Jun 26, 1922

Cedarville, Ohio, USA

Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She attended the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts at the age of 15. She turned down two opportunities for screen-tests to gain additional experience before signing a contract with Warner Brothers.
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She was cast in one of Warner Brothers' biggest produ... ... (read more...) ctions for the 1943 season, the pro-Soviet Mission to Moscow (1943) directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Walter Huston as the U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. Eleanor played his daughter in the film, which became notorious in the McCarthy era for its glorification of "Uncle Joe" Stalin. The film proved significant to Eleanor as she met a future husband on the set, Navy Lieutenant. Fred L. Losse, Navy dentist. The marriage was a brief war-time affair, lasting from March 21, 1943, to December 5, 1944.
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In an Warner Brothers remake, she took over the role Bette Davis had made good in (ironically, at rival R.K.O.) in the 1946 remake Of Human Bondage. Though Parker would be gaining kudos and Oscar nominations by the beginning of the next decade, her portrayal in this film was weak in comparison with Davis' dynamic performance.
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Parker received the first of her three Best Actress Oscar nominations playing a prisoner in Caged (1950), for which she won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival. She was also nominated the next year playing the cop's wife who shared a secret with the neighborhood abortionist in William Wyler's Detective Story (1951). Her third and last Oscar nod came for Interrupted Melody (1955), playing an opera singer struck down by polio. She could easily have been nominated that same year for her role in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) adapted from the novel by Nelson Algren.
She received an Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy nomination in 1963 for her appearance in "The Eleventh Hour" (1962) episode "Why Am I Grown So Cold?" and a Golden Globe nomination in 1970 as Best Lead Actress for her role in the TV series "Bracken's World" (1969)
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Parker proved herself to be a supremely talented and very versatile lead actress. This versatility was likely one of the reasons why she never quite became a major star. She was focused on creating unique characters in each of her films and resisted being type cast.
She is probably best remembered as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965).