Vanessa Brown
| Vanessa Brown | |
|---|---|
Brown in 1951.
|
|
| Born |
Smylla Brind March 24, 1928 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | May 21, 1999 (aged 71) Woodland Hills, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1944–1980 |
| Spouse(s) | Robert Alan Franklyn (1950–57; divorced) Mark Sandrich Jr. (1959–89; divorced; 2 children) |
Vanessa Brown (March 24, 1928 – May 21, 1999) was an Austrian-born American actress who was successful in radio, film, theater, and television.
Born Smylla Brind in Vienna, Austria, to Jewish parents (Nah Brind, a language teacher, and Anna Brind, a psychologist), Brown and her family fled to Paris, France in 1937 to escape persecution with the rise of the Nazi Party.
Within a few years the family had settled in America and Brown auditioned for Lillian Hellman for a role in Watch on the Rhine. Fluent in several languages, the youngster impressed Hellman with her presence and authentic Teutonic accent, and she was signed as understudy to Ann Blyth, eventually doing the role of Babette on Broadway and in the touring production. In high school she wrote and directed school plays. She graduated from UCLA in 1949, having majored in English. While there, she was movie critic and feature writer for the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper.
Brown's IQ of 165 led to two years of work as one of the young panelists on the radio series Quiz Kids. She specialized in literature and language. In her adult years, she had an interview program on the Voice of America.
She was also heard on Lux Radio Theatre, Skippy Hollywood Theatre, NBC University Theatre, and Theatre Guild on the Air.
Brown was a junior member of the National Board of Review, the critical panel serving the motion picture industry. RKO Radio Pictures brought her family to Los Angeles, and Brown made her film debut (as Tessa Brind) in Youth Runs Wild (1944). RKO changed her screen name to Vanessa Brown and assigned her to a series of ingenue roles over the next few years. In the late 1940s she was featured in The Late George Apley (1947), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), playing Mrs. Muir's grown daughter Anna in a luminous performance that makes this perhaps the film's most moving scene, Big Jack (1949; Wallace Beery's last movie), The Heiress (1949) and other films. She was the eighth actress to play the role of Jane, appearing in Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950) opposite Lex Barker, followed by a role in Vincente Minnelli's acclaimed The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Her last film appearance was playing Millie Perkins's sister in the cult horror film The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976).
...
Wikipedia