Ohio’s very own Eleanor Parker could easily go down in history as one of the more underrated actresses of her time. She started her career as a child actor in school plays, then went on to play a few iconic roles. Yet, history doesn’t seem to remember her nearly as much as many of her contemporaries and in my opinion, that’s a bloody shame.
Remembering the Career of Eleanor Parker
For as long as Eleanor Parker could remember, she wanted to be in the movies. The only problem was that she was born in Cedarville, Ohio (a short ways east of Dayton), and grew up in East Cleveland – neither place exactly known as a playground for movie producers looking for new starlets to put in their movies. So, she did what she could, acting in school productions and getting involved with community theater.
At the ripe old age of fifteen, she relocated to Martha’s Vineyard, to attend the prestigious Rice Summer Theater. While there, she grabbed the attention of a 20th Century Fox recruiter who tried to get her to do a screen test. This she refused, wanting to stay with theatrical acting. Instead, she returned to Cleveland and started attending Shaw High School.
After graduating high school, Eleanor decided that while being on the stage was nice, what she really wanted was to be in film. And, in order to do that, she needed to relocate to sunny California.
One night, while attending a show at the Pasadena Playhouse, Eleanor met Irving Kumin, who just happened to be a talent scout for Warner Bros. One screen test later, she was offered a contract which she happily accepted.
Eleanor’s first foray into the world of films didn’t exactly go as she would have hoped. She was offered a role in a film called They Died with Their Boots On, featuring some talented individuals such as Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. After all her scenes had been shot, the director made the decision to cut quite a few scenes, which included all of Eleanor Parker’s. Her name was removed from the title card.
Eleanor wasn’t going to give up on her dream that easily. She was next cast as a nurse in a short film called Soldiers in White. She did appear in several short films, either as an uncredited extra, or as a voice only actor, such as playing the telephone operator in Humphrey Bogart’s The Big Shot.
It wasn’t much – but at least she was making movies.
Over the next few years, she would be cast in several B Movies, usually playing supporting characters.
A historical note here: B-Movies were low budget commercial films, made to be entertaining, but were hardly crowd pleasers, and therefore not the kind of movies to attract well-known names. The reason they were called B-Movies was that they were often the second movie in a “double feature” set. Today, what we call B-Movies do share a bit in common with their 1940’s namesakes, although they tend to be more cheesy – and tend to go straight to whatever home media format is popular at the moment (DVD or BluRay, Streaming, etc.).
Eleanor Parker would finally get noticed when appearing as a lead in the 1846 version of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1946), replacing Ida Lupino who had been cast but was forced to drop out. At the time, people praised her acting, and later in life she would say this was her favorite of all the films she made. Unfortunately, because nothing in life can be that easy, the critics saw the film and even though they thought Eleanor was great, they commented that everything else was … meh.
That film did appear to be something of a turning point in Eleanor’s cinematic career, and in her general personality. She was finally getting the attention she craved as a serious actress which meant she was now being offered larger roles. But, perhaps her ego got in her way a time or two when she committed one of the unforgeable sins of Early Hollywood.
Not once, but twice, she was frozen out of future projects because she told Warner Bros no, turning down roles that they wanted to see her in. Movie studios took their contracts with actors very seriously and on the rare times someone turned down a role in a film, they were labeled as “hard to work with” or some other equivalent of “doesn’t work well with others” and the studio heads told producers not to allow them on set.
These breaks were short lived, however, as apparently, they still saw something in her. She hadn’t seen a massive success yet, but they hoped that film would be right around the corner.
During her two-year hiatus from film, she got married and had a child. When she was finally offered another role in the film The Hasty Heart (1941)it was a role that she felt would have been perfect for her, and she really wanted to do the film, yet she turned them down, again. Filming that movie would mean spending many months in London and she strongly felt that staying in California with hew newborn was a better idea.
The following year she was finally cast in a movie, this one alongside Humphrey Bogart, Chain Lightning. But, it would be her next film that would ultimately change her life for good.
When she heard that Warner Bros was about to make a film called Caged, about women in prison, she knew she was right for the job. She lobbied for the role, and with more than a little reluctance from Warner’s casting people, she got the job. She went to represent the film at the Venice Film Festival and ended up walking away with an award The Volpi Cup for Best Actress.
And then she was nominated for an Academy Award. In another year, she might have had a chance to win, but as she was going up against the likes of Bette Davis and Ann Baxter for All About Eve, Gloria Swanson as Nora Desmond in Sunset Blvd., she wasn’t likely to win. (Who did? Well, it was Jennifer Holliday for Born Yesterday. Seriously? I mean … How?)
As they say, it is an honor just to be nominated, and that was certainly reflected in her career.
The following year, she’d be nominated again for her role in Detective Story (1951), and several years after that for a film called Interrupted Melody (1955).
She was now three-time Academy Award for Best Actress loser, Eleanor Parker.
She continued to make movies, but it would be another decade before she did the role she was, perhaps, the most known for – The Baroness Elsa Schraeder, otherwise known as that bitch you really want to slap because how dare she stand in the way of true love especially when one of the players is Julie (BLEEP)ing Andrews. Then again, the object of their affections only had one love song in the entire show, which he decided to sing about an ugly white flower, so I guess there was that.
If you’ve been living under a rock and have no idea what film this is, it was of course The Sound of Music (1965). If you haven’t sat through the magical Julie Andrews version, I’m sure you’re trying to forget that horrible High School production of it you were forced to sit through because your niece or third cousin or some other relative was in.
She would go on to make a few more movies after that, but her stardom was starting to fade. Or, maybe it was because she stood in the way of Julie (BLEEP)ing Andrews, who knows. If “The Movies” didn’t want her, maybe there was a place for her on Television.
In Reality, the most likely culprit was Hollywood itself. The film studios were, after all, a money-making business and once a starlet was past her prime, she slowly was put out to pasture, as they say. Parker did have a small, but very loyal set of fans desperately waiting for her next picture.
However, the movies she appeared in weren’t of the highest quality. And many of her costars in those films were already past their prime, getting that dreadful moniker: Has-Been. Being that Parker was still one of the darlings that the gossip columns loved to follow (Dorothy Kilgallen was one of her favorites) it was hard to separate herself from her has-been co-stars and the decline in roles being offered was due to that.
She would appear in a few shows over the years, until in 1986 she fell victim to the Murder, She Wrote curse (or conspiracy theory). (Many actors would make their final … or nearly final acting appearance on the iconic Angela Lansbury’s show – making some people wonder if the show was cursed, or just simply unlucky enough to be the last acting credit for a wide array of actors and actresses. Or is this some kind of conspiracy they don’t want you to know…?
Eleanor Parker would never return to live in Ohio, but she was still seen as a hometown hero in both Cedarville and East Cleveland, where she also still had family and would make the occasional visit.
In 2003, her health started to deteriorate so she officially moved into a retirement community in Palm Springs, where she would stay until her death ten years later.
The Legacy of Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Parker had everything it took to be a great actress. She had the looks, and the talent – and she clearly had the ego to be a great actress. Perhaps it was that ego that ultimately held her back.
Before Parker’s time, the Studios were known to effectively own their talent as if the actors were but property of the companies. The studios invested (for lack of a better word) their resources in people who could, hopefully, make them some money. In the early days of cinema, audiences didn’t even know what the actor’s names were, no matter how much the general public raved about “the MGM girl” or “the vamp” – everyone knew who they were referring to.
Everything we knew about the actors and actresses was tightly controlled by the studios, even after we started to learn what all the players names were. The studios were known to go to great lengths to invent backstories or personalities for people to make them seem more appealing or relatable to the public. Or, to avoid scandal – which I assume was a complete nightmare for everybody since at that time career ending scandals could be as simple as getting divorced or being gay.
At some point, actors and actresses started to realize that they had a little power over the industry even if the studio heads didn’t always want to give that up. Some people learned how to play this game, and they played it well – ultimately achieving some level of iconic status that few at the time were getting.
Others, and I believe that Eleanor Parker fits into this perfectly, failed to read the room. There is no doubt that Parker was a gifted actress, however by not playing “the game” as well as her contemporaries, she never managed to achieve the level of stardom that she seemingly strove for. She apparently felt that she deserved it due to her acting ability, her looks, and her overall presence. If that’s all there was to it, I am sure she would have been on all the lists of the greats – but, she was missing something, or maybe a few things. Like, being relatable. Or feeling like she should be able to ask the studios for too much.
She may have had good reasons, beyond her ego, to turn down those roles from Warner Brothers, but I have to wonder if she did that a bit too early in her career, while she was still trying to establish herself, getting her face and name out there. For many other actors, doing this was the kiss of death – but considering that she (albeit barely) survived, perhaps it ended out working out in her favor after all.
Many of her contemporaries did achieve iconic status, something that Parker was assuredly striving for. Yet, while names like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford … Clark Gable and Humphry Bogart and Charlton Heston and so many others (most of whom she made films with) … it’s kind of a shame that her name isn’t nearly as recognized as the rest. Due to the hard work she put into her films – I’d say she had earned that, at least.
