Anne Jeffreys obit

Anne Jeffreys, Glamorous Ghost of ’50s TV, Is Dead at 94

She was not on the list.

Anne Jeffreys, the sophisticated blond actress and singer who played a glamorous ghost in the 1950s television series “Topper,” died on Wednesday at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 94.

Her death was confirmed by her son Jeff Sterling.

“Topper,” seen on CBS from 1953 to 1955, was based on the 1937 film of the same name starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as a young couple, George and Marion Kerby, who die in an accident and come back to haunt their old house, now occupied by a stodgy banker, just for fun.

Ms. Jeffreys starred opposite her dapper real-life husband, Robert Sterling. The banker, Cosmo Topper (played in the movie and its sequels by Roland Young), was played by Leo G. Carroll.

Although the series lasted only two seasons, it was praised for its smart comedy, largely thanks to its stars as well as to the young man who wrote many of the first-season episodes: Stephen Sondheim.

Ms. Jeffreys’s television fame was preceded by a few busy years of moviemaking. She was in the musicals “I Married an Angel” (1942), with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, and “Step Lively” (1944), with Frank Sinatra. She played the virtuous Tess Trueheart in “Dick Tracy” (1945) and its 1946 sequel; the lady in red who led a criminal to his death in “Dillinger” (1945); and the newcomer Robert Mitchum’s girlfriend in “Nevada” (1944).

Low-budget westerns became a big part of her film career; in 1943 and 1944 she starred with Bill Elliott and Gabby Hayes in at least eight, including “Wagon Tracks West” and “Death Valley Manhunt.”

Between the movies and her television success, she appeared in four Broadway shows: “Street Scene” (1947), a musical drama by Elmer Rice, Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes; “My Romance” (1948), an operetta-style musical; “Kiss Me, Kate,” in which she replaced the original female lead, Patricia Morison, in 1950 as Lilli Vanessi, a tempestuous actress who finds herself cast opposite her ex-husband in a musical version of “The Taming of the Shrew”; and “Three Wishes for Jamie” (1952), a musical comedy that also starred John Raitt.

In her later years, Ms. Jeffreys reached new audiences with her work on the daytime soap opera “General Hospital” and its spinoff, “Port Charles.” Between 1984 and 2003, on both shows, she played Amanda Barrington, a society widow who — soap plots of the time tending toward the extreme — came under a vampire spell.

Annie Jeffreys Carmichael was born on Jan. 26, 1923, in Goldsboro, N.C., a small city 55 miles southeast of Raleigh, to Mack Carmichael and the former Kate Jeffreys. She attended Anderson College in South Carolina and planned an opera career.

She went to New York to work as an operatic soprano and as a model with the John Robert Powers agency. But with her mother’s guidance she quickly switched to the movie business, making her film debut in “Billy the Kid Trapped,” a 1942 western starring Buster Crabbe.

Ms. Jeffreys worked mostly onstage and on television in the 1950s. When she returned to feature films after almost 15 years, it was as Howard Duff’s suspicious wife in the racy-for-its-era Kim Novak comedy “Boys’ Night Out” (1962).

She continued working in television until she was 80, in guest roles, as a series regular on “Finder of Lost Loves” (1984-85) and in a recurring role as David Hasselhoff’s mother on “Baywatch” in the 1990s. She was back on the small screen one last time when she played a patient in a 2013 episode of “Getting On,” the dark HBO comedy series set in a hospital’s extended-care ward.

Ms. Jeffreys married twice. Her marriage to Joseph R. Serena in 1945 was annulled. She married Mr. Sterling in 1951; they had met that year when she was starring in “Kiss Me, Kate” at the Shubert Theater in New York and he was in “Gramercy Ghost” at the Morosco, a block away. He died in 2006.

In addition to her son Jeff, Ms. Jeffreys is survived by two other sons, Dana and Tyler; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

In a 1993 interview with The Toronto Star, Ms. Jeffreys attributed her career not to her own drive but to her mother’s.

“She heard me sing along with the phonograph when I was 6,” she said, “and I guess that started things.”

Film

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1942      Billy the Kid Trapped       Sally Crane         

Yokel Boy             Witness at wedding        Uncredited

Tarzan's New York Adventure     Young woman   Uncredited

Moonlight Masquerade                 Singer at Trio     Uncredited

I Married an Angel           Polly     

Joan of Ozark     Marie Lamont   

The Old Homestead        Goldie  

Flying Tigers       Nurse    Uncredited

X Marks the Spot              Lulu       

1943      Chatterbox         Vivan Gale          

Calling Wild Bill Elliott    Edith Richards   

The Man from Thunder River      Nancy Ferguson               

Crime Doctor     Reporter on telephone Uncredited

Bordertown Gun Fighters             Anita Shelby      

Wagon Tracks West         Moon Hush        

Overland Mail Robbery Judy Goodrich   

Death Valley Manhunt   Nicky Hobart     

1944      Mojave Firebrand            Gail Holmes       

Hidden Valley Outlaws   June Clark           

Step Lively           Miss Abbott       

Nevada                 Julie Dexter       

1945      Dillinger               Helen Rogers     

Zombies on Broadway    Jean La Danse   

Those Endearing Young Charms Suzibelle, officer's club waitress                

Sing Your Way Home      Kay Lawrence   

Dick Tracy            Tess Trueheart

1946      Ding Dong Williams         Vanessa Page    

Step by Step       Evelyn Smith     

Genius at Work Ellen Brent         

Dick Tracy vs. Cueball     Tess Trueheart

Vacation in Reno              Eleanor                

1947      Trail Street          Ruby Stone        

Riffraff Maxine Manning             

1948      Return of the Bad Men Cheyenne          

1962      Boys' Night Out                 Toni Jackson      

1968      Panic in the City                Myra Pryor         

1976      Southern Double Cross                 

1994      Clifford Annabelle Davis               

2008      Richard III            Duchess of York               

Empire State Building Murders   Betty Clark          TV movie

2012      Sins Expiation    Susanna              

2015      Le Grand Jete     Millie Halifax     

Television

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1953–1955          Topper Marion Kerby     78 episodes

1955      Dearest Enemy Betsy Burke        TV movie

1957      Wagon Train      Julia Gage            Episode: The Julia Gage Story

1957      Wagon Train      Mary Beckett     Episode: The Mary Beckett Story

1966      Bonanza               Lily         Episode: "The Unwritten Commandment"

1966      The Man from U.N.C.L.E.              Calamity Rogers                Episode: "The Abominable Snowman Affair"

1969      My Three Sons Mrs. Carstairs    Episode: What did you do today Grandpa

1972      Love, American Style      the First Lady     Segment "Love and the President"

Episode: "Love and the Clinic/Love and the Perfect Wedding/Love and the President/Love and the Return of Raymond"

1972–1973          The Delphi Bureau           Sybil Van Loween            

1975–1976          Police Story        Examiner Murphy / Marie Tabor                2 episodes

1978–1982          Fantasy Island    Nancy Ogden / Cissy Darumple / Sally Dupres      3 episodes

1978      Flying High          Mrs. Benton       Episode: "In the Still of the Night"

1979      Battlestar Galactica         Siress Blassie      Episode: "The Man with Nine Lives"

1979      Vega$    Cynthia                 Episode: "Doubtful Target"

1979      Beggarman, Thief             Honor Day           TV movie

1982–1983          Falcon Crest        Amanda Croft    7 episodes

1983      Matt Houston    Elisabeth Davis Episode: "Here's Another Fine Mess"

1984      Hotel     Mrs. Jenks           Episode: "Tomorrows"

1984–1985          Finder of Lost Loves        Rita Hargrove     23 episodes

1984–2004          General Hospital               Amanda Barrington         361 episodes

1986      Murder, She Wrote         Agnes Shipley    Episode: "If a Body Meet a Body"

1992      L.A. Law                Lilah Vandenberg             Episode: "I'm Ready for My Closeup, Mr. Markowitz"

1993–1998          Baywatch             Irene Buchannon              5 episodes

1999–2003          Port Charles        Amanda Barrington         17 episodes

2013      Getting On          Donna Hewler   Episode: "If You're Going to San Francisco"

Selected musical theatre work

    Street Scene (1947)

    Kiss Me, Kate (1949)

    Three Wishes for Jamie (1952)

    Bells Are Ringing (1958)

    Destry Rides Again (1960)

    Kismet (1962)

    Camelot (1963)

    Do I Hear a Waltz? (1966)

    Ninotchka (1966)

    Pal Joey (1968)

    The Desert Song (1968)

    Song of Norway (1969)

    The Most Happy Fella (1970)

    The King and I (1974)

    Follies (1977)

    High Button Shoes (1978)

    A High-Time Salute to Martin and Blane (1991 benefit concert)