Evelyn Keyes
Evelyn Keyes | |
|---|---|
Keyes c. 1940s | |
| Born | Evelyn Louise Keyes November 20, 1916[1] Port Arthur, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | July 4, 2008 (aged 91) Montecito, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1938–1993 |
| Spouses | Barton Bainbridge
(m. 1938; died 1940) |
| Partner | Michael Todd (1953–1956) |
Evelyn Louise Keyes (November 20, 1916 – July 4, 2008)[2] was an American film actress. She is best known for her role as Suellen O'Hara in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.
Early life
Evelyn Keyes was born in Port Arthur, Texas,[3] to Omar Dow Keyes and Maude Ollive Keyes, the daughter of a Methodist minister. After Omar Keyes died when she was three years old, Keyes moved with her mother to Atlanta, Georgia, where they lived with her grandparents. According to her memoir, Keyes was sexually molested by one of her brother's friends when she was five years old.[4] As a teenager, Keyes took dancing lessons and performed for local clubs such as the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Film career
A chorus girl by age 18, Keyes came out to Hollywood and was introduced to Cecil B. DeMille who in her own words "signed me to a personal contract without even making a test".[5] After a handful of B movies at Paramount Pictures, she was cast in Say It in French (1938). However, Keyes had to drop out to have an abortion and was replaced by Olympe Bradna. Later, she auditioned for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Though she failed to get the part, Selznick was impressed by her Southern accent and cast her as Scarlett O'Hara's sister Suellen in January 1939.[6]
Columbia Pictures signed her to a contract. In 1941, she played an ingenue in Here Comes Mr. Jordan. She spent most of the early 1940s playing leads in many of Columbia's B dramas and mysteries. She appeared as the female lead opposite Larry Parks in Columbia's blockbuster hit The Jolson Story (1946). She followed this up with an enjoyable minor screwball comedy, The Mating of Millie, with Glenn Ford. She was then in a 1949 role as Kathy Flannigan in Mrs. Mike.[7] Keyes' last role in a major film was a small part as Tom Ewell's vacationing wife in The Seven Year Itch (1955). Keyes officially retired in 1956, but continued to act.
Personal life
In her autobiography Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister: My Lively Life In and Out of Hollywood, Keyes described being raped by her director Andrew Stone while working on Say It in French. Keyes became pregnant and got an abortion in late 1938, which got her fired from the picture, and replaced with Olympe Branda. Only weeks later, she was cast in Gone With the Wind.[4][8] She married Barton Bainbridge shortly after. Bainbridge was an alcoholic, and threatened Keyes with a gun on at least one occasion. They separated and in 1940, he committed suicide with a shotgun in her car, leaving a note. Keyes wrote: "The note said it was because I had left him. I never left a man again. I made them leave me."[4]
Later, she married and divorced director Charles Vidor (1943–1945), actor/director John Huston (23 July 1946 – February 1950),[9][10][11] and bandleader Artie Shaw (1957–1985).[12] Keyes said of her many love affairs: "I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments."[13] While married to Huston, the couple adopted a twelve-year-old Mexican child, Pablo, whom Huston had discovered while filming on location in Mexico for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In her memoir, Keyes claimed that her adoptive son sexually molested her and that they lost contact after only a few years.[4]
Keyes expressed her opinion that Mrs. Mike was her best film. Among her many love affairs in Hollywood she recounted in Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister, were those with film producer Michael Todd (who left Evelyn for Elizabeth Taylor), actors Glenn Ford, Sterling Hayden, Dick Powell, Anthony Quinn, David Niven and Kirk Douglas. She had to regularly fend off Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn's advances during her career at the studio.
Keyes died of uterine cancer on July 4, 2008 at the Pepper Estates in Montecito, California,[2] and was cremated. Half her ashes were sent to Lamar University in Beaumon, Texas and the rest were divided among relatives and buried in a family plot at Waco Baptist Church Cemetery, Waco, Georgia, with a small tombstone bearing the epitaph Gone with the Wind.[2]
Filmography
- Excluding appearances as herself.
Film
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1938 | The Buccaneer | Madeleine | |
| Sons of the Legion | Linda Lee | ||
| 1939 | Sudden Money | Mary Patterson | |
| Union Pacific | Mrs. Calvin | ||
| Gone with the Wind | Suellen O'Hara | ||
| Slightly Honorable | Miss Vlissigen | ||
| 1940 | The Lady in Question | Francois Morestan | |
| Before I Hang | Martha Garth | ||
| Beyond the Sacramento | Lynn Perry | ||
| 1941 | The Face Behind the Mask | Helen Williams | |
| Here Comes Mr. Jordan | Bette Logan | ||
| Ladies in Retirement | Lucy | ||
| 1942 | The Adventures of Martin Eden | Ruth Morley | |
| Flight Lieutenant | Susie Thompson | ||
| 1943 | The Desperadoes | Allison McLeod | |
| Dangerous Blondes | Jane Craig | ||
| There's Something About a Soldier | Carol Harkness | ||
| 1944 | Nine Girls | Mary O'Ryan | |
| Strange Affair | Jacqueline 'Jack' Harrison | ||
| 1945 | A Thousand and One Nights | Babs | |
| 1946 | Renegades | Hannah Brockway | |
| The Thrill of Brazil | Vicki Dean | ||
| The Jolson Story | Julie Benson | ||
| 1947 | Johnny O'Clock | Nancy Hobson | |
| 1948 | The Mating of Millie | Millie McGonigle | |
| Enchantment | Grizel Dane | ||
| 1949 | Mr. Soft Touch | Jenny Jones | |
| Mrs. Mike | Kathy O'Fallon Flannigan | ||
| 1950 | The Killer That Stalked New York | Sheila Bennet | |
| 1951 | Smuggler's Island | Vivian Craig | |
| The Prowler | Susan Gilvray | ||
| Iron Man | Rose Warren Mason | ||
| 1952 | One Big Affair | Jean Harper | |
| It Happened in Paris | Patricia Moran | ||
| 1953 | Rough Shoot | Cecily Paine | |
| 99 River Street | Linda James | ||
| 1954 | Hell's Half Acre | Donna Williams | |
| 1955 | Top of the World | Virgie Rayne | |
| The Seven Year Itch | Helen Sherman | ||
| 1956 | Around the World in 80 Days | Cameo appearance | |
| 1987 | A Return to Salem's Lot | Mrs. Axel | |
| 1989 | Wicked Stepmother | Witch Instructor |
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Lux Video Theatre | Jane | Episode: "Wild Geese" |
| 1955 | Climax! | Drusilla Cayley | Episode: "Wild Stallion" |
| 1968 | Playhouse | Mrs. Panzack | Episode: "A Matter of Diamonds" |
| 1968 | The Ugliest Girl in Town | Mrs. Blair | Episode: "Visitors from a Strange Planet" |
| 1971 | From a Bird's Eye View | Mrs. Beal | Episode: "The Matchmakers" |
| 1983 | The Love Boat | Mrs. Parker | Episode: "Bricker's Boy/Lotions of Love/The Hustlers" |
| 1985, 1987, 1993 | Murder, She Wrote | Edna, Sister Emily, Wanda Polaski | Episodes: "Sticks & Stones", "Old Habits Die Hard", "Dead to Rights" |
| 1986 | Amazing Stories | Evelyn Chumsky | Episode: "Boo!" |
Bibliography
- Keyes, Evelyn (1971). I Am a Billboard. Lyle Stuart. ISBN 978-0818401077.
- Keyes, Evelyn (1977). Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister. Lyle Stuart. ISBN 978-0818402432.
- Keyes, Evelyn (1991). I'll Think about That Tomorrow. Dutton. ISBN 978-0525249696.
References
- ^ Her birth date is often incorrectly given as 1919, but census records list 1916.
- ^ a b c Wilson, Scott (September 16, 2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. McFarland. ISBN 9781476625997 – via Google Books.
- ^ Hollywood Remembered
- ^ a b c d Keyes, Evelyn (1977). Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister. Secaucus, N.J. : L. Stuart. pp. 33, 122–123. ISBN 0818402431.
- ^ Interview with Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show, July 28, 1977
- ^ Thomas, Bob (July 12, 2008). "'Gone With the Wind' actress dies at 91". Intelligencer Journal. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. p. B3.
- ^ Hopper, Hedda (October 2, 1949). "Evelyn Keyes Finally Elevated to Stardom; Leading Lady Bridges Gap Between 'Good' and 'Great' by Her 'Mrs. Mike'". Los Angeles Times. p. D1.
Until "Mrs. Mike," Evelyn Keyes had always been considered a fine leading lady rather than a star in the true sense of the word. She seemed to have lacked that final push that bridges the gap between "good" and "great."
- ^ Harmetz, Aljean (July 28, 1977). "'Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister'". The New York Times. p. 57.
Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister is a strange sort of autobiography for a prim Southern girl to have written a sexual odyssey up and down the decades, in which Evelyn Keyes pauses only occasionally to mention a movie she has just started or just finished.
- ^ Hopper, Hedda (July 24, 1946). "Evelyn Keyes married to film director John Huston". Los Angeles Times. p. 2.
An impulsive proposal in a Beverly Hills cafe, a midnight airplane ride to Las Vegas and a 3:30 a.m. appearance before the parson provided the "shooting script" for the surprise marriage yesterday of Evelyn Keyes, film star, and John Huston...
- ^ "Evelyn Keyes Separates From Director-Husband; Actress Cites Incompatibility as Cause of Split with Third Spouse, John Huston". Los Angeles Times. May 24, 1949. p. 2.
Evelyn Keyes has separated from her third husband, Director John Huston, the blond actress said yesterday.
- ^ "Mexican Divorce Ends Evelyn Keyes' Marriage". Los Angeles Times. February 11, 1950. p. 2.
- ^ "Artie Shaw Plans to Wed Evelyn Keyes". Los Angeles Times. March 6, 1957. p. 2.
- ^ Gates, Anita (July 12, 2008). "Evelyn Keyes, 91, Whose Film Roles Included 'Gone with the Wind,' Is Dead". The New York Times.