Jeff Donnell Pics

Jeff

Donnell

10 July 1921

South Windham, Maine

Cancer

11 April 1988

Hollywood, California

Heart Attack

Marie

67

Slim

Brown - Dark

Brown - Dark

White

American

Female

Jeff Donnell (July 10, 1921 — April 11, 1988) was an American film and television actress. Born Jean Marie Donnell, she grew up in South Windham, Maine. As a child, she adopted the nickname "Jeff" after the character in her favorite comic strip, Mutt and Jeff.

Featured player and occasional co-star Jeff Donnell was born Jean Marie Donnell in a boy`s reformatory in South Windham, Maine in 1921, her father a penologist and mother a schoolteacher. It was during her upbringing at the all-male reformatory that she gave herself the nickname "Jeff." She met her first husband, a drama teacher from her Boston alma mater, Leland Powers Drama School, and married him at the age of 19. Together they started the Farragut Playhouse in Rye, New Hampshire, and almost immediately she was noticed in a play there by a Columbia Studios talent scout and signed. Whisked to Los Angeles, she appeared in her first war-era movie, My Sister Eileen (1942) and her husband was hired as a dialogue director. Hardly the chic, glamour girl type, Jeff possessed a perky, unpretentious charm and demeanor that fit comfortably as an occasional light love interest or sidekick in mostly unchallenging "B" escapism. Typical of her movie load were the innocuous What`s Buzzin, Cousin? (1943), A Thousand and One Nights (1944), Carolina Blues (1944) and Eadie Was a Lady (1945). She also enlivened a number of musical westerns that featured Ken ("Gunsmoke") Curtis. In the few "A" films she appeared in, more than not she was the obliging or supportive friend of the leading lady. Jeff later moved to RKO Studios but fared no better and found herself in progressively inferior material. She made a successful move to TV in the early 50s and was seen in a number of comedy and dramatic parts. Divorcing her first husband in 1952, she married actor Aldo Ray, who was a up-and-rising film star at the time, in 1954 but the marriage crumbled within two years, beset by drinking problems. Jeff would marry and divorce two more times. As the 50s rolled on she earned steady work on TV bringing to life comedian George Gobel`s often-mentioned wife Alice on the sitcom "The George Gobel Show" for four seasons. She also got to play Gidget`s mom in a couple of lightweight movies. Most fans, however, will remember Jeff`s long-running stint on "General Hospital as Stella Fields, a Quartermain housekeeper, which started in 1979 and lasted until her death in 1988. Dogged by ill health in later years, Jeff died peacefully of a heart attack in her sleep at age 66.

Jean Marie Donnell

Actor/Actress, Soundtrack

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