Doris Dudley

Doris Dudley (July 17, 1917 – August 14, 1985) was an American actress and later real-estate developer, born in New York City. She was the daughter of playwright and drama critic Bide Dudley, and her brother Bronson worked as a dancer.

Dudley's entry into professional acting came through an unplanned audition. After visiting producer Eddie Dowling at his office and reading lines for him, she left with the leading role in Agatha Calling, a production that completed a pre-Broadway tour but never reached Broadway itself. Her Broadway career spanned 1935 to 1940 and included five productions: The Season Changes, End of Summer, Stick-in-the-Mud, Here Come the Clowns, and My Dear Children.

One of the more notable episodes of her stage career involved My Dear Children, the 1940 Broadway production starring John Barrymore. Dudley had originally stepped into the role of Cordelia — the daughter of Barrymore's character — in St. Louis, after Barrymore's wife Elaine departed the show following a marital dispute. When the production opened in New York in 1939, Dudley continued in the role, but Elaine Barrymore reclaimed the part just two weeks into the run. Dudley later described the experience as her first time being fired. Shortly afterward, she took on the female lead in Margin for Error, which played at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston.

In 1936, RKO signed Dudley to a five-year contract. Her film work included A Woman Rebels (1935), The Moon and Sixpence (1942), City without Men (1943), and The Secret Fury (1950). On radio, she played Peggy, the title character's daughter, in Meet Mr. Meek. After stepping away from acting, Dudley pursued a career in real-estate development.

Dudley's personal life included several significant events. She married engineer Theodore Kurrus in Brewster, New York, on June 6, 1932, at the age of fourteen; an annulment was finalized on May 4, 1936. On April 29, 1936, she shot herself in the chest with a .22 caliber rifle following an argument with her fiancé, playwright Sidney Kingsley. New York City detectives ruled the incident an attempted suicide after discovering a note in which she expressed fear that Kingsley's affection for her had diminished. She was treated at York Hospital for a superficial flesh wound. Later that same year, Dudley married Jack E. Jenkins, a restaurant operator from Beverly Hills, in Yuma, Arizona. The couple had two sons, one of whom was child actor Butch Jenkins. Among her personal interests, Dudley was a pilot and at one point raised mink for fur.

Dudley died of bone cancer on August 14, 1985, in Greenville, Texas, at the age of 68. No service was held, and her ashes were interred at Mount Kisco, New York.