Eleanor Parker

Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, to Lola (née Isett) and Lester Day Parker. The family later relocated to East Cleveland, Ohio, where Parker attended public schools and graduated from Shaw High School. From an early age she pursued acting, participating in school plays before traveling to Martha's Vineyard after graduation to continue developing her craft. While working there as a waitress, she was offered a screen test by 20th Century Fox but declined it. She subsequently moved to California and began performing at the Pasadena Playhouse, where a Warner Bros. talent scout named Irving Kumin spotted her in the audience one evening and offered her a studio test. She accepted, and Warner Bros. signed her to a long-term contract in June 1941.

Before her film career took shape, Parker had appeared on Broadway in 1925 in the play Is Zat So?.

Parker's early work at Warner Bros. included small and supporting parts. Although she was cast in They Died with Their Boots On, her scenes were cut, making her actual film debut the 1942 short Soldiers in White, in which she played Nurse Ryan. She went on to appear in the B films Busses Roar (1942) and The Mysterious Doctor (1943), as well as Mission to Moscow (1943). Her work on that last film led the studio to cast her opposite Paul Henreid in Between Two Worlds (1944), replacing Joan Leslie. She received her first starring role alongside Dennis Morgan in The Very Thought of You (1944), taking over from Ida Lupino. Warner Bros. then gave her the role of Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1946), an adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel directed by Edmund Goulding, though the film received an underwhelming reception upon its delayed release. Parker later named it her favorite role as of 1953.

A significant turning point came when she was cast opposite John Garfield in Pride of the Marines (1945), which Parker identified as the major break of her career. Two subsequent films with Errol Flynn — the comedy Never Say Goodbye (1946) and the drama Escape Me Never (1947) — performed poorly at the box office. Parker was suspended multiple times by Warner Bros. for refusing roles, including parts in Stallion Road and Love and Learn, and again when she declined to appear in Somewhere in the City (1948). She also turned down The Hasty Heart (1949), which would have required travel to England during her infant child's first year. She returned to the screen in Chain Lightning alongside Humphrey Bogart before lobbying successfully for the lead in Caged (1950), a film about a woman in prison. The performance earned her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and her first Academy Award nomination. She departed Warner Bros. in February 1950 after eight years under contract, following a dispute over a promised project called Safe Harbor that the studio had no intention of producing.

Parker's post-Warner Bros. career began with Valentino (1951), in which she played a fictionalized version of Rudolph Valentino's wife, and the comedy A Millionaire for Christy (1951). She then signed a contract with Paramount for one film per year with options for outside work. That arrangement produced one of her most acclaimed performances: the role of Mary McLeod in Detective Story (1951), directed by William Wyler and co-starring Kirk Douglas. The performance earned Parker her second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and it remains the shortest performance to receive a nomination in that category.

At MGM, Parker starred in Scaramouche (1952) opposite Stewart Granger in a role originally intended for Ava Gardner. The film was a major commercial success. She followed it with Above and Beyond (1952), a biopic of Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. starring Robert Taylor, and signed a five-year contract with MGM while filming Escape from Fort Bravo (1953). She was reunited with Taylor in Valley of the Kings (1954) and Many Rivers to Cross (1955). Returning to Paramount, she starred opposite Charlton Heston in The Naked Jungle (1954), directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal, playing a mail-order bride set in 1901.

MGM cast Parker as opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody (1955), a role she later named her favorite. The film was a substantial hit and brought her a third Academy Award nomination. That same year she appeared in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), directed by Otto Preminger and released through United Artists, playing Zosh, the wheelchair-bound wife of Frank Sinatra's heroin-addicted character Frankie Machine. The film was both a commercial and critical success.

Parker remained active in film through the following decade, with notable appearances including A Hole in the Head (1959) with Frank Sinatra, The Sound of Music (1965) in which she played the Baroness opposite Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and The Oscar (1966). She died on December 9, 2013, at the age of 91.