Timelines for year 1947
Otto Kruger
Daughter Ottilie Kruger was a stage actress who performed with Marlon Brando on Broadway in the 1944 production of "I Remember Mama." She also appeared in two plays with her father -- "Little A" (1947) and "Time for Elizabeth" (1948). She died of pancreatic cancer on May 12, 2005, at age 78.
Dorothy Hart
She won (over 20,000 contestants) a movie contract at Columbia Studios when a newspaperman friend entered her picture in Columbia's "National Cover Girl" contest in 1944. Instead of taking the contract, she studied drama at the Cleveland Playhouse and in New York because she felt she "wasn't ready." A few years later, Columbia signed her and she made her debut in Gunfighters (1947) with Randolph Scott.
Elizabeth Short
Was last seen alive January 9, 1947, when she went to meet her sister at The Regal Biltmore Hotel (506 South Grand Avenue) in Los Angeles.
Patricia Morison
Had a very promising role in the classic Victor Mature/Richard Widmark crime thriller Kiss of Death (1947) as Mature's Italian wife who is raped and later commits suicide by putting her head in the kitchen gas oven. The censors cut her part out completely because they refused to allow a rape or suicide to be shown. Patricia's name still appears on the credits of the film.
Barbara Lawrence
In 1947 she was involved in an incident that seemed to foreshadow the stalking incidents that are so common today. While at the movies she was stabbed by an unknown assailant. The wound was so deep that she was treated at the Santa Monica Emergency Hospital. The assailant was never found.
Bart Burns
Bart Burns was born George Joseph Burns in New York City. To avoid confusion with comic George Burns, he took the name Bart when he began his acting career in 1947. During World War II, Burns was a Marine captain in the Pacific, where he was wounded twice. He won a Silver Star for leading a tank through a minefield to destroy a Japanese pillbox on Iwo Jima.
Claramae Turner
Participated in the first complete opera recorded by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1947. The opera, released that same year by Columbia Records, was Engelbert Humperdincks "Hansel und Gretel," sung in English translation. Singing the role of the Stepmother, she was joined by fellow Met luminaries Risë Stevens (Hansel), Nadine Conner (Gretel), Thelma Votipka (The Witch), and John Brownlee (The Father). Max Rudolf led the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus for this recording, which remained in print through the early 1980s.
Henry Hathaway
Directed 2 actors to Oscar nominations: Richard Widmark (Best Supporting Actor, Kiss of Death (1947)), and John Wayne (Best Actor, True Grit (1969)). Wayne won an Oscar for his performance.
Mary Pickford
Was to have made her big-screen comeback as Vinnie in Life with Father (1947), but the role eventually went to Irene Dunne because of Dunne's box-office appeal.
Jeanne Crain
Children with Paul Brooks: Paul F. Brinkman Jr. (b. 6 April 1947), Michael (b. 21 January 1949), Timothy (b. 2 August 1950), Jeanine (b. 5 March 1952), Lisabette (b. 21 November 1958), Maria (b. 10 January 1961), Christopher (b. 5 May 1965).
Gene Nelson
He can be seen as one of the anonymous studio executives in the trailer for the original 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street (1947),.
Andy Williams
His high baritone voice was used, along with his brothers, whenever Kay Thompson would do vocal arrangements at MGM. He can easily be heard in numbers featured in Good News (1947) (most notably in the "Ladies Man" number alongside Mel Tormé), The Harvey Girls (1946), and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946).
Richard Widmark
Unforgettable in his screen debut in Kiss of Death (1947) as Tommy Udo, a psychopathic mob hit-man, who giggles gleefully even as he shoves a wheelchair-bound old woman, portrayed by Mildred Dunnock, tumbling down a long stairway to her demise.