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Peggy Ann Garner`s career was launched by a determined mother, who got her into summer stock and modeling before she was 6. Virginia Garner moved her daughter to Hollywood a year later. She had placed her in several films before the young actress gained fame as Francie Nolan in the 1945 film, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Her career began to fade as she grew older, but she did stage and television work as well as a few other films, never recapturing her childhood fame. Even while earning her living as a real estate broker in the 1960s and as a fleet automobile sales manager during the 1970s, she dreamed of a return to the screen. She was married and divorced three times. Her second husband was actor Albert Salmi, by whom she had a daughter, Catherine. The actress was born Feb. 3, 1932, in Canton, Ohio. Her father was an English-born attorney, William H. Garner, who was a U.S. Army officer during World War II and later became estranged from her mother. Her parents were divorced in 1947 and the young actress, who had a falling out with her mother, went to court to ask that her father be appointed guardian in her mother`s place.

Before she was 20, she left Hollywood for New York to try her talents on Broadway. She spent the 1950s living and working in New York and studying with the Actors Studio. She appeared in "The Man" with Dorothy Gish in 1950, "A Royal Family" in 1951 and "Home is the Hero" in 1954. She also was in the road company of "Bus Stop" in 1955. She received the "Hasty Puddings Theatrical award for "Woman of the Year" in 1956.

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