Kathleen Freeman
| Kathleen Freeman | |
|---|---|
Kathleen Freeman in the late 1960s
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|
| Born |
February 17, 1919 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | August 23, 2001 (aged 82) New York, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Lung cancer |
| Resting place | Hollywood Forever Cemetery |
| Occupation | Actress, voice artist |
| Years active | 1948–2001 |
| Partner(s) | Helen Ramsey (19??-2001) |
Kathleen Freeman (February 17, 1919 – August 23, 2001) was an American film, television, voice actress, and stage actress. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, she portrayed acerbic maids, secretaries, teachers, busybodies, nurses, and battle-axe neighbors and relatives, almost invariably to comic effect.
Freeman was born in Chicago, Illinois. She began her career as a child, dancing in her parents' vaudeville act. After a stint studying music at University of California, Los Angeles, she went into acting full-time, working on the stage, and finally entering films in 1948. She was a founding member, in 1946, of the Circle Players at The Circle Theatre, now known as El Centro Theatre.
Freeman made her film debut in Wild Harvest (1947). Freeman's most notable early role was an uncredited part in the 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain, as Jean Hagen's diction coach, Phoebe Dinsmore.
Beginning with the 1954 film 3 Ring Circus, Freeman became a favorite foil of Jerry Lewis, playing opposite him in 11 films. These included most of Lewis's better known comedies, including The Disorderly Orderly as Nurse Higgins, The Errand Boy as the studio boss's wife, and especially The Nutty Professor as Millie Lemon. Over 30 years later, she made a small cameo appearance in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.
Other film roles included appearances in The Missouri Traveler (1958), the horror film The Fly (1958), the Western spoofs Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), and appearances in a spate of comedies in the 1980s and 1990s. Freeman played Sister Mary Stigmata (referred to as The Penguin) in John Landis' The Blues Brothers and Blues Brothers 2000, had cameos in Joe Dante's Innerspace and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (as tipsy cooking host Microwave Marge in 2), and a Ma Barker type gangster mother in Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult.
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