Evelyn Keyes

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Evelyn Louise Keyes (November 20, 1916 – July 4, 2008)[1] 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,[2] 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.[3] As a teenager, Keyes took dancing lessons and performed for local clubs such as the Daughters of the Confederacy.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Film career

File:Evelyn Keyes pin-up, Yank, The Army Weekly, March 12, 1944.png
Pin-up photo of Keyes for Yank, the Army Weekly in 1944

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".[4] 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.[5]

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.[6] 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.[3][7] 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."[3]

Later, she married and divorced director Charles Vidor (1943–1945), actor/director John Huston (23 July 1946 – February 1950),[8][9][10] and bandleader Artie Shaw (1957–1985).[11] Keyes said of her many love affairs: "I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments."[12] 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.[3]

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.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Keyes died of uterine cancer on July 4, 2008 at the Pepper Estates in Montecito, California,[1] 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.[1]

Filmography

File:Evelyn Keyes in color.jpg
Evelyn Keyes in The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Excluding appearances as herself.

Film

Year Title Role Notes
1938 Template:Sortname 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 Template:Sortname Francois Morestan
Before I Hang Martha Garth
Beyond the Sacramento Lynn Perry
1941 Template:Sortname Helen Williams
Here Comes Mr. Jordan Bette Logan
Ladies in Retirement Lucy
1942 Template:Sortname Ruth Morley
Flight Lieutenant Susie Thompson
1943 Template:Sortname 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 Template:Sortname Babs
1946 Renegades Hannah Brockway
Template:Sortname Vicki Dean
Template:Sortname Julie Benson
1947 Johnny O'Clock Nancy Hobson
1948 Template:Sortname Millie McGonigle
Enchantment Grizel Dane
1949 Mr. Soft Touch Jenny Jones
Mrs. Mike Kathy O'Fallon Flannigan
1950 Template:Sortname Sheila Bennet
1951 Smuggler's Island Vivian Craig
Template:Sortname 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
Template:Sortname Helen Sherman
1956 Around the World in 80 Days Cameo appearance
1987 Template:Sortname 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 Template:Sortname Mrs. Blair Episode: "Visitors from a Strange Planet"
1971 From a Bird's Eye View Mrs. Beal Episode: "The Matchmakers"
1983 Template:Sortname 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

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References

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External links

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  1. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  2. ↑ Hollywood Remembered
  3. ↑ a b c d Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  4. ↑ Interview with Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show, July 28, 1977
  5. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  6. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  7. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  8. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  9. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  10. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  11. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  12. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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