Jean Parker
Actress Jean Parker died on Nov. 30 following a stroke. She was 90.
Parker is perhaps best remembered as one of the four sisters — Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, and Frances Dee were the other three (above, with Spring Byington’s Marmee) — in the George Cukor-directed 1933 version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Although never a major star, Parker’s film career lasted more than two decades.
Much information about Jean Parker’s early years differs according to the source. She was born either Lois Mae Green (as per an IMDb bio apparently written by her son) or Louise Stephanie Zelinska (as per the Associated Press obit) in either Deer Lodge or Butte, Montana, on most probably August 11, 1915 (though some sources say 1912). Her family moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena when she was six years old (or eight months old as per another report).
According to Hollywood lore, Parker was discovered by MGM honcho Louis B. Mayer’s secretary, Ida Koverman, who saw a picture of the pretty young woman with a heart-shaped face after the latter had won a prize at the local New Year’s Day Tournament of Roses Parade.
Parker landed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at the time the most prestigious and by far the most profitable of Hollywood studios. Her first two films for MGM were released in 1932: the big-budget Rasputin and the Empress, in which she has a small role opposite John, Ethel, and Lionel Barrymore, and the B-film Divorce in the Family.
At MGM (and elsewhere), Parker would be typecast as demure young things. In They Had Faces Then, author John Springer says the actress “seemed made to order for the most sentimental — sometimes maudlin — movie yarns.”
Most of her starring pictures for MGM were either programmers or quickies, with the exception of Sequoia (1934), a bucolic story that was quite popular with audiences the world over. In fact, the film was such a big hit (earning more than US$1 million in worldwide rentals, a remarkable sum at the time) that it was rereleased in the early 1950s. But her other films for the studio were mostly disappointments, including Lazy River (1934), Have a Heart (1934), and Murder in the Fleet (1935).
Parker had better luck elsewhere. Her two best-remembered films were made on loan-out to other studios in 1933: At RKO, Little Women (1933), as Beth, and at Columbia, Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day (1933), in which she plays the daughter of Apple Annie (May Robson), the homeless woman who poses as a grand-dame for one day. Both films received Academy Award nominations for best picture and best direction. (They lost in both categories to Frank Lloyd’s Cavalcade.)
After her MGM contract expired in the mid-1930s, Parker (who looked like a younger Jean Arthur) began to freelance. Things started well with The Ghost Goes West, made in England by René Clair, and in which she co-starred with Robert Donat. From then on, however, her film career suffered an inexorable downslide.
She began alternating between B-movies at major studios (e.g., The Flying Deuces at RKO, Hello, Annapolis at Columbia, and One Body Too Many at Paramount) and even cheaper productions made at smaller studios (e.g., Romance of the Limberlost at Monogram, She Married a Cop at Republic, and Lady in the Death House at Producers Releasing Corporation).
In the mid-1940s, she appeared on Broadway in Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert’s Loco, and in a revival of George Manker Watters and Arthur Hopkins‘ Burlesque, starring Bert Lahr.
Following a five-year hiatus, she returned to the big screen in one of her most prestigious films, Henry King’s downbeat Western The Gunfighter (1950), starring Gregory Peck (right). Around that time, she replaced Judy Holliday (who had taken over from Jean Arthur) in the original Broadway production of Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday. Parker could also be seen in several television shows.
Also in the early 1950s, she resumed her film career, appearing in several minor productions until calling it quits after The Parson and the Outlaw (1957), a B-Western starring Anthony Dexter as Billy the Kid.
She returned to the screen for only one more film, Apache Uprising (1966), one of the many B-Westerns featuring faded stars that producer A. C. Lyles made for Paramount in the mid-1960s. (Also in the Apache Uprising cast were Rory Calhoun, Corinne Calvet, Lon Chaney Jr., Richard Arlen, Johnny Mack Brown, and Don ‘Red’ Barry.)
Jean Parker’s four marriages ended in divorce. One of her husbands, Robert Lowery, was also and actor. (Lowery played Batman in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin.) The couple appeared together in regional theater productions, and also toured in a nightclub act. In the 1970s, Parker coached young actors, but in later years she became a recluse, refusing to be interviewed or to discuss her film past.
Since 1998, she had been living at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills.
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Tags: Classic Movies, Jean Parker, Joan Bennett, Katharine Hepburn, Lady for a Day, Little Women, May Robson, Sequoia, The Ghost Goes West, The Gunfighter
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