Nina Foch

Nina Foch, born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock on April 20, 1924, in Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands, was an American actress and drama educator whose career extended across six decades, encompassing more than 50 feature films, over 100 television credits, and a Broadway presence spanning 1947 to 1960. She died on December 5, 2008, at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, of complications from myelodysplasia, having fallen ill the day before while teaching at the University of Southern California. Her son, Dirk de Brito, confirmed the cause of death to the Los Angeles Times.

Foch was the daughter of American actress and singer Consuelo Flowerton and Dutch classical music conductor Dirk Foch. Her parents divorced when she was a toddler, after which she and her mother relocated from the Netherlands to New York City. Her mother encouraged her artistic development throughout her childhood, and Foch studied piano and art before gravitating toward acting. She graduated from the Lincoln School and went on to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she studied method acting under Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler.

At age 19, Foch signed a contract with Columbia Pictures and made her feature film debut in the horror picture The Return of the Vampire (1943) alongside Bela Lugosi. Columbia's Cry of the Werewolf followed the next year, and she subsequently appeared in the biopic A Song to Remember (1945) and the drama I Love a Mystery (1945). She also starred in a series of film noirs during this period, including Escape in the Fog (1945), in which she played a woman who experiences a premonition of her own kidnapping, and My Name is Julia Ross (1945), in which she took the titular role of a woman who awakens to find herself with a different identity in a remote house in rural Cornwall. Later Columbia credits included Johnny O'Clock (1947), The Dark Past (1948), The Undercover Man (1948), and Johnny Allegro (1949). During the same period, she was a regular presence in John Houseman's CBS Playhouse 90 television series.

Foch made her Broadway debut in 1947 in the production of John Loves Mary, playing the titular role of Mary. She went on to appear in Stratford and Broadway productions of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in 1949 and King Lear in 1950, the latter among the verified Broadway credits in her stage record. Her Broadway work also included A Second String, the comedies The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure, and the play Freight. In 1967, she made her theatrical directorial debut with a Broadway production of Ways and Means, a comedy by Noël Coward.

Her film work in the 1950s brought her significant critical recognition. She appeared alongside Gene Kelly in the musical An American in Paris (1951), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year, and played Marie Antoinette in Scaramouche (1952). Foch received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a secretary in the boardroom drama Executive Suite (1954), which starred William Holden, Fredric March, and Barbara Stanwyck. She also earned a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. In Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), she played Bithiah, the pharaoh's daughter who discovers the infant Moses in the bulrushes, adopts him, and ultimately joins him and the Hebrews in their exodus from Egypt. In 1957, the Maryland State Council of the American Jewish Congress honored her with a special award for that performance. She appeared in Spartacus (1960), starring Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier, as a woman who selects gladiators to fight to the death for her entertainment.

Foch's television career was equally extensive. She was cast as the first murder victim in the Columbo mystery series, appearing in the pilot film Prescription: Murder (1968) with Peter Falk and Gene Barry. She guest-starred across numerous series, including Checkmate (1961), Naked City (1962), Route 66 (1964), The Wild Wild West (1969), The F.B.I. (1970), and Hawaii Five-O (1973). In 1980, she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her guest role as Mrs. Pope on the Lou Grant episode "Hollywood." Later television work included War and Remembrance (1988), in which she played the Comtesse de Chambrun, and the role of Frannie Halcyon in the miniseries Tales of the City (1993). She also portrayed the Overseer Commander in Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994) and appeared in Just Shoot Me, Dharma & Greg, and NCIS, the latter in the recurring role of Dr. Donald Mallard's elderly mother.

Foch married actor James Lipton in 1954; the marriage ended in divorce in 1959. That same year she married television writer Dennis de Brito, with whom she had one son, Dirk. She and de Brito divorced in 1964. Her third marriage, to Michael Dewell in 1967, ended in divorce in 1993.

Beginning in the 1960s, Foch built a parallel career as an educator, teaching courses in drama and film directing at the American Film Institute and at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where she remained a faculty member for more than 40 years. Among her students were directors Randal Kleiser and Edward Zwick and performer Julie Andrews. She continued teaching until the end of her life, falling ill during a class at USC the day before her death. Foch also worked as an independent script-breakdown consultant for Hollywood directors. She holds two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6300 and 7000 Hollywood Boulevard. Following her death, she was cremated by the Neptune Society of Sherman Oaks, California, and her ashes were placed in the custody of her son.