Dianne Foster obit

Actress Dianne Foster dies at 91. Co-starred with Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart,Dean Martin. TV & Film

 

She was not on the list.

Dianne Foster, a busy actress in film and television from the 1950s to the 1970s died yesterday at 91

Dianne Foster (born Olga Helen Laruska; October 31, 1928) is a Canadian actress of Ukrainian descent

Foster was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She began her career at the age of 13 in a stage adaptation of James Barrie’s What Every Woman Knows.In London in 1951, she appeared on stage in Agatha Christie’s The Hollow and Orson Welles’s Othello.

At 14 she began a radio career, subsequently moved to Toronto, and became one of Canada’s top radio stars, working with Andrew Allan, drama supervisor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on productions such as Stage ’49.[5]She appeared on Radio Luxembourg in a broadcast of The Lives of Harry Lime.

In March 1952, her husband returned to Canada while she stayed in London, England, to honor her five-year contract with a British film company.In 1953, she co-starred alongside Charlton Heston and Lizabeth Scott in the middling Bad for Each Other. In 1954, she was signed by Columbia Pictures and relocated to Hollywood, where her first appearance proper that year was with Mickey Rooney in Drive a Crooked Road .In 1955, Foster appeared on the cover of Picturegoer and co-starred in two films, Glenn Ford‘s The Violent Men and Burt Lancaster‘s The Kentuckian.

Although her film career continued, it was not on the same upward trajectory as before. In 1957 she co-starred in the biopic Monkey on My Back about boxer Barney Ross, Night Passage with James Stewart and The Brothers Rico with Richard Conte. In 1958, she starred with Alan Ladd in The Deep Six, and that same year she appeared alongside Jack Hawkins in Gideon of Scotland Yard before her last really big picture, The Last Hurrah .It featured an all-star cast that included Spencer Tracy, Pat O’Brien, and Basil Rathbone, and was nominated for a BAFTA award. In 1963, she made her last film appearance, in the Dean Martin vehicle Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?.

In 1960, Foster was the title guest star in the episode “Lawyer in Petticoats” on the short-lived NBC western series Overland Trail starring William Bendixand Doug McClure. Foster also appeared in 1960 in three other NBC westerns Bonanza (as Joyce Edwards in “The Mill”), Wagon Train (as Leslie Ivers in “Trial for Murder: Part 2”), and Riverboat (as Marian Templeton in “Path of the Eagle”) Also in 1960 she appeared in Have Gun Will TravelSeries 4, Episode 20.

There was a three-year absence before she next returned to the big screen in King of the Roaring 20’s – The Story of Arnold Rothstein. Gunsmoke season 7 episode 23 “Reprisal” Cornelia. Foster continued to appear in television programs, such as the Wild Wild Westepisode “The Night of the Lord of Limbo,” CBS‘s The Lloyd Bridges Show(1962–1963) and the ABC medical drama Breaking Point (1963–1964) and in The Fugitive. She guest starred in the ABC drama Going My Way, starring Gene Kelly. She made four guest appearances on Perry Mason between 1962 and 1965, and appeared in the “Caesar’s Wife” episode of The Big Valley in 1966.

In 1951, Foster married Andrew Allan, a drama supervisor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in London. In 1954, she married Joel A. Murcott, a Hollywood radio-television scriptwriter, in Owensboro, Kentucky.On February 14, 1956, she gave birth to twins: a son, Jason, and a daughter, Jodi. That same year she also filed for divorce from Murcott. She asked for custody and $1 in token alimony. The couple reconciled, but it proved to be temporary as they separated twice more before finally divorcing in 1959. After her divorce from Murcott she married Dr. Harold Rowe, a Van Nuys dentist. On November 14, 1963, her son, Dustin Louis Rowe, was born in Los Angeles.

Selected filmography

 

    The Quiet Woman (1951)

    The Steel Key (1953)

    Isn't Life Wonderful! (1953)

    Bad for Each Other (1953)

    Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

    The Bamboo Prison (1954)

    The Violent Men (1955)

    The Kentuckian (1955)

    Monkey on My Back (1957)

    Night Passage (1957)

    The Brothers Rico (1957)

    The Deep Six (1958)

    Gideon's Day (or Gideon of Scotland Yard) (1958)

    The Last Hurrah (1958)

    Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963)