Remembering Jeanne Crain on her Centennial Birthday

I never miss a Jeanne Crain-Dana Andrews musical.

^^^^ One of my faves. Miss Crain always reminded me of a much-beloved aunt.

🎼 It might as well be Spring..... 🎶

Was she in Psycho?

And we here at DL should also remember her hot, very potent husband Paul Brinkman, who kept her perpetually pregnant.

She had everything but "it."

Lucky Jeanne!

I like her a lot in her ‘40s movies, many of which were shot in technicolor to show her green eyes, ash brown hair, peachy complexion.

Unfortunately, by the mid-‘50s she looks like every other starlet of that decade, the freshness is gone.

Ever grateful that she got pregnant and couldn't play Eve Harrington. Jeanne was lovely but not up to the task.

R7, that look for the '50s, cropped hair and hard makeup, made a lot of actually young stars look matronly.

Give Kazan and Crain for having "Pinky" played genuinely unglamorous: little makeup, simple hairdo, and plain wardrobe that isn't fitted like a second skin. And Jeanne's performance is very straightforward, too. No winks to the audience.

She almost ruined A LETTER TO THREE WIVES, an otherwise perfect movie.

No she didn’t.

Poor Jeanne and Dana. Their career nadir has got to be "Hot Rods to Hell."

Hot Rods to Hell is fun in a campy way. Jeanne still looked good, too.

Ann Gilbreth in Cheaper by the Dozen!

I always found her bland.

Her nose was too aquiline and her eyebrows confused me.

Miss Crain, allegedly, had issues with alcohol later in life. Life with husband, Paul, was [italic]messy[/italic], with both accusing each other in court papers of extramarital affairs, but never actually divorcing, due to the fact that they were staunch Catholics.

Their son, Michael Anthony, drank himself to death at age 43, his body found in a hotel room in Orange, CA. Their youngest son, Christopher Martin, original lead guitarist for Jane's Addiction, was found dead of heroin overdose in a Hollywood motel room, age 31.

Elia Kazan wrote autobiography that Jeanne Crain was perfect for pinky because she had such a bland personality. Her character was such a cipher in the movie.He also wrote that Ethel Waters was a racist. He asked her if her religious pose was sincere or not, and she said that she thought all white people were devils.

[quote]He also wrote that Ethel Waters was a racist.

Ethel Waters came up hard, was very bitter about it, and developed some strong opinions about everything and everyone. Her outbursts and racist diatribes on set got her blacklisted for several years.

I Love Jeanne Crain in State Fair …. my favorite is “Margie” where she winds up marrying her teacher and she sings “A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You!” …….. Apartment for Peggy with William Holden was my mother’s favorite. ….. Dangerous Crossing used to be on late night on Fox Movie Channel all of the time - I don’t remember the twist at the end

I'm white and I have no problem with Ethel Waters' opinion of white people.

I was going to say—that was her actual lived experience, not some blind bigotry.

Waters was involved with some extremely ugly racist incidents. And at a party when she was in her cups she said to Kazin, 'I don't like any fucking white man' 'Not even me?' 'Not even you.'

She starred in the Irving Berlin musical As Thousands Cheers introducing Suppertime and Heat Wave. The show co-starred Marilyn Miller, Helen Broderick and Clifton Webb. I hate saying this because I like all three but they refused to take a curtain call with her. Berlin then announced that there would be no curtain calls. The three then relented.

I've always said her name as Genie, but I suppose it's actually Gee-anne.

I like the ending of State Fair when she gets the phone call when she deeply and sadly has resigned herself to the fact it was a momentary romantic moment in her life. Her joy is overwhelming when she gets the call she could only dream about.

Her face had the look of a Pomeranian dog.

Clifton Webb once greeted Ethel with “hello, darkie”, when they were working on that play. Ethel shot back to him, “hello, pansy!”.

I always mix her up with Gene Tierney whos infants mental health troubles were caused by a fan. Famously used as the murder in The mirror cracked wide open by Agatha Cristie.

[quote]R19 Ethel Waters was a racist. He asked her if her religious pose was sincere or not, and she said that she thought all white people were devils.

As a white person myself, I can’t say she’s so far from wrong.

It’s pronounce like Gene. As far as I know…

R29, Gene looked sweet. Even when playing dastardly, like in Leave Her to Heaven, she had a sweet-looking disposition. Jeanne, on the other hand, with her big, flared nostrils looked perpetually irritable, snooty or condescending.

She had a tiny waist and a spectacular bust line. So did Kathryn Grayson but she looked stumpy a lot of the time. The years are going by so quickly now but I believe it was in the early 2000s that Jeanne’s granddaughter sold a lot of Jeanne’s belongings on EBay. ….. Jeanne Crain lived down the street from Lucille Ball. I think she had 7 or 8 kids. Lu I’ll ills Ball would often say that Jeanne Crain’s kids were always getting in trouble and wandering over to Lucy’s house!

You're so real, R30

I remember watching her as a celeb contestant on the after-school game show You Don't Say! hosted by cute Tom Kennedy in the mid-1960s. It was sort of like Password.

Jeanne Crain's name keeps coming up as an actress that was often foisted on directors who really didn't want to use her.

Hard now to comprehend how an actress (and certainly one whose looks made their career) could find time to have SEVEN kids during the height of their career. If nothing else, you'd think the studio became very wary of casting her in anything.

^ Some of the kids were born after her career peak, though. Her youngest was born in 1965, by then her career was mostly over

I watched The Hypnotic Eye yesterday. Marcia Henderson reminded me of Jeanne a bit.

She was incredibly pretty, even if she lacked personality. Since she grew up in California, I imagine she was constantly approached with, “Do you want to be in the movies?”

[quote]r33 She had a tiny waist and a spectacular bust line.

Is this Marilyn’s gold dress?

R11 I don’t think she ruins A Letter to Three Wives, but the first story is by far the weakest of the three, not helped by an equally bland leading man. On first viewing, at this point, I was ready to peg the movie as another disappointing classic whose acclaim and Oscars rate a big “huh?” Things get much better with the second story, Ann Sothern, a surprisingly appealing Kirk Douglas and unsurprising scene-stealing from Florence Bates and, above all, Thelma Ritter (should have been her first nomination). It helps that Mankiewicz has a target, commercial radio, to aim his barbs at. The last story, Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas, is to me the best half hour Mankiewicz ever put on film—yes, even better than any half hour of you-know-what.

At least she wasn't pushing nasty snack cakes, like that bitch Ann Blyth.

I thought Elia Kazan was kind of an asshole regarding actors. And while I am not that big of fan of Jeanne Crain, she surprised me how straightforwardly she played Pinky. If Fox had to go with a white actor, I would have gone with Linda Darnell, who would have been more believable as passing, plus she had a tough side that would have been perfect. But Crain did a good job, as well as the rest of the excellent cast.

...and this was how Pinky was rated back in the day...

Sarah Vaughan recorded a version of the theme song. No words.

The DVD commentary by Kenneth Geist is great.

I'm disappointed there's not much love given to Pinky's sequel, "Stinky Pinky: The Shocker"

It really is an underrated series -

PINKY III: 2 IN THE PINK, 1 IN THE STINK

"STINKY PINKY" TO YOU: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

Probably would be better known, overall, had they not starred Bella Darvi, after Crain emphatically declined.

r42, I pretty much agree with all you say except the Linda Darnell/Paul Douglas segment is the second one in the film, not the third.

I find Linda Darnell so utterly luscious as well as complex and so empathetic, I really feel she should have gotten an Oscar nomination. But perhaps it would have had to be for Supporting Actress and Fox (and maybe Linda) didn't want to go there. Anyway, I don't think she was ever given another role to shine like that. You just know Mankiewicz must have been madly in love with her, the way she's presented and photographed.

As for Jeanne Crain, I think she's awful in the film though, admittedly, a lot of her performance is hampered by a very weakly drawn character.

No, R50, though though Lora Mae and Porter (Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas) appear as a sparring couple in the film’s second segment, we don’t get their full story until the third part of the film.

Linda Darnell was never better and never more beautiful than in this film and she and Paul Douglas were so good together it’s a wonder that they weren’t teamed again. Darnell started sleeping with writer/director Joe Mankiewicz around this time and their affair supposedly was an on-again-off-again sexual relationship that lasted for years. She was especially vulnerable then, drinking and putting on weight (the white apron-like skirt she wears over her black gown in the second segment was meant to hide her thickening waistline). When Mankiewicz finally broke it off with her once and for all she was devastated.

And I agree with the poster above, I actually prefer “A Letter to Three Wives” over “All About Eve,” as brilliant as that film is. “Letter” has more humor and warmth, and it’s a terrific look at America in the immediate postwar years. Though it’s true that the first Jeanne (pronounced Jean) Crain/Jeffrey Lynn story is the weakest, Crain has that terrific monologue she tells to Ann Sothern when she talks about how restricted and provincial her life had been growing up on a farm. Joining the army introduced her to the greater world and her uniform meant she could have from Vassar as far as anyone, including her husband, knew. Now she is running with a fast Westchester crowd without the education or sophistication to hold up her end, and social anxiety in the burgeoning suburbs was a big middle class preoccupation then.

I never understood the lack of Oscar nominations for Darnell and Douglas, either. Maybe it was just that, as one of the top-billed wives, she would have been in Actress and, as a movie newcomer with secondary billing, he would have been Supporting—though, except for the opening set-up, all their screen time is together. He made such a hit that before the year was out he was starring in films and probably neither he or 20th Century Fox wanted him “demoted” into the supporting category. Too bad—they are superb together and should have been, in whatever category. He at least got to host that year’s ceremony.

#r41 - wow - it sure looks like it, doesn’t it?!

I always find the ending pretty underwhelming. Brad really slighted Deborah by wanting her to wear the same gown to the dance as one Addie had and he never in the whole movie treated her like she was really important to him. Porter treated her with more consideration!

But Lora Mae’s change of heart towards him came out of nowhere, especially after he’d just confessed he was about to leave town with Addie. As many times as I’ve watched that movie I feel like they left something out in that scene.

Rita and George… she only got $100 a week for writing a daily radio show?! That’s all I got when it comes to them.

For someone nearly forgotten today, she had quite a few movies that were big hits and/or pop culture touchstones, especially for classic film enthusiasts: State Fair, Leave Her to Heaven, Centennial Summer (Fox's answer to MGM's Meet Me in St Louis), and Margie, all in the space of two years; then A Letter to Three Wives, Pinky, and Cheaper by the Dozen in 49-50.

But then the gradual slide with Dangerous Crossing (a B-movie), Vicki (the I Wake Up Screaming remake), two flop musicals (though she didn't do her own singing): Gentlemen Marry Brunettes and Second Greatest Sex.

After that, she's good supporting Glenn Ford in Fastest Gun Alive; Jeff Chandler in the tawdry Tattered Dress; and Sinatra in Joker is Wild. Her 1960s movies are irrelevant or misfires or she has nothing to do in them...or all three. For some reason, she didn't do much television or radio, though she did "tv spectacular" versions of Great Gatsby and Meet Me in St. Louis--but as Rose, not Esther.

No Love Boat or other Spelling anthology show, no Murder, She Wrote. Her last work was 1972 but she didn't die till 2003, at 78.

R4 Paul Brinkma used to smack Jeanne around. He kept her in line with the perpetual pregnancies and Catholic guilt

Jeanne supposedly feuded with fellow Fox starlet, June Haver, for ten years and only ended when Haver quit the business for the Sisters of Charity. Jeanne and June were friendly when they first started out, and starred together in "Home in Indiana" (1944). But the friendship soured on a Fox cross-country press tour, and the studio had to split them up and put them on separate itineraries. They never spoke with each other after that and avoided each other on the Fox lot.

Jeanne had a good run at Fox, but she grew tired of the good girl roles and wanted to stretch herself as a sexy vamp. She left the studio, dyed her hair a fiery red, and landed a contract with Universal, which didn't really do much for her career.

R54 I don’t think Lora Mae has an abrupt change of heart at the end of Three Wives but realizes what has always been clear to us in the audience—that all their talk about merely using each other is just a defense against the truth that they are in fact in love. Instead of underwhelming, I find the ending believable, especially as acted by these two, and quite satisfying.

Loni Anderson was a revelation as Lora Mae in the 1985 remake

I like her in The Model and The Marriage Broker because Thelma Ritter wipes her off the screen. Crain is billed above her but the film belongs to Ritter. She really could carry a film and hold her own against screen hogs Zero Mostel and Frank Fontaine. Scott Brady is easy on the eyes as well. Nancy Kulp has a brief role as a client's difficult-to-find-a-match-for daughter.

Two things about about Letter to Three Wives:

1-nobody has mentioned wonderful Connie Gilcrist as Lora Mae's Ma. 2-the dreaded Celeste Holm voice-overed the largely-unseen Addie Ross

June Haver was such a bland performer. I always wondered why she, and not the wonderful and vivacious Vivian Blaine, won out as the new Fox musical starlet of the mid-1940s. Did she give better blowjobs?

Mitzi Gaynor made the college drama Take Care of My Little Girl with Crain. She called Crain dreamface.

Evelyn Varden is such nasty fun as Pinky's nemesis. And later loved her as The Bad Seed's near-next victim!

r63: Actually Haver was known to give fantastic blow-jobs and was a favorite post-lunchtime 'dessert' for Zanuck and producer George Jessel, whom Haver was fucking to get a plum role as Betty Grable's sister in THE DOLLY SISTERS. She was the only female co-star Betty Grable despised. As Haver styled herself a good wholesome Catholic girl Grable described her as "A Bible in one hand and condoms in the other".

To Haver's credit, she became an excellent tap dancer when she went to Warners on loan-out for LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING and THE DAUGHTER OF ROSIE O'GRADY, under the training of Gene Nelson, whom she was also fucking. A big step up for June from slimy Jessel.

I like Blaine a lot. She had a lot of personality and seems very contemporary today. But she just didn't click with audiences. I also like Jane Frazee, who never progressed beyond B-movies at Universal and Columbia.

r8: I find the idea of Crain as Eve very appealing. She would have been playing against type and her patented sweetsy-nice routine would have been unexpected contrast with her as a conniving bitch. If she could have been well-directed, that is.....

Barbara Bates, who played Phoebe in “Eve,” played Jeanne’s sister in Cheaper by the Dozen that same year.

June Haver had an affair with very married fellow Catholic Fred MacMurray, and they two fell passionately in love and when his wife became ill with cancer Haver left the business and went into a nunnery of all things. Then once MacMurray’s wife died, she came out of the nunnery and the two married, though she never returned to acting.

Funny you should mention “Fastest Gun Alive,” R55, just last night I was reading Peter Ford’s biography of his father Glenn Ford, never a favorite of mine but a big box office star of the ‘50s and early ‘60s, and when he talks about “Fastest Gun” he quotes Russ Tamblyn, who was in that film and was interviewed for the book. Tamblyn liked Glenn, they got along very well but Tamblyn makes a point of trashing Jeanne Crain as an actress so wooden it was difficult to do scenes with her. He talks about how gorgeous she looked but how he and Ford commiseratedabout how one-sided a scene with her was.

But then I see that shot R58 posted and I’m reminded why I love her in ‘40s films, she just had such a great look.

"I don't like the name Deborah, and I don't like Jeanne Crain." -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

What did Joe have against Jeanne?

Did someone say Tattered Dress?

I love Linda Darnell's acerbic presence against the hilarious banter between Connie Gilchrist and Thelma Ritter and whoever that actress is who plays Linda's younger sister in their little hovel on the wrong side of the (noisy) tracks. Only Mank could direct those all-women scenes so brilliantly.

Barbara Lawrence played the blond younger sister. She later went on to make four appearances on “Perry Mason.”

Paul Douglas played the male lead opposite Judy Holliday (who'd replaced Jean Arthur during out-of-town tryouts) in BORN YESTERDAY on Broadway. But he was replaced by Broderick Crawford for the film. Was Crawford really that much more castable than Douglas?

Well, of course, Crawford had just won his Oscar for ALL THE KING'S MEN. But he didn't have the sexual dynamic of Douglas IMHO.

Here's a gallery shot of Jeanne and June with cute as a button, Lon McCallister, from "Home in Indiana." Fox set Lon up on dates with Jeanne, June, Anne Baxter, and other pretty starlets on their roster, but his heart belonged to William Eythe.

On "Highway Patrol" Broderick Crawford walks around like he has a crap in his pants.

Yes R70, I love everything about The Tattered Dress. Its presskit, posters, and ads are as trashy as could be for a mainstream film. I'm a sucker for black and white CinemaScope anyway. The film festival Lincoln Center or Film Forum will never have is "the 50s melodramas of Jeff Chandler at Universal and elsewhere" but damn, it would be terrific to see gorgeous prints of those films:

Foxfire, the last film of the era in 3-strip Technicolor, with Jane Russell

Female on the Beach - with Joan Crawford

The Tattered Dress - with Jeanne Crain

Jeanne Eagels - with Kim Novak

The Lady Takes a Flyer - with Lana Turner

Raw Wind in Eden - with Esther Williams

Stranger in My Arms - with June Allyson

and end with Return to Peyton Place - with everyone left over who was at Fox or could be borrowed

The follow-up festival would be all the Westerns he did during this same period, with Dorothy Malone, Susan Hayward, and others.

R41, Yes. Marilyn's gold lamé Travilla halter gown used for "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" promotion was recycled for "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes," which was produced by Jane Russell and Bob Waterfield's production company Russ-Field Productions.

Although "Brunettes" was not as successful as its predecessor, critics praised Jeanne's newly uncovered comedic talents, with one reviewer saying she "had been hiding her light from the world."

[quote]R68 June Haver had an affair with very married fellow Catholic Fred MacMurray, and they two fell passionately in love

They were both Republicans (shudder)

Russ Tamblyn was an asshole, as was Glenn Ford, and neither was any great shakes themselves in the acting department.

Team Jeanne

Was it a mothball shortage that caused The Tattered Dress to become tattered?

Russ Tamblyn is still an asshole.

R76 is spot on. Has anyone mentioned People Will Talk with Cary Grant? Good cast, another for Mank. He must have liked something about her. Pliability?

I think Jeanne was foisted on Mank by Fox, a studio player...

AS I always felt that Anne Baxter was so over the top in Eve, I don't think I would have minded Crain in it at all, but I think the greatest casting of the part would have been Judy. You would have actually believed she was that great an actress.

Jeanne had a look-alike younger sister, Rita Crain, who dabbled in high school theater, but never pursued a showbiz career like her famous sister. (Maybe there was room for only ONE actress in the family).

Rita married Vincent John Holian, who became a prominent Beverly Hills real estate consultant, and had ine son. After their divorce in 1965, Rita was financially set and lived comfortably until her untimely demise in a house fire in 1977, at age 50.

^ ... had [italic]one[/italic] son.

Love her gorgeous singing voice in “State Fair” (1945). Nobody sings “It Might as Well Be Spring” like Jeanne Crain, I always say.

Except for the person who dubbed her…

R87. Including Jeanne Crain, it would appear. She was dubbed by Louanne Hogan

Are you sure R89?

The dubbing is perfect.

I found a second reference to her dubbing Crain’s singing voice.