Gloria Mildred DeHaven was born on July 23, 1925, and died on July 30, 2016.
She was an American actress and singer.
She was a contract star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Gloria DeHaven started her career as a child actor with a bit part in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936).
Gloria was signed to a contract with MGM. Despite featured roles in such films as Best Foot Forward (1943), The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), Scene of the Crime (1949) and Summer Stock (1950), and being voted by exhibitors as the third most likely to be a “star of tomorrow'” in 1944,[4] she did not achieve film stardom.
Gloria had played her own mother, Flora Parker DeHaven, in the Fred Astaire film Three Little Words (1950).
Following a long absence from the screen, DeHaven appeared as the love interest of Jack Lemmon in the 1997 comedy Out to Sea, also starring Walter Matthau.
Her musical talents supplemented her acting abilities.
Other than being cast as a singer in many of her films, including I’ll Get By, So This Is Paris and The Girl Rush, and performing numbers in many of her movies, DeHaven sang with the bands of Jan Savitt and Bob Crosby and at one time had her own nightclub act.
She also appeared as a regular in the television series and soap operas Ryan’s Hope (as Bess Shelby), As the World Turns (as Sara Fuller), and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Gloria was one of the numerous celebrities enticed to appear in the all-star box office flop, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and has guest starred in such television series as Robert Montgomery Presents, Appointment with Adventure (episode entitled “The Snow People”), The Guy Mitchell Show, Johnny Ringo (as Rosemary Blake in “Love Affair”), The Rifleman, Wagon Train, The Lloyd Bridges Show, Marcus Welby, M.D., Gunsmoke, Mannix, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, The Love Boat, Mama’s Family, Highway to Heaven, Murder, She Wrote and Touched by an Angel.
She appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, on March 21, 1974.
And later that year saw her debut as a regular in the cast of the short-lived ABC police drama Nakia.
She was married four times to three different men.
Actor John Payne, her first husband was star of The Restless Gun television series, whom she married on December 28, 1944, and divorced in 1950.
Martin Kimmel, her second husband was real estate developer; they were married June 21, 1953, and divorced the following year.
Gloria was married to Richard Fincher, son of a Miami Oldsmobile dealer, from 1957 until 1963; they remarried in 1965 and divorced again in 1969.
Gloria has two children with Payne, daughter, Kathleen Hope (born 1945), and son, Thomas John Payne (born 1947), and two children with Fincher, son, Harry (born 1958), and daughter, Faith (born 1962).
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Blvd.
She died in Las Vegas, one week after her 91st birthday.
Gloria DeHaven passed away at 91 years old.