|
Although she's best remembered for her turn as Suellen O'Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939), this feline blonde enjoyed a brief period of popularity while under contract to Columbia Pictures, where she played leading lady to Robert Montgomery in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and to Larry Parks in The Jolson Story (1946), two of the studio's biggest 1940s hits. A former nightclub dancer who wangled bit parts at Paramount (beginning with 1937's Artists and Models) before appearing in Wind Keyes signed with Columbia in 1940, apprenticing in a "Wild Bill" Elliott horse opera (Beyond the Sacramento) and a Boris Karloff thriller (Before I Hang) before making a third B, The Face Behind the Mask (1941), in which, cast as a blind girl who falls in love with disfigured gangster Peter Lorre, she delivered an earnest, genuinely touching performance that won her a shot at the big time.
Unfortunately, many of Keyes' vehicles were routine, and while her performances were consistently good, they couldn't lift the films themselves out of programmer class. She appeared in Ladies in Retirement (1941), Flight Lieutenant, Dangerous Blondes (both 1943), Nine Girls, Strange Affair (both 1944), A Thousand and One Nights (1945), The Thrill of Brazil (1946), Johnny O'Clock (1947), Enchantment, The Mating of Millie (both 1948), Mrs. Mike, Mr. Soft Touch (both 1949), and The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) before scouting around for roles outside Columbia. Joseph Losey's The Prowler (1951) was a good choice, but Keyes lost more ground (thanks to the likes of 1951's Smuggler's Island and Iron Man 1952's One Big Affair 1953's 99 River Street and 1954's Hell's Half Acre), finally taking a small supporting role in The Seven Year Itch (1955) before retiring. (Although she did take small roles in 1972's Across 110th Street 1987's Return to Salem's Lot and 1989's Wicked Stepmother)
By all accounts, Keyes' performances offscreen were more interesting than her movie exploits. Her first husband shot himself after their divorce. She then married director Charles Vidor, leaving him after two years for director John Huston, to whom she was married for four turbulent years. In the mid 1950s she lived with producer Mike Todd, and took a cameo in his Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). In 1957 she wed bandleader Artie Shaw. Much of her stormy private life was chronicled in her 1977 autobiography, "Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister."
|
