by Ray Hagen
A touch of lipstick—1947 to 1966.
In 1971 she returned to regular filmmaking, though mostly in low-budget thrillers, and she continued to pop up regularly on television in episodic series, TV movies and miniseries. She was now playing psychotics, eccentrics, killers, daffy mothers, over-the-hill actresses, aging mistresses—basically, anything that was handed to her. In 1973, James Robert Parish quoted an ambivalent Gloria as saying, “I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s hard to get a good script. Maybe I should just keep doing housework and not try to come back at all, you know what I mean?”
One of these projects is worth noting, a 1974 TV movie, The Girl on the Late, Late Show. The cast was headed by Don Murray and featured other stars from Gloria’s era in assorted cameos—Van Johnson, Yvonne DeCarlo, Walter Pidgeon, John Ireland, Cameron Mitchell and Ralph Meeker. The movie involved a search for Carolyn Parker (Gloria), a former movie star who mysteriously dropped out of sight 20 years ago at the height of her fame. Throughout the movie, people are discussing her and watching scenes from the star’s glory days—“Carolyn” co-starring with Humphrey Bogart, Broderick Crawford and Glenn Ford in clips from In a Lonely Place, Human Desire and The Big Heat. (Gloria also shot a quick scene with Van Johnson, shown as a black and white outtake from Carolyn’s final uncompleted movie, and a brief shot as the younger Carolyn running down a flight of stairs and screaming as she witnesses a murder.) She’s described as “a girl you’d see in a polo coat at a football game, talk to her for five minutes and lose her in the crowd, but remember the rest of your life.” At the end of the film, all the mysteries are solved and Carolyn is found. Don Murray enters a dilapidated old mansion and sees her from the back, sitting and watching In a Lonely Place on TV. She turns slowly to face her visitor (and the camera), her face skeletal and tear-stained. She looks up at Murray and wearily asks, “Who were you expecting to find here? Carolyn Parker?” Slow curtain, The End. For any Hollywood historian, or Gloria Grahame fan, this is all most disquieting, not to say downright spooky. For her part, Gloria was thrilled. She had practically nothing to do, her character was the center of the film, and she was paid quite handsomely.
In 1975, at age 51, Gloria was diagnosed with breast cancer. She spent the next few years in and out of court battling with Tony Ray over their divorce, and steadfastly refusing to divulge her condition as she continued working on TV and doing plays both here and in England.
“I find England quite extraordinary,” she told Ian Woodward. “I grew up in such an English atmosphere, with both my parents being English themselves. I feel at home here. I have a British passport; I’ve had it quite awhile. And I belong to British Equity, the actors’ union.” She added, “I’ve had a very beautiful life. A very interesting life. A very lucky life. I realize it especially when I consider others’ lives—so boring and grey and motionless. I care passionately for the job I do.”
Through painful setbacks, she muscled her way through a grueling work schedule until collapsing in England during rehearsals for a second production of The Glass Menagerie. She was flown to St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York, where she refused all aggressive attempts to prolong her life.
She died on October 5, 1981, just short of what would have been her fifty-eighth birthday. The death certificate listed her “approximate age” as 41. Her sister Joy said, “Gloria would have been smiling at that one.”
Thanks to the ever-growing public interest in what we now call film noir, Gloria Grahame’s reputation as the genre’s ultimate femme fatale has continued to grow. In 1979, a full biography of Gloria was published, Vincent Curcio’s (hideously titled) Suicide Blonde. Then, in 1986, yet another Gloria Grahame book was published. A short volume titled Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, it was Peter Turner’s affectionate memoir of his relationship with Gloria during her final days in England as her illness was progressing.
Yes, she was probably the most blatantly carnal vixen ever filmed. And yes, she led a private life of considerable vitality and color. But let it not be forgotten that she was a stage-trained actress of greater power and range than moviegoers saw. Under all the Hollywood frou-frou, and her own misguided insecurities, Gloria Grahame was one killer tomato.
1943: Pin-Ups on Parade (Soundies). 1944: Oh! Please Tell Me Darling (Soundies), Loads of Pretty Women (Soundies), Blonde Fever (MGM). 1945: Without Love (MGM). 1946: It’s a Wonderful Life (RKO). 1947: It Happened in Brooklyn (MGM), Merton of the Movies (MGM), Crossfire (RKO), Song of the Thin Man (MGM). 1949: A Woman’s Secret (RKO), Roughshod (RKO). 1950: In a Lonely Place (Columbia). 1952: Macao (RKO), The Greatest Show on Earth (Paramount), Sudden Fear (RKO), The Bad and the Beautiful (MGM). 1953: The Glass Wall (Columbia), Man on a Tightrope (TCF), The Big Heat (Columbia), Prisoners of the Casbah (Columbia). 1954: Human Desire (Columbia), Naked Alibi (Universal), The Good Die Young (UA). 1955: Not as a Stranger (UA), The Cobweb (MGM), Oklahoma! (TCF). 1956: The Man Who Never Was (TCF). 1958: Ride Out for Revenge (UA). 1959: Odds Against Tomorrow (UA). 1966: Ride Beyond Vengeance (Columbia). 1971: The Todd Killings (National General), Chandler (MGM), Blood and Lace (AIP), Escape (ABC-TV), Black Noon (CBS-TV). 1972: The Loners (Fanfare). 1973: Tarot (Vagar). 1974: Mama’s Dirty Girls (Premiere), The Girl on the Late, Late Show (NBC-TV). 1976: Mansion of the Doomed (Group 1), Rich Man, Poor Man (ABC-TV). 1977: Seventh Avenue (NBC-TV). 1979: Chilly Scenes of Winter AKA Head Over Heels (UA), A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (AIP). 1980: Melvin and Howard (Universal). 1981: The Nesting (Feature Films).
Jean Hagen: After the Rain
by RAY HAGEN
I think it was the voice that did it for me when I saw this new girl, Jean Hagen, in her first two movies. In both she played floozies, one wearily battered and one sharply comic, and there was a complete shift in sound as well as attitude from one to the other. She was clearly a skilled and experienced actress with an offbeat beauty and an intriguing off-center smile, not the typical run of starlet the studios usually presented. But it was that warm and pliable voice, womanly rather than girlish, that riveted my attention. I find it both reasonable and ironic that Jean Hagen’s greatest fame rests on her performance as a bubbleheaded shrew with the most insanely hideous voice ever to hit a soundtrack.
Jean made only 19 feature films, and only two of lasting importance. But those two—The Asphalt Jungle and, especially, Singin’ in the Rain—assure her some small niche in cinema history. They also display her unique versatility, ranging from brutally honest pathos to knockabout farce. It’s regrettable that, during her four years as an MGM contract player, she was used mostly in slick B programmers, usually playing drabs, trollops or colorless second leads. Her looks, and her skill, seemed to suit her to strong character roles while still in her twenties, but most of the parts she did play in films were anything but strong.
Jean Shirley Verhagen was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 3, 1923. Her father, Christian M. Verhagen, was born in Holland and came to the U.S. when he was 25 “as an adventure,” says Jean’s sister, LaVerne Verhagen Steck. He settled in Illinois and became a mechanical engineer. “He first saw Mom walking across the street, holding a tennis racquet,” says LaVerne, “and said to a friend, ‘I’m gonna marry that girl.’” Christian and Marie Verhagen raised five children—in order of arrival, LaVerne, Donald (who was killed in World War II), Jean, Roger and Paul. There were also three infants who died in childbirth. Roger and Paul are both retired optometrists in, respectively, Indiana and Florida, and LaVerne lives with her husband on their farm in Pelham, New Hampshire.
LaVerne recalls, “Our childhood was wonderful, nothing but happiness. Our parents were very family-oriented people, very close. And I can’t remember when Jean wasn’t interested in acting. We used to put on plays in our basement in Chicago. We wrote them and acted in them and charged five cents.” The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, when Jean was 12.
Jean attended Chicago’s Northwestern University, majoring in drama. Not coming from a wealthy family, she was there on
a limited budget, and helped defray costs by working the freshman dorm’s switchboard. While still at school she obtained her first professional job on radio as an eccentric teenager, appearing irregularly on a daily afternoon series called The Brewster Boy. Her part-time radio work also helped finance her education.
During her years at Northwestern, Jean met five other aspiring actresses who, though their lives would take very different directions, would become her close friends for the rest of her life—Patricia Neal, Helen Horton, Nancy Hoadley, Nathalie Brown and Mimi Morrison. Helen Horton (now Helen Thomson) remembers, “Except for Pat, who was two years younger, we all met in a play we did together during our first year, Cry Havoc. Jean played the cigarette-smoking, wisecracking, smarty-pants girl. Then she did Sabina in Skin of Our Teeth and she was terrific, she was extremely talented. She was at her best when she was being funny or tough. Jean was the one who brought us back down to earth if we got a bit flighty.” Jean also appeared in Twelfth Night, and in one of Northwestern’s annual satirical revues with Mimi and Paul Lynde.
Patricia Neal joined this group when she came to Northwestern, rooming briefly with Jean and two other students. She later said that “people used to tell us we looked like sisters.”
Cry Havoc at Northwestern University, 1943. Seated at left, front: Nancy Hoadley and Jean Hagen. Standing at far right: Helen Horton and Nathalie Brown. All became lifetime friends (courtesy Nathalie Brown Thompson).
During their last year at college, Jean and Mimi Morrison teamed up as a comedy duo in nightclubs around Chicago. “The act was very silly,” says Mimi (now Mimi Tellis). “The agent who booked us said to Jean, ‘Now, you’re very pretty,’ and said to me, ‘and you’re not.’ [laughs]. We did a patter song together, then we were two gum-chewing girls who walked through the audience selling cigars and cigarettes with short skirts and black stockings and all that, and we’d toss repartee back and forth, ‘Hey, Maisie’ kind of stuff. We were all very impressed that Jean was already a professional radio actress while at college.” They continued doing their club act during their first year out of school.
Portrait of Jean Hagen, 1949.
In December 1945, Jean set out to conquer New York, arriving with Helen Horton. The whole Northwestern group, except Mimi, was in New York by then, sharing inexpensive apartments in various combinations. Jean did not have instant success crashing Broadway, but managed to continue working in radio in such series as Grand Central Station, Hollywood Story and Light of the World.
In 1946, after a real-life stint selling cigarettes in a nightclub, she became an usher at the Booth Theater, where the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play Swan Song was running. She had made some outspoken (and decidedly negative) comments about the show, and at a theater gathering was overheard by the authors. They engaged her in conversation and, far from being offended, offered her a chance to try out for a small role as a replacement for an ailing cast member. Jean promptly came down with appendicitis and wound up in the hospital. But the job was kept open for her and, upon her recovery, she took over the part.
The show closed on September 28, 1946, and she quickly won the role of Laurette Sincee in Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest (a prequel to The Little Foxes), which opened on November 20 of that year. Also in the cast was Patricia Neal. They were now roommates in New York (eventually sharing three different apartments together) and were ecstatic when they learned that both had won roles in the same play. To celebrate, they shopped ’til they dropped. Said Ward Morehouse in his New York Sun review: “There is a superb performance from Patricia Neal as the young Regina, another from Jean Hagen as the brazen trollop sought by the weakling Oscar.” Hagen and Neal had cemented their friendship and, along with the other four Northwestern girls, would remain lifelong best friends.
Early the following year Jean began dating actor Tom Seidel. They were married on July 3, 1947, while she was playing in Dear Ruth in a Connecticut summer stock company. Seidel had played small parts and uncredited bits in films since 1938, mainly in B pictures (Gone with the Wind being a prime exception).
Back in New York, Jean obtained a job as Judy Holliday’s understudy in Born Yesterday, and late in 1947 played Billie Dawn for a month while Holliday was on vacation. Her next Broadway assignment was as Regina in Eva Le Gallienne’s translation of Ibsen’s Ghosts, in which Le Gallienne and Alfred Ryder starred. It opened on February 16, 1948. Critical reaction was divided, about Jean’s performance as well as about the production. Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times, “Jean Hagen’s scheming servant-girl is well played, the commonness harshly breaking out of the demure reserve in the last scene.” But Richard Watts, in The New York Post, said, “I cannot say that Jean Hagen as Regina and Robert Emhardt as Engstrand offer exactly subtle performances, but at least they give some show of alertness to the proceedings.” It closed five days later.
Jean had better luck in her next show, Jed Harris’ production of Herman Wouk’s The Traitor, which opened March 31, 1949. She was seen in the play by Sam Zimbalist and Anthony Mann, who were in New York doing location work on an about-to-be-produced MGM crime drama, Side Street. They were immediately impressed with Jean and tested her the following morning. The test was flown to the coast for a quick okay, which it got.
She was signed at once to a Metro contract, and the next morning she was at work in the picture, playing a dipso nightclub singer who got throttled for her misplaced loyalty to gangster James Craig. In her first scene in her first film, set in the seedy club in which she sang, she delivered a prophetic line with mushy, boozy dignity: “An entertainer has to put up with a lot for the sake of her profession.”
“Both my parents were very driven, strong people,” says their son, Aric Seidel. “When they came to California from New York, they knew exactly what they wanted. In retrospect it reminds one of the old saying, watch out what you wish for.”
On the completion of Side Street, MGM sent her to Hollywood and cast her as a lanky homewrecker (“that tall job”) in Adam’s Rib. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn starred, and considerable attention was paid to the four featured Broadway recruits who were all appearing in their first important Hollywood roles—Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell, David Wayne and Jean Hagen. Adam’s Rib, released in 1949 just before Side Street, was a substantial hit and served as an effective springboard for all their careers.
She was next seen as a brutalized pioneer wife in Ambush (1950), a competent if unremarkable Western, and was then given the poignant role of Doll Conovan in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Huston chose Jean for the part of the pathetic drab in love with a crook “because she has a wistful, down-to-earth quality rare on the screen. A born actress.”
Jean was sitting with Huston while he was screening test footage of various unknown actresses for the role of Louis Calhern’s young blonde mistress. A few minutes into Marilyn Monroe’s test, they turned and looked at each other at the same moment. “Her?” asked Huston. “Yep,” said Jean. Both the picture and Jean’s touching performance were widely admired, but Monroe got quite the lion’s share of the publicity. Jean told people who didn’t remember who she played in The Asphalt Jungle that “there were only two girl roles, and I obviously wasn’t Marilyn Monroe.”
Jean sparring with lawyer Spencer Tracy in Adam’s Rib (MGM, 1949).
Metro then let her languish in three minor efforts. A Life of Her Own (1950) was a Lana Turner dud in which Jean was seen briefly—very briefly—as a friend of Lana’s. Jean’s husband was played by real-life hubby Tom Seidel. She had a few scenes as a loose lady on the make for Ray Milland in Night Into Morning (1951), and in No Questions Asked (’51) she mooned over Barry Sullivan, who only had eyes for Arlene Dahl. These programmers kept her working but hardly advanced her career, though critics were paying her favorable notice. The New York Herald-Tribune, in its No Questions Asked review, commented: “It is Jean Hagen who is responsible for the one real performance in the picture. With little or nothing to wor
k with, she manages to make the sincere girl both believable and sympathetic. She is excellent and admirably restrained in the drunk scene, a temptation to any actor.”
In 1952, following these trifles, Singin’ in the Rain was released. Jean’s hilarious performance as Lina Lamont, the egomaniacal silent screen vamp (“I am a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firma-mint”) whose screechy voice was not okay for sound, is still considered one of the big reasons for that film’s lasting success. Her lines have been quoted endlessly: “I make more money than Calvin Coolidge! Put tigither!,” “I cahn’t git him outta my mind,” “If we can bring a little happiness into your humdrum lives, it means our hard work ain’t been in vain fer nothin’.”
The satire on Hollywood’s early talkie days was an altogether happy blending of talents meshing perfectly to produce what many filmgoers still feel is the finest musical comedy Hollywood has made. Hagen drew raves for her deliriously spot-on performance, and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award (Gloria Grahame won for The Bad and the Beautiful). Her lampoon was perhaps too effective; most movie fans who saw her as the idiotic blonde with the piercing voice never even connected her with the Jean Hagen they saw in subsequent films.