette[15] |
| 1957 | Suspense | Episode 107 – The Vanishing Lady |
References
[edit]- ^ a b Oliver, Myrna (May 24, 1999). "Vanessa Brown; Actress, Writer and Artist". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- ^ "They Know the Land Whereof They Act". Alton Evening Telegraph. Illinois, Alton. Alton Evening Telegraph. May 3, 1941. p. 5. Retrieved December 31, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Handsaker, Gene (August 23, 1946). "In Hollywood". Ironwood Daily Globe. Ironwood Daily Globe. p. 12. Retrieved May 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b DeLong, Thomas A. (1996). Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7864-2834-2. p. 43.
- ^ a b "Another character star". The Post-Crescent. August 30, 1970. p. 111. Retrieved May 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Wolf, Tom (April 3, 1941). "Youth Reviews Movies". The Rhinelander Daily News. Wisconsin, Rhinelander. The Rhinelander Daily News. p. 4. Retrieved December 31, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "The Young Reviewers". National Board of Review Magazine. 19 (8): 14. December 1944. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- ^ Chapman, Philip (November 1953). "an exciting girl named Brown". Radio and Television Mirror. 40 (6): 57, 87–89. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- ^ "Gorgeous (And Brainy) Vanessa Brown Is Making A Splash In Literary World". Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. September 6, 1953. p. 57. Retrieved May 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b "Actress Becomes Promising Artist". Independent. Independent. October 5, 1959. p. 17. Retrieved May 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Wilson, Scott (16 September 2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. McFarland. ISBN 9781476625997 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Hollywood Walk of Fame – Vanessa Brown". walkoffame.com. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
- ^ Kilgallen, Dorothy (July 3, 1956). "Voice of Broadway". Shamokin News-Dispatch. Shamokin News-Dispatch. p. 4. Retrieved May 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Contest". Independent. Independent. September 29, 1962. p. 2. Retrieved May 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Those Were the Days". Nostalgia Digest. 41 (2): 32–41. Spring 2015.
External links
[edit]
- 1928 births
- 1999 deaths
- American film actresses
- American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
- American stage actresses
- American television actresses
- Austrian emigrants to the United States
- Jewish American actresses
- Actresses from Vienna
- Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
- 20th-century American actresses
- 20th-century American Jews