Obituaries

[beechnut79]

(01-15-2018, 11:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Very old actress, largely forgotten now because she retired from screen acting in her late 30s in the early 1960s.  Important in her time enough to get high billing:

Bennie Jean Porter (December 8, 1922 – January 13, 2018) was an American film and television actress. She was notable for her roles in The Youngest Profession (1943), Bathing Beauty (1944), Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945), Till the End of Time (1946), Cry Danger (1951), and in The Left Hand of God (1956).

Porter was notable for her marriage with Edward Dmytryk, who was one of the Hollywood Ten, the most prominent blacklisted group in the film industry during the McCarthy-era.[1]

In addition to Ms. Porter, another long forgotten actress of the same time frame passed over the last weekend. Dorothy Malone, 93, was perhaps best known for her portrayal of the nymphomanic daughter of a Texas oil tycoon in "Written on the Wind", a movie largely thought to have set the stage for later TV dramas of dysfunctional well-off families such as "Dallas" and Dynasty".





Porter was born in Cisco, Texas.[2] Porter was named the "Most Beautiful Baby" in Eastland County when she was 1.[1] At age 10, she had her own half-hour radio show on the WRR station in Fort Worth and landed a summer vaudeville job headlining with Ted Lewis and his band.[1]
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At the age of 12, Porter arrived at Hollywood and was discovered while taking dancing lessons at the Fanchon and Marco dancing school.[3] Porter was discovered by director Allan Dwan, who gave her an uncredited role in his musical Song and Dance Man (1936), starring Claire Trevor.[4]



Porter in the trailer for Twice Blessed (1945)

Beginning with a bit parts in movies such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and One Million B.C. (1940), she eventually established herself as an actress for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941.[5][6]

While never a big star, she was active throughout the 1940s, appearing in almost 30 motion pictures alongside MGM stars like Esther Williams, Mickey Rooney and the comedy duo Abbott & Costello.[1] In the 1950s, Porter appeared mainly in television series such as The Red Skelton Show, Sea Hunt, and 77 Sunset Strip.[3] She retired from acting in 1961.[1] MGM had loaned out Porter to RKO so she could step in for Till the End of Time.[3]

She was married to film director and writer Edward Dmytryk, who was one of the Hollywood Ten, the most prominent blacklisted group in the film industry during the McCarthy-era.[1] The two married May 12, 1948, in Ellicott City, Maryland.[7] They had three children.[8] Porter and Dmytyrk had fled to England in the late 1940s after he was blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten for refusing to answer charges that he was a communist.[1] They returned to the U.S. in 1951, and he served six months in prison for contempt of Congress.[3]

Porter wrote several books, including the unpublished The Cost of Living, about her and her husband; Chicago Jazz and Then Some, about their L.A. neighbor, jazz pianist [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jess_Stacy]Jess Stacy; and, with Dmytryk, On Screen Acting.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Porter