Noreen Nash, a 1940s and 1950s starlet who appeared in notable films like The Southerner, Huge And The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, has passed away. She turned 99.
Nash died of natural causes Tuesday at her Beverly Hills home, her eldest son, Lee Siegel Jr., said The Hollywood Reporter.
Nash worked on about two dozen feature films during her twenty-year career, including several ‘B’ movies such as Phantom from space (1953), where she portrayed a kidnapped scientist in a film shot at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
The dark-haired, blue-eyed Nash also starred as the wife of a Palm Springs tennis club owner in the CBS summer replacement series The Charles Farrell Show – it stood for I love Lucy in 1956 – and appeared in episodes of Hopalong Cassidy, Abbott and Costello’s show, My little Marge, Dragnet And Sunset strip 77.
Nash played the daughter of J. Carrol Naish’s character in Jean Renoir’s The Southerner (1945), starring Zachary Scott in a story about a struggling family of cotton farmers in 1940s Texas, and in Huge (1956), she was Lona Lane, the glamorous Hollywood star present at the opening of the Emperador Hotel.
“What I remember most is that by the time I got into that picture, director George Stevens and James Dean were together,” Nash recalled in an interview for the Western clippings website. Dean did his usual mumbling and Stevens kept saying, “This script cost a lot of money. I want to hear those words!’ George didn’t like James’ acting!”
Noreen Nash in a promotional photo for 1956 Huge
Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Norabelle Jean Roth was born on April 4, 1924 in Wenatchee, Washington. Her mother, Gayle, was a teacher and her father, Albert, owned a Coca-Cola bottling plant. She was crowned Apple Blossom Queen at 18 and then signed with MGM after being spotted by Bob Hope’s agent at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood.
She took the stage name Noreen Roth and appeared in films, among other things Girl crazy (1943) with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland; Bath beauty (1944) with Esther Williams and Basil Rathbone; Mervyn LeRoys Thirty seconds over Tokyo (1944) with Spencer Tracy; And Mrs Parkington (1944) with Greer Garson.
Her first major role came in The Southerners after she left MGM, and working with Naish inspired her to change her stage name one more time, she said.
Nash next played for “Poverty Row” outfits as Producers Releasing Corp. and Eagle Lion in movies like The devil on wheels (1947) alongside Darryl Hickman and Terry Moore, The big solution (1947), Assigned to danger (1948), The checkered jacket (1948) and Adventures of Casanova (1948).
She collaborated with director Lesley Selander on four Westerns: The red stallion (1947), Thunderstorm over Wyoming (1950), Road Agent (1952) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958), where her Frances Henderson kills a man with an axe.
She played the wife of Dick Shawn’s character in LeRoy’s Wake me up when it’s over (1960) before retiring from acting in 1962. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in history from UCLA in 1971 – the same year her youngest son, Robert, graduated from the school.
Nash published her first novel, the 16th Century Set Filled with lovein 1980 and co-wrote that of 2015 Titans of the Muses: When Henry Miller Met Jean Renoir.
She was married to Lee E. Siegel, the medical director of the studio at Fox from 1955-71 known as “Doctor to the Stars” from 1942 until his death in 1990, and to Oscar-nominated actor James Whitmore of 2001 until his death in 2009. dead.
In addition to her sons, the survivors include her grandchildren, Sebastian, Dmitri, John and Cara, and four great-grandchildren.
