Eleanor Parker

Lovely Eleanor Parker in a 1945 portrait sitting by photographer Bert Six. Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio. Her film debut was in a small part in the Errol Flynn epic "They Died With Their Boots On" (1941), but she was cut from the final release print. However, she soon had a few ingenue roles. On the set of "Mission to Moscow" (1943), she met Lieutenant Fred Losse, a navy dentist, and they were married soon afterwards. The marriage lasted for two years. Parker was kept busy at Warners throughout the 1940s, her first major starring part being in "Between Two Worlds" (1944). She also gave another touching performance in "Pride of the Marines" (1945) as the girlfriend of a war hero (John Garfield) who is blinded fighting on Guadalcanal. But her greatest challenge to date was as the ruthless Mildred in "Of Human Bondage" (1946) where she had to reveal a nasty side, which she did with relish. Parker made another successful film in the mystery "The Woman in White" (1948) and she received the first of her three Oscar nominations for the wrongly convicted prisoner in "Caged" (1950). Among her best roles in the 1950s were in "Detective Story" (1951), "Scaramouche" (1952), "Many Rivers To Cross" (1955), "Interrupted Melody" (1955) and "The Seventh Sin" (1959). Apart from "The Sound of Music" (1965), many of Parker's films in the 1960s were inconsequential. As films dried up, she turned to television, appearing in a wide variety of shows, including the series "Bracken's World" (1969-70). One of her last appearances was in a TV movie called "Dead on the Money" (1991). Eleanor Parker retired far too soon for those who were her fans and those who appreciated a superb actress. She passed away on December 9, 2013, at a medical facility in Palm Springs, California, of complications of pneumonia (age 91).

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