Irene Kane

Chase was an actress, journalist, memoirist, and co-author of autobiographical books about Rosalind Russell, Josephine Baker, and Betty Ford. Performing under the name Irene Kane during the 1950s and '60s, she appeared on the New York stage, on television, and in film. Her most notable role came in Stanley Kubrick's 1955 noir thriller "Killer's Kiss," playing a dance-hall partner-for-hire who becomes a brutal man's obsession. She also performed in the 1956 Off Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, held a recurring part on the CBS television soap opera "Love of Life," appeared in several episodes of the TV series "Naked City," and played a cynical television culture critic in Bob Fosse's dark portrayal of show business life, the 1979 film "All That Jazz." Stardom eluded Chase, but she found her voice writing about what she portrayed as her "I Love Lucy"-like pursuit of it. Her wry, self-deprecating essays, many first published in The New York Times, became the basis of a 1974 memoir, "How to Be a Movie Star, or a Terrible Beauty is Born." Chase also co-wrote "Josephine: The Hungry Heart" (1993) with Jean-Claude Baker, who had been informally adopted as a teenage boy by Josephine Baker, the chanteuse and dancer who made a mission of adopting orphans from around the world.