Lois Moran

Lois Moran, born Lois Darlington Dowling on March 1, 1909, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was an American actress whose career spanned film, stage, and television. She died on July 13, 1990, in Sedona, Arizona, following a battle with cancer. Her ashes were scattered in the Red Rock country of Arizona.

Moran's early life was marked by significant loss. Her father, Roger Dowling, died in an automobile accident when she was one year old, and her mother, Gladys Evans Dowling, subsequently remarried a Dr. Timothy Moran. Moran later described her stepfather as "my dearest person in the world next to mother," and his death from influenza when she was nine compounded the family's grief. She attended Seton Hill Academy in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, before relocating to Paris in 1921 at age twelve with her mother, the move financed by a great-aunt.

Her performing career began in Europe. At thirteen she was singing and dancing at the Paris National Opera, and at fourteen she made her first film in Paris. Her Hollywood debut came with the 1925 film Stella Dallas, in which she played Laurel Dallas, the daughter of the title character — a role for which she remains best known. Throughout the late 1920s she appeared in numerous films, including the early sound productions Behind That Curtain (1929) and the musical pictures A Song of Kentucky (1929), Words and Music (1929), and Mammy (1930).

Moran transitioned to Broadway between 1930 and 1933. She appeared in the play This Is New York in 1930, followed by the musicals Of Thee I Sing and Let 'Em Eat Cake. Beyond her stage work, she became a figure of personal significance to writer F. Scott Fitzgerald during a brief affair in 1927, when Fitzgerald had traveled to Hollywood to write a flapper comedy for United Artists. Moran served as an inspiration for the character Rosemary Hoyt in Fitzgerald's novel Tender is the Night; the character, previously written as male in earlier drafts, was rewritten to closely mirror her.

In 1935, Moran married Clarence M. Young, who served as assistant secretary of commerce, and temporarily stepped back from acting. The couple had one son, Timothy, and remained together until Young's death in 1973. Moran later returned to performing, taking a co-starring role in the television series Waterfront (1954–1955), in which she played May Herrick opposite Preston Foster's Captain John Herrick.