Audrey Totter
| Audrey Totter | |
|---|---|
in Yank, The Army Weekly (1945)
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| Born |
Audrey Mary Totter December 20, 1917 Joliet, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | December 12, 2013 (aged 95) Woodland Hills, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Stroke |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1935–1987 |
| Spouse(s) | Leo Fred (m. 1953–95) (his death); 1 child |
| Children | Mea Lane |
Audrey Mary Totter (December 20, 1917 – December 12, 2013) was an American actress and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player.
Audrey (some sources indicate "Audra") Totter was born in 1917 and reared in Joliet in Will County in northeastern Illinois. Her parents were John Totter (born in Slovenia with birth name Janez) and Ida Mae Totter. Her father was of Austro-Slovenian descent and her mother was Swedish American. She had two brothers, Folger and George, and a sister, Collette.
Totter graduated from Joliet High School, where she "acted in a number of school dramas."
Totter began her acting career in radio in the latter 1930s in Chicago, only forty miles northeast of Joliet. She played in soap operas, including Painted Dreams, Road of Life, Ma Perkins, and Bright Horizon.
Following success in Chicago and New York City, Totter was signed to a seven-year film contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She made her film debut in Main Street After Dark (1945) and established herself as a popular female lead in the 1940s. Although she appeared in various film genres, she became most widely known to movie audiences in film noir productions.
Among her successes were:
By the early 1950s, the tough-talking "dames" she was best known for portraying were no longer fashionable, and as MGM began streamlining its roster of contract players and worked towards creating more family-themed films, Totter was released from her contract. She reportedly was dissatisfied with her MGM career and agreed to appear in Any Number Can Play only after Clark Gable intervened. After leaving MGM, she worked for Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox, but the quality of her films dropped, and by the late 1950s, her film career was in decline, though she continued to work steadily for television.
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