One of Hollywood's great beauties, Gene Tierney had an elegant yet sexy manner on screen that suggested a blue flame: cool to the eye but hot to the touch. She appeared in 36 films, starring in most of them and making her best during the mid- to late 1940s. The one film for which she is best remembered is Laura (1944), in which she played the title role.
Gene Tierney was the daughter of a well-to-do Wall Street trader who, when she decided to become an actress, fully supported her and even formed a corporation called Belle-Tier that was designed solely to push her career. By 1939 Gene Tierney was on Broadway, and when she appeared on stage in The Male Animal the next year, DARRYL F. ZANUCK was in the audience. He saw her screen potential and signed her to a contract. That same year she made her movie debut in The Return of Frank James (1940).
Gene Tierney was given the star treatment very early on. She played Ellie May in Tobacco Road (1941), she was Belle in Belle Star (1941), and she was the female lead in ERNST LUBITSCH's Heaven Can Wait (1943), but it was Laura that hurled her into the Hollywood firmament of stars.
In this romantic suspense movie directed by OTTO PREMINGER, a detective (played by Dana Andrews) falls in love with a portrait of Laura (Gene Tierney), thinking that the beautiful woman in the picture has been murdered. When she suddenly appears, alive and well, the two are drawn together while a thwarted murderer (Clifton Webb) continues his efforts to kill her.
The movie was a smash hit and has since become a classic. Gene Tierney has been so associated with Laura that one tends to forget that she garnered an Oscar nomination for Leave Her to Heaven (1945), gave an achingly tender performance in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), and was excellent in Whirlpool (1949).
Most of her other films in the late 1940s and early 1950s were ordinary, unmemorable entries such as The Iron Curtain (1948), Night and the City (1950), The Mating Season (1951), and Plymouth Adventure (1952).
Gene Tierney's personal life was far more dramatic than many of her later movies. She had dated John F. Kennedy before he entered politics, married fashion designer Oleg Cassini in 1941, and, after their divorce in 1952, became deeply involved with Aly Khan, the ex-husband of RITA HAYWORTH. When that affair ended, she went into a severe emotional tailspin, spending 18 months in a sanitarium.
Later, in 1960, Gene Tierney married an ex-husband of HEDY LAMARR and settled in Texas. After remarrying, she made a few appearances in movies such as Advise and Consent (1962) and Toys in the Attic (1963). One can glimpse her final appearance on film in The Pleasure Seekers (1964).
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