Audrey Long, Film Noir Star of the 1940s, Dies at 92
She was not on the list.
She starred in 'Desperate' and 'Born to Kill,' then married
Leslie Charteris, author of The Saint adventure books
Audrey Long, who starred opposite John Wayne in the 1944
Western Tall in the Saddle and in a pair of film noir favorites directed by
Anthony Mann and Robert Wise three years later, has died. She was 92.
Long, who was married to Leslie Charteris, the author of The
Saint adventure books, from 1952 until his death in 1993, died Sept. 19 in
Virginia Water, Surrey, England, after a long illness, according to Ian
Dickerson of the website LeslieCharteris.com.
With her husband (played by Steve Brodie), Long's character
fled from the cops and a crook (Raymond Burr) in Mann’s 1947 crime thriller
Desperate. Also in May of that year, she was seen in theaters as the rich San
Francisco sister of Claire Trevor who is fooled into marrying the evil and
duplicitous character played by Lawrence Tierney in Born to Kill, directed by
Wise.
The hazel-eyed Long also appeared in Yankee Doodle Dandy
(1942), Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1944), Wise’s A Game of Death (1945),
Pan-Americana (1945), Perilous Holiday (1946), The Adventures of Gallant Bess
(1948), Song of My Heart (1948), Post Office Investigator (1949), Insurance
Investigator (1951) and Indian Uprising (1952) before she retired from acting.
Long was a native of Orlando; her father, a U.S. Navy
chaplain, moved his family around the country. Eventually, she graduated from
high school in Los Gatos, Calif., and received a scholarship to Max Reinhardt’s
drama school in Hollywood.
While still a teenager, she was signed by Warner Bros. and
made her screen debut in an uncredited role in The Male Animal (1942), starring
Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland.
She had a small role on Broadway in 1943 opposite Stella
Adler and Gregory Peck in Sons and Soldiers and then signed a movie contract
with RKO, for which she appeared in A Night of Adventure (1944) alongside Tom
Conway, who would later play Simon Templar — aka The Saint — on an NBC Radio
series.
Roger Moore famously starred as the sophisticated “modern-day
Robin Hood” in an ITV series in the 1960s; George Sanders (Conway's brother)
played the Saint in several movies in the 1930s and ’40s; and Val Kilmer
portrayed Templar in a 1997 film directed by Phillip Noyce.
Survivors include a daughter and three grandchildren.
Filmography
The Male Animal
(1942) - Student
Yankee Doodle
Dandy (1942) - Dietz and Goff's receptionist (uncredited)
Eagle Squadron
(1942) - Nurse
Pardon My Sarong
(1942) - Girl on bus with Tommy (uncredited)
The Great
Impersonation (1942) - Anna (uncredited)
A Night of
Adventure (1944) - Erica Drake Latham
Tall in the Saddle
(1944) - Clara Cardell
Pan-Americana
(1945) - Jo Anne Benson
Wanderer of the
Wasteland (1945) - Jeanie Collinshaw
The Lost Weekend
(1945) - Cloakroom attendant (uncredited)
A Game of Death
(1945) - Ellen Trowbridge
Perilous Holiday
(1946) - Audrey Latham
Born to Kill
(1947) - Georgia Staples
Desperate (1947) -
Mrs. Anne Randall
Adventures of
Gallant Bess (1948) - Penny Gray
Song of My Heart
(1948) - Princess Amalya
Perilous Waters
(1948) - Judy Gage
Stage Struck
(1948) - Nancy Howard
Miraculous Journey
(1948) - Mary
Homicide for Three
(1948) - Iris Duluth aka Mona Crawford
Duke of Chicago
(1949) - Jane Cunningham
Air Hostess (1949)
- Lorraine Carter
Post Office
Investigator (1949) - Clara Kelso
Alias the Champ
(1949) - Lorraine Connors
Trial Without Jury
(1950) - Myra Peters
David Harding,
Counterspy (1950) - Betty Iverson
The Petty Girl
(1950) - Mrs. Connie Manton Dezlow
Blue Blood (1951)
- Sue Buchanan
Insurance
Investigator (1951) - Nancy Sullivan
Cavalry Scout
(1951) - Claire Conville
Sunny Side of the
Street (1951) - Gloria Pelley
The Bigelow
Theatre (1951; television series)
Indian Uprising
(1952) - Norma Clemson (final film role)
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