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Dig A Hole: Evelyn Keyes

July 12th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Evelyn Keyes & Van Heflin in Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (1951)

Evelyn Keyes, whose four tempestuous marriages and affairs with Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn and producer Michael Todd frequently eclipsed her acting career, died of uterine cancer at her home in Montecito on July 4. The news was withheld until a death certificate was issued. She was 91.

Professionally, Ms. Keyes was best known for playing Scarlett O’Hara’s sister Suellen in Gone With The Wind, but it was her marriages to Barton Bainbridge (1938 - 1940), director Charles Vidor (1943 - 1945), John Huston (1946 - 1950) and Artie Shaw (1957 - 1985) transformed her into the stuff gossip columns are made of.

“I have no roots,” she told The New York Times in 1977. ”I deliberately set out to destroy them, and I did. If there’s any such thing as a hometown for me, it’s Hollywood. I was formed here as an adult.”

Ms. Keyes was born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1916, and later moved to Atlanta where she grew up fatherless and poor. A striking blonde with a comely figure, she began her career dancing in nightclubs and set her sites on Hollywood at the tender age of 17.

In 1999, Keyes told an interviewer, “To become a big movie star like Joan Crawford you need to wear blinders and pay single-minded attention to your career. Nobody paid attention to me, including me. I was the original Cinderella girl, looking for the happy ending in the fairy story. But my fantasy prince never came.”

She was discovered by Cecil B. DeMille who signed her to a seven-year contract and cast her in his 1938 pirate epic The Buccaneer. She appeared in five bit roles for Paramount and a featured part in DeMille’s Union Pacific before gaining Hollywood immortality as Scarlett’s younger sister in Gone With the Wind.

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Filed Under Obituaries

Loni Anderson gets married for the fourth time!

May 18th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Loni Anderson auditioning for the role of The Joker

What do you think of when former WKRP in Cincinnati star Loni Anderson is mentioned? Big boobs, bigger hair, a doomed marriage to Burt Reynolds and her uncanny ability to mangle any dialog put before her.

A former girlfriend who found the same contemptuous delight in the Mamie Van Doren wannabe that I do in Bob Hope hipped me to Loni’s supreme mediocrity. While I’ve successfully avoided dipping into WKRP, her made-for-TV movies never fail to please.

Loni blames mom for pointing her in the direction of Burt Reynolds. When she was a teenager, her mother was very struck by an attractive actor on TV and told Loni that was the kind of guy she ought to wed. Her calamitous seven year marriage to the actor was a plastic surgeon’s dream.

The two met during the filming of Stroker Ace, arguably the worst entry in Reynolds’ s**t-kicking series of 70s and 80s hillbilly comedies.

According to Reynolds, he never saw his vain wife out of makeup. After their ugly divorce, Reynold noted “I’m paying the third highest alimony and child support in the world. And the only two ahead of me are sheiks.”

Last night, the 62-year-old former pin-up queen exchanged vows with The Brothers Four singer Bob Flick. The bride was given away by her son Quinton Reynolds, spawn of Burt.

Loni and Bob originally dated for six months when Anderson was a teenage model, but they split and went their separate ways as her acting career took off.

It is the fourth marriage for Anderson, who has decided to keep her maiden name. She had previously been wed to Ross Bickell (no relation to Travis) and Bruce Hasselbeck (no relation to The View’s Republican harpy Elizabeth.)

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