Hope Elise Ross Lange

 Hope Elise Ross Lange (November 28, 1933 – December 19, 2003)

Lange was a film, stage, and television actress. Lange was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Selena Cross in the 1957 film Peyton Place. In 1969 and 1970, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Carolyn Muir in the sitcom The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. She began working in television in the 1950s with appearances on Kraft Television Theatre, which caught the eye of a Hollywood producer. Lange came to prominence in her first film role in Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray, whom she married on April 14, 1956. Murray later said that Monroe grew jealous of another blonde being hired for the movie and asked the studio producers to dye Lange's blonde hair light brown. She went on to appear in Nicholas Ray's film, The True Story of Jesse James (1957) as James' wife, opposite Robert Wagner. She appeared in The Young Lions alongside Montgomery Clift. She starred as the wife of Jeffrey Hunter's character in Anton Myrer's wartime drama In Love and War (1958). These roles eventually led to Lange earning top billing in The Best of Everything (1959), with Suzy Parker and Joan Crawford. Lange appeared as Elvis Presley's older psychologist love interest in Wild in the Country (1961), despite being only 13 months Elvis' senior. She then appeared in Frank Capra's final movie, Pocketful of Miracles, alongside Glenn Ford. The next year, she appeared with Ford again in the romantic comedy Love Is a Ball. Lange returned to television for a 1966 role on the series The Fugitive (1963). She starred from 1968 to 1970 on the television series, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir for which she earned two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award nomination.

This success was followed by three seasons on The New Dick Van Dyke Show as Dick Van Dyke's wife, Jenny Preston, from 1971 to 1974, after which she declined to return for a fourth season of the show. She also played the wife of Charles Bronson's character in Death Wish (1974). In 1985, she appeared in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, and in 1986, she took a role as Laura Dern's mother in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Lange died on December 19, 2003, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, as a result of an ischemic colitis infection at the age of 70.