Joel McCrea & Frances Dee

Before they worked together, Dee and McCrea first spotted each other at a traffic light in Los Angeles, where McCrea tipped his hat to her.She thought he was being very familiar and very fresh, so she ignored him.She turned up her nose and drove on.They met soon after at a Paramount publicity photo shoot on the beach, where McCrea happened to be playing volleyball. Their romance bloomed later when they teamed up for ''The Silver Cord.''

The couple married on October 1933 for once and only in their lifetime.They bought a large ranch in Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles, where their three sons grew up. Her survivors include her sons, Peter (later married with Jack Lemmon's daughter Courtney), Joel Dee (who became an actor as Jody McCrea) and David; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Dee jokes on McCrea "My favorite leading man? Obviously my husband, darling! But I mean it. Oh, yes—I could boss him around!".While McCrea very grateful had Frances as his wife "Frances was a very talented actress but once the children came along the family came first. She's very strong. I was inclined to walk away when things got tough, but not her. Frances is a sticker-outer. That's been a tremendous help to me and an influence. I wasn't bright enough not to have gone awry occasionally, but the kind of relationship we had, the kind of marriage, has made it possible for me to rise to the occasion when I had to. You wouldn't think to look at that delicate, fragile beauty of hers, but she's one of the strongest human beings I've ever known."

In 1935, Dee and husband separated, but soon reconciled. In 1966, he filed for divorce, charging her with cruelty.However the couple stayed married until McCrea's death.

Mr. McCrea died on the couple's 57th anniversary in 1990.They were dispel the myth that marriages between artists will never last long.After McCrea died, Ms. Dee remained on the ranch; for part of the last two years, she lived in New Mexico near her sons Joel and David. She rarely appeared in public, but in her 90's she was honored with retrospectives of her film career at film festivals in Bergen, N.J., and Tunica, Miss. Last December in Boston, she attended a tribute in her honor and a screening of her 1943 horror flick, ''I Walked With a Zombie.'' She told the audience, ''I can't believe all you people would come out on a frosty night to see an old movie like this.''

Movies they filmed together : The Silver Cord (1933) , Wells Fargo (1937) , Four Face West (1948)