Eve Arden

Eve Arden

Arden in 1976
Born Eunice Mary Quedens[1]
(1908-04-30)April 30, 1908[2]
Mill Valley, California, U.S.
Died November 12, 1990(1990-11-12) (aged 82)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death Colorectal cancer and heart disease
Resting place Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Nationality American
Education Tamalpais High School
Occupation Actress
Years active 1928–1987
Spouse(s) Ned Bergen (m. 1939–47)
Brooks West (m. 1952; his death 1984)
Children 4
Website Eve Arden official website

Eve Arden (April 30, 1908[2] – November 12, 1990)[3] was an American actress and comedienne. She performed in leading and supporting roles over nearly six decades. In the latter part of her career, she played the sardonic but engaging title character of a high school teacher in Our Miss Brooks (winning the first Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series), and the school principal in Grease and Grease 2.

Early life

Arden was born Eunice Mary Quedens in Mill Valley, California to Charles Peter Quedens, son of Charles Henry Augustus and Meta L. (née Dierks) Quedens, and Lucille (née Frank) Quedens, daughter of Bernard and Louisa (née Mertens) Frank, both of German descent. Lucille, a milliner, divorced Charles over his gambling, and went into business for herself. Although not Catholic, young Eunice was sent to a Dominican convent school near Modesto, and later attended Tamalpais High School, a public high school in Mill Valley until age 16. After leaving school, she joined a stock theater company.[4] She made her film debut under her real name in the backstage musical Song of Love (1929). She played a wisecracking showgirl who becomes a rival to the film's star, New York singer Belle Baker. The film was one of Columbia Pictures' earliest successes. Her Broadway debut came in 1934, when she was cast in that year's Ziegfeld Follies revue. This was the first role in which she was credited as Eve Arden. She adopted the name while shopping for cosmetics and coming across 'Evening In Paris' and Elizabeth Arden.

Career

Film

from Comrade X (1940)

Arden's film career began in earnest in 1937 when she appeared in the films Oh Doctor and Stage Door. Her Stage Door portrayal of a fast-talking, witty supporting character gained Arden considerable notice and was to be a template for many of Arden's future roles.[5][6]

Her many memorable screen roles include a supporting role as Joan Crawford's wise-cracking friend in Mildred Pierce (1945) for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and James Stewart's wistful secretary in Otto Preminger's murder mystery, Anatomy of a Murder (1959). (One of her co-stars in that film was husband Brooks West.) She also performed some acrobatics in the Marx Brothers film At the Circus (1939). In 1946, exhibitors voted her the sixth-most promising "star of tomorrow".[7]

Radio and television

Groucho Marx and Eve Arden in a scene from At the Circus (1939)

Arden's ability with witty scripts made her a natural talent for radio; she became a regular on Danny Kaye's short-lived but memorably zany comedy-variety show in 1946, which also featured swing bandleader Harry James and gravel-voiced character actor-comedian Lionel Stander.[8]

Kaye's show lasted one season, but Arden's display of comic talent and timing set the stage for her to be cast in her best-known role, Madison High School English teacher Connie Brooks in Our Miss Brooks. Arden portrayed the character on radio from 1948 to 1957, in a television version of the program from 1952 to 1956, and in a 1956 feature film. Arden's character clashed with the school's principal, Osgood Conklin (played by Gale Gordon), and nursed an unrequited crush on fellow teacher Philip Boynton (played originally by future film star Jeff Chandler, and later on radio, then on television, by Robert Rockwell). Except for Chandler, the entire radio cast of Arden, Gordon, Richard Crenna (Walter Denton), Robert Rockwell (Mr. Philip Boynton), Gloria McMillan (Harriet Conklin), and Jane Morgan (landlady Margaret Davis) played the same roles on television.[9]

Arden's portrayal of the character was so popular that she was made an honorary member of the National Education Association, received a 1952 award from the Teachers College of Connecticut's Alumni Association "for humanizing the American teacher", and even received teaching job offers.[3]

She won a listeners' poll by Radio Mirror magazine as the top-ranking comedienne of 1948–1949, receiving her award at the end of an Our Miss Brooks broadcast that March. "I'm certainly going to try in the coming months to merit the honor you've bestowed upon me, because I understand that if I win this (award) two years in a row, I get to keep Mr. Boynton," she joked. But she was also a hit with the critics; a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors taken by Motion Picture Daily named her the year's best radio comedienne.[10]

With the Armed Forces Radio Service, 1940s

Arden had a very brief guest appearance in a 1955 I Love Lucy episode entitled "Hollywood at Last" in which she played herself. While awaiting their food at The Brown Derby, Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) argue over whether a certain portrait on a nearby wall is Shelley Winters or Judy Holliday. Lucy urges Ethel to ask a lady occupying the next booth, who turns and replies, "Neither. That's Eve Arden." Ethel suddenly realizes she was just talking to Arden herself, who soon passes Lucy and Ethel's table to leave the restaurant while the pair gawk.[9]

Desilu Productions, jointly owned by Desi Arnaz and Ball during their marriage, was the production company for the Our Miss Brooks television show, which filmed during the same years as I Love Lucy. Ball and Arden became acquainted when they co-starred together in the film Stage Door in 1937. Ball, according to numerous radio historians, suggested Arden for Our Miss Brooks after Shirley Booth auditioned for but failed to land the role and Ball – committed at the time to My Favorite Husband – could not.[11]

Arden tried another series in the fall of 1957, The Eve Arden Show, but it was canceled in spring of 1958 after 26 episodes. In 1966, Arden played Nurse Kelton in an episode of Bewitched. She later co-starred with Kaye Ballard as her neighbor and in-law, Eve Hubbard, in the 1967–69 situation comedy The Mothers-in-Law, which was produced by Arnaz after the dissolution of Desilu Productions.[12]

Other credits

Arden was one of many actresses to take on the title roles in Hello, Dolly! and Auntie Mame in the 1960s; in 1967, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.[13] Arden was cast in 1983 as the leading lady in what was to be her Broadway comeback in Moose Murders, but she wisely withdrew (and was replaced with the much younger Holland Taylor) after one preview performance, citing "artistic differences". The show went on to open and close on the same night, becoming known as one of the most legendary flops in Broadway history.[14]

She became familiar to a new generation of film-goers when she played Principal McGee in both 1978's Grease and 1982's Grease 2, as well as making appearances on such television shows as Bewitched, Alice, Maude, Hart to Hart, and Falcon Crest. In 1985, she appeared as the wicked stepmother in the Faerie Tale Theatre production of Cinderella.[9]

Arden published an autobiography, The Three Phases of Eve, in 1985. In addition to her Academy Award nomination, Arden has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Radio and Television (see List of stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for addresses). She was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.[15]

Personal life

Arden was married to Ned Bergen from 1939-47, and to actor Brooks West (born Dudley Brooks West) from 1952 until his death in 1984 from a heart ailment, aged 67. She and West had four children, all of whom survived their parents.[5]

Death

On November 12, 1990, Arden died from cardiac arrest and arteriosclerotic heart disease, aged 82, at her home, according to her death certificate. Some sources also cite cancer as a cause of death but this is not included or even mentioned in the death certificate.[16] She is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Westwood, Los Angeles, California.[16]

Filmography

Features

Short subjects

Stage work

References

  1. ↑ Eve Arden birth name, highbeam.com; accessed September 3, 2015.
  2. 1 2 Census records from 1910 and 1920 (the earliest records found on Arden) as well as the Social Security Death Index (568-03-2856) support 1909 as her year of birth. However, her death certificate (#39019050699, County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk in the name of Eve Arden West), the California Death Registry, and her family crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery cite 1908. After her death, some sources initially cited 1907, giving her age as 83, but this is groundless. Arden gave her own year of birth as 1912 for many years.
  3. 1 2 Burt A. Folkart (November 13, 1990). "Eve Arden, 82; Portrayed TV's Beloved 'Our Miss Brooks'". Los Angeles Times. LAtimes.com. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  4. ↑ Tamalpais High School Alumni Directory (2002). Harris Publishing Co., p. 237; lists "Quedens, Eunice M.", Class of 1926.
  5. 1 2 Albin Krebs (November 13, 1990). "Eve Arden, Actress, Is Dead... TV's 'Our Miss Brooks'". New York Times. NYTimes.com. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  6. ↑ "Eve Arden". tcm.com. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  7. ↑ "The Stars of To-morrow.". Sydney Morning Morning Herald (NSW: 1842-1954). NSW: National Library of Australia. September 10, 1946. p. 11 Supplement: The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine. Retrieved April 24, 2012.
  8. ↑ "The Danny Kaye Show". The Digital Deli Too. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  9. 1 2 3 Eve Arden at the Internet Movie Database
  10. ↑ "Eve Arden, 82, dies; best known as 'Our Miss Brooks'". The Oregonian. Worthpoint. November 13, 1990. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  11. ↑ "Eve Arden as Connie Brooks". Ourmissbrooks.com. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  12. ↑ "Eve Arden profile (1908-1990)". Brian's Drive-in Theatre. February 15, 2011. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  13. ↑ "The Sarah Siddons Society Awardees". Sarah Siddons Society. 2010. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  14. ↑ Campbell Robertson (April 21, 2008). "A Broadway Flop Again Raises Its Antlers". New York Times. NYTimes.com. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Comedy: Eve Arden". Radio Hall of Fame. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  16. 1 2 Copy of death certificate, findadeath.cim; accessed October 21, 2016.

Further reading

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