Una Merkel

Una Merkel (December 10, 1903 – January 2, 1986) was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, radio, and television across several decades. Born in Covington, Kentucky, to Bessie (née Phares) and Arno Merkel, she spent much of her early childhood moving through the Southern United States, where her father worked as a traveling salesman. By the time she was fifteen, the family had relocated to Philadelphia, and after roughly a year there, they settled in New York City. It was in New York that Merkel enrolled at the Alviene School of Dramatic Art and began pursuing a professional acting career.

Her physical resemblance to silent film star Lillian Gish led to an early opportunity to play Gish's youngest sister in a silent picture called World Shadows, though the project collapsed when its funding fell through. Merkel subsequently appeared in several silent films, a number of them produced by the Lee Bradford Corporation, as well as the two-reel sound-on-film short Love's Old Sweet Song (1923), produced by Lee de Forest using his Phonofilm process and featuring Louis Wolheim and Helen Weir. Finding limited success in silent pictures, she shifted her focus to the stage and secured roles in several Broadway productions. Her most significant early theatrical achievement came with Coquette in 1927, which starred Helen Hayes, an actress Merkel regarded as an idol.

Director D. W. Griffith invited Merkel to Hollywood to portray Ann Rutledge in his 1930 film Abraham Lincoln, and her transition to sound pictures proved highly successful. Throughout the 1930s she became a recognizable presence at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she held a contract from 1932 to 1938 and appeared in as many as twelve films in a single year, frequently on loan to other studios. She was typically cast as the wisecracking best friend of the leading lady, supporting performers including Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, and Eleanor Powell. She also took on leading lady roles opposite Jack Benny, Harold Lloyd, Franchot Tone, and Charles Butterworth. Her distinctive qualities as a performer included Kewpie-doll looks, a pronounced Southern accent, and a dry delivery of comic lines.

Among her best-known film roles, Merkel played a streetwise showgirl in 42nd Street (1933), appearing alongside Ginger Rogers in the "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" number. She portrayed Sam Spade's secretary in the original 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon and appeared in both the 1934 and 1952 film versions of The Merry Widow in different roles. In the 1937 film The Good Old Soak, she received second billing alongside Wallace Beery and Ted Healy. One of her most celebrated screen performances came in the 1939 Western comedy Destry Rides Again, in which her character Lily Belle engages in a physical altercation with Marlene Dietrich's character Frenchie over a pair of trousers won in a crooked card game. She also played the elder daughter to W. C. Fields's character in The Bank Dick (1940).

During the 1940s her film work diminished, though she remained active in radio, playing Adeline Fairchild on The Great Gildersleeve. In 1950 she appeared with William Bendix in the baseball comedy Kill the Umpire, which became a surprise commercial success. Her stage career continued as well, and her Broadway appearances across the full span of her career included Salt Water, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, Take Me Along, and The Ponder Heart, among other productions, with her first Broadway credit dating to 1916 and her last to 1959.

The role that brought Merkel her most prominent theatrical recognition was in The Ponder Heart, adapted from the novella of the same name, for which she received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1956. She returned to film work in subsequent years, appearing in the MGM production The Mating Game (1959) alongside Paul Douglas and Debbie Reynolds. In 1961 she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Summer and Smoke, and that same year she appeared as a housekeeper named Verbena in the Walt Disney comedy The Parent Trap, starring Brian Keith. Her final film role came opposite Elvis Presley in Spinout (1966).

Merkel married Ronald L. Burla, an executive at North American Aviation, in 1932. The couple separated in April 1944, and Merkel filed for divorce in Miami on December 19, 1946; the divorce was granted in March 1947. They had no children. On March 5, 1945, Merkel was found unconscious in her New York City apartment after her mother Bessie turned on five gas jets in their kitchen and died by suicide. Nearly seven years later, on March 4, 1952, Merkel was found unconscious after an overdose of sleeping pills and remained in a coma for a day before recovering. She was a lifelong Methodist.

Merkel died in Los Angeles on January 2, 1986, at the age of 82, and is buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, near her parents. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6230 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1991, a historical marker was dedicated to her in her hometown of Covington, Kentucky.