On The Precipice of Stardom

Marsha Hunt (Marcia Virginia Hunt 1917-) is an American actress with a career spanning over seventy-five years. As of this writing, she is the oldest living and one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She is also the oldest living member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Unable to find a suitable college for her drama training, the Chicago-born native found work modeling for the John Powers Agency and began taking stage acting classes at the Theodora Irvine Studio. She was one of the highest-earning models by 1935. She appeared in popular films including Pride and Prejudice (1940), in which she was quite amusing, Cry 'Havoc' (1943), The Human Comedy (1943), and one of her last noted films before the advent of television was, Raw Deal (1948). Hunt's 1941 contract with MGM kept her busy for six years, providing strong supporting characters.

Television offered mostly dramatic guest-starring roles from the Fifties through the Eighties. She played everything from grandmas to judges. Notable early performances were for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, two anthology series, Climax! and Zane Grey Theater, and numerous, well-hidden roles on detective or drama series during the Sixties and Seventies. She was a cast member for the fourteen-episode, Peck's Bad Girl (1959). The versatile actress never found superstardom yet her longevity proved valuable to many casting directors. Semi-retiring in the early Sixties, television and the stage remained her focal points.

Reel Character Series

 

Adele Jergens (Adele Louisa Jurgens 1917-2002) was an American B-movie supporting actress. Her celebrity status as "Miss World's Fairest" at the 1939 New York World's Fair gained her a great deal of recognition before landing a movie contract in 1944 with Columbia Pictures in mostly forgettable films. The 5' 9” brunette was soon better known as a blonde and typically cast as a tough-talking second female lead as a girlfriend of a gangster or burlesque dancer. She was cast in the Franchot Tone film, I Love Trouble (1948) followed by similar roles that became her mainstay throughout the Fifties such as Armored Car Robbery, 1950 (above) and The Miami Story, 1954. The latter revealing a plump-cheeked puffiness. She failed to become a major star but made an impression with a host of conniving female roles. She was married to film and television actor Glenn Langan from 1949 until his death in 1991. Perhaps tiring of typecast roles, Jergens retired from acting in 1956.

Transition to Television

Karen Kay Sharpe (1934-) is a former actress of film and television, appearing on screen consistently from 1952 through 1966. The attractive Texas-born actress studied ballet and dancing as a child and was a model for magazine covers in her teens. By eighteen, she was cast in a small role for The Sniper, produced by her future husband, Stanley Kramer. Director William Wellman then cast Sharpe in the airline disaster classic, The High and the Mighty, for which she garnered a Golden Globe Award as "New Star of the Year—Actress." She appeared in two "man-titled" films back-to-back, The Man With a Gun (1955) with Robert Mitchum and a B-movie the following year opposite William Campbell, in The Man In The Vault. Before these films, she had already established herself on television by appearing on Racket Squad, Lux Video Theatre, Playhouse 90, General Electric Theater, and The Millionaire, and more. Her only recurring role was in the television western, Johnny Ringo, for eighteen episodes (1959-60). She got noticed on such popular shows as 77 Sunset Strip, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Dream of Jeannie, and The Wild Wild West. In between, she also was cast in the Jerry Lewis comedy, The Disorderly Orderly.

She is the third wife of producer/director Stanley Kramer. The two were married in 1966 with Sharpe soon leaving acting to devote full time to her family and serve as assistant to her husband in the film industry. After his death in 2001, she took her married name, Karen Kramer, as an executive producer for a number of video shorts and documentaries from 2005-2008.

Synopsis: Thrust Into Television

 

Patricia Blair (Patsy Lou Blake 1933-2013) commonly played a second female in the 1950s for Warner Brothers and later MGM studios. From there it was City of Fear (1959) and Cage of Evil (1960) playing a devoted girlfriend and temptress, respectively. She was a one-season love interest on television's The Rifleman and a main cast member as the wife of Daniel Boone in Fess Parker's series. Blair had a brief recurring role in the series Yancy Derringer. After retirement, the business-savvy actress produced industrial trade shows.