Karen Morley |
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Karen Morley Biography |
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Willowy leading lady Karen Morley received most of her acting training at Pasadena Playhouse. Signed to an MGM contract in 1931, she distinguished herself in a series of offbeat roles, notably the defiant heroine in Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), the title character`s foredoomed predecessor in Mata Hari (1932), and the mistress of the President of the United States in Gabriel Over the White House (1933). On loan to Howard Hughes, she was seen as gangster Paul Muni`s "high-class" paramour in Scarface (1931); and at RKO, she was the much-despised blackmailer (and well-deserved murder victim) in The Phantom of Crestwood (1933). Too mannered and aloof to become an audience favorite, she nonetheless worked steadily on-stage and onscreen well into the late `40s. Her film career came to a sudden halt in 1951 when she invoked the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Blacklisted from Hollywood, she unsuccessfully attempted to start a career in politics, then completely retired, refusing numerous entreaties to resume her film work once the blacklist had relaxed in the 1960s. Formerly married to director Charles Vidor, Karen Morley was later the wife of fellow blacklistee Lloyd Gough.
Biography Credit: www.allmovie.com/artist/karen-morley-50727 |
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Trivia and QuotesTrivia Had been considered for the role of Mrs. Connelly in the 2003 Drew Barrymore film, Duplex (2003). Had she received the role, it would have been her fifth with a member of the Barrymore family. Her MGM career fell apart after marrying director Charles Vidor, one of Hollywood`s bright promises at the time. It seems it didn`t sit well that she had nabbed him over prettier stars and it affected the way the public viewed her as an ingenue. By the late 30s she was reduced to small roles. Had a son Michael by first husband Charles Vidor. Hollywood folklore has it that she broke into films when she read lines with actors being tested for Greta Garbo`s movie Inspiration (1931) in 1931. She was so convincing that director Clarence Brown cast her in a prime role. She only made one film, an independent western called Born to the Saddle (1953) after testifying before the Senate Committee hearing alongside her second husband Lloyd Gough, who shared her `leftist` views. Both then dropped completely out of sight. He eventually came back in the 60s, she didn`t. In 1954, she ran unsuccessfully as a New York lieutenant governor candidate for the American Labor Party. Originally a pretty starlet/ingenue in Hollywood, Morley`s career was ruined 50 years ago by the Hollywood Blacklist/McCarthyism. She has long been a staunch left-wing activist around the San Francisco area. Now in her 90s, she appeared in a Vanity Fair photoshoot featuring other surviving victims of the Blacklist in December, 1999. | ||
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