Iris Adrian

Iris Adrian Hostetter (May 29, 1912 – September 17, 1994) was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, radio, and television across several decades. Born in Los Angeles, California, to Florence (née Van Every) and Adrian Earl Hostetter, who had married in 1909, she was an only child raised by her single mother in Los Angeles. She completed her education at Hollywood High School.

Adrian's performing career began before she reached Hollywood. She won a beauty pageant, worked with Fred Waring, and appeared with the Ziegfeld Follies before making her film debut in the short subject Chasing Husbands in 1928. She subsequently appeared as an extra or chorus girl in early sound productions, including Paramount on Parade in 1930.

Her stage career brought her to Broadway between 1930 and 1938. She appeared in the revue The New Yorkers, the musical Hot-Cha!, and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, as well as The Fabulous Invalid in 1938. These credits placed her among the working performers of Broadway's Depression-era theatrical scene.

Throughout the 1930s, Adrian built a screen identity around hard-boiled characters, glamorous gold-diggers, and gangsters' molls, accumulating supporting roles across numerous features. Among her more noted film appearances was the role of Gee-Gee Graham in Lady of Burlesque. In the Jerry Lewis comedy The Errand Boy, she portrayed a glamorous movie star named Anastasia Anastasia, whose on-set birthday celebration is disrupted by Lewis's character. She also appeared on radio, including the Abbott and Costello Show.

By the close of the 1960s, Adrian had appeared in more than one hundred films. In her later career she became a recurring presence in Walt Disney productions, including That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug, The Shaggy D.A., Freaky Friday, and No Deposit, No Return. Disney director Robert Stevenson regarded her as his good-luck charm. Across these films and others, such as The Odd Couple, she was regularly cast as sharp-tongued waitresses, landladies, and working-class neighborhood figures. On television she held a cast role in the situation comedy The Ted Knight Show during the spring of 1978 and made guest appearances on series including Get Smart, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Munsters, The Love Boat, The Lucy Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Jack Benny Program.

Adrian was married four times. Her first marriage, to Charles Over, lasted from 1935 to 1936 and ended in divorce. A second marriage, to George Jay, also ended in divorce. On September 24, 1949, she married camera manufacturer Dan Schoonmaker in Las Vegas; they separated two months later and were divorced on September 14, 1950, in Ciudad Juárez. Her fourth marriage, to football player Ray (Fido) Murphy, lasted more than thirty years until his death in 1983. Adrian had no children.

She died in Los Angeles on September 17, 1994, as a result of a fall sustained in her home during the Northridge earthquake eight months earlier. Her ashes are interred in the Columbarium of Radiant Dawn at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.