Sidney Fox

Sidney Fox, born Sarah Liefer on December 10, 1907, was an American stage and film actress whose career spanned the late 1920s and 1930s. She was born in Poland-Galicia and emigrated with her Jewish parents, Rucha Rose (née Szapiro) and Jacob Liefer, to New York in 1911. By 1920, her mother had remarried a man named Joseph Fox, a Yiddish-speaking Polish native, and Sarah subsequently adopted her stepfather's surname. The federal census of 1930 recorded the 22-year-old living with her mother, stepfather, younger brother Samuel, and two stepbrothers on the 500 block of West 178th Street in Manhattan. That same census listed her occupation as stenographer, though she was simultaneously pursuing stage work. Other sources indicate she also held jobs as a seamstress, a law firm secretary, and a model at a Fifth Avenue shop.

Fox began studying acting in the late 1920s with the goal of establishing a stage or film career. Around 1928 she joined a touring theatrical company, and within a year she had secured her first Broadway role. She appeared in the play It Never Rains in 1929, then returned to Broadway in 1930 in the comedy Lost Sheep, portraying the character Rhoda Wampas. A Variety critic reviewing Lost Sheep that May offered the production a lukewarm assessment overall but singled out Fox for her energetic performance. Among those in attendance was Carl Laemmle Jr., then head of production at Universal Studios, who subsequently signed her to a multi-year contract with the studio.

Fox made her Hollywood film debut in the 1931 Hobart Henley drama Bad Sister for Universal Pictures, appearing alongside Conrad Nagel, Humphrey Bogart, Zasu Pitts, and Bette Davis, who was also making her film debut in that production. The same year, motion picture advertisers selected Fox as a WAMPAS Baby Star, recognizing her as one of the industry's most promising new actresses. In 1932 she starred as Mademoiselle Camille L'Espanaye in Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue Morgue opposite Bela Lugosi, and in 1933 she appeared opposite operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin in the English-language version of Don Quixote. Her later film roles were largely smaller parts, though she did carry a starring role in the 1935 release School for Girls. Her final screen performance appeared in the musical comedy Down to Their Last Yacht, released on August 31, 1934, for which she completed last-minute retakes in early August of that year.

In December 1932, Fox married Charles Beahan (1903–1968), and the two remained married until her death. The 1940 federal census recorded the couple residing in a rented home at 9421 Charleville Drive in Beverly Hills, California, at a monthly rent of $125. That census listed Fox as having no occupation and not seeking employment, while Beahan was documented as working as a literary agent in stage and motion pictures. Fox died in Hollywood on November 15, 1942, from an overdose of sleeping pills that authorities ruled accidental. Her body was returned to New York City and interred at Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Glendale, Queens.