Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
She was raised by her mother, Betty Horn Myers
(1916-2011), a fashion model. Her father, Joseph Blacker, was an accountant.
The name "Louise" was supposedly added during her senior year in high
school when she mentioned to her drama teacher that she was the only girl in
the class without a middle name. He immediately picked the name
"Louise" and it stuck. She attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. At the age of 17, Louise began studying acting,
singing and dancing. During her early acting years, she was offered modeling
jobs and appeared on the cover of several pinup magazines such as Adam, Sir!
and Modern Man. Her later pictorials for Playboy (May 1958, April 1959) were arranged by Columbia Pictures
studio in an effort to further promote the young actress. Her acting debut came
in 1952 in the Bette Davis musical revue Two's
Company, followed by roles in
other Broadway productions, such as John Murray Anderson's Almanac, The Fifth Season, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? She also appeared in such early live television
dramas as Studio
One, Producers'
Showcase, and Appointment
with Adventure.
In 1957, she and Julie Newmar appeared on Broadway in the hit musical Li'l Abner. Her album It's Time for Tina was also
released that year, with songs such as "Embraceable You" and "I'm
in the Mood for Love".
Louise made her Hollywood film debut in 1958 in God's
Little Acre. That same year the
National Art Council named her the "World's Most Beautiful Red Head."
She became an in-demand leading lady for major stars like Robert
Taylor, Richard Widmark and Robert Ryan, often playing somber roles quite unlike the
glamorous pinup photographs and Playboy pictorials she had become famous for in the late
1950s. She turned down roles in Li'l
Abner and Operation
Petticoat taking roles on
Broadway and in Italian
cinema and Hollywood. Among her more notable Italian film credits was the
historical epic Garibaldi (1960), directed by Roberto
Rossellini, that concerned
Garibaldi's efforts to unify the Italian states in 1860. When Louise returned
to the United States, she began studying with Lee Strasberg and eventually became a member of the Actors Studio. She appeared in the 1964 beach party film For Those Who Think Young, with Bob Denver, prior to the development of Gilligan's Island.
In 1964, she left the Broadway musical Fade
Out – Fade In to portray movie
star Ginger
Grant on the situation comedy Gilligan's Island, after the part was turned
down by Jayne
Mansfield. However, she was unhappy
with the role and worried that it would typecast her. The role did make Louise a pop icon of the era, and in 2005 an episode of TV Land Top
Ten ranked her as second only to Heather Locklear as the greatest of television's all-time sex symbols.
After the series ended in 1967, Louise continued to
work in film and made numerous guest appearances in various television series.
She appeared in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Wrecking Crew
(1969) with Dean Martin. Louise played a doomed suburban housewife in the
original The Stepford Wives
(1975), and both the film and her performance were well received.
She attempted to shed her comedic image by essaying
grittier roles, including a guest appearance as a pathetic heroin addict in a
1974 Kojak episode, as well as a co-starring role as an evil
Southern prison guard in the 1976 ABC
TV Movie Nightmare
in Badham County. Her other
television films of the period included Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976), SST: Death Flight (1977), Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979),
and in the prime-time soap opera Dallas, during the 1978-79 seasons. as J.R.'s secretary,
Julie Gray, a semi-regular character.
The question "Ginger
or Mary Ann?" is regarded to be
a classic pop-psychological question when given to American men of a certain age as an insight into their
characters, or at least their desires as regarding certain female stereotypes.
Despite successes on her own, she declined to
participate in any of three reunion television films for Gilligan's Island
and the role of Ginger was recast with Judith Baldwin and Constance
Forslund. Although she did not appear
in these television movies, she made brief walk-on appearances on a few talk
shows and specials for Gilligan's Island reunions, including Good
Morning America (1982), The Late Show
(1988) and the 2004 TV Land award show with the other surviving cast members.
In the 1990s, she was reunited with costars Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, and Russell Johnson in an episode of Roseanne. She did not reunite with them for the television
film Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredible True Story of the Longest
Three-Hour Tour in History (2001), co-produced by Wells. She was portrayed
by Kristen
Dalton in the television film. Her
relations with series star Denver were rumored to be strained, but in 2005, she
wrote a brief, affectionate memorial to him in the year-end
"farewell" issue of Entertainment
Weekly.
In 1985, Louise played the second and final Taylor
Chapin on the syndicated soap opera Rituals. Later film roles included a co-starring appearance
in the Robert
Altman comedy O.C. and Stiggs (1987) as well as the independently made satire Johnny Suede (1992) starring Brad Pitt. She appeared in Married...
with Children as Miss Beck in
episode Kelly Bounces Back (1990).
From 1966 to 1974, Louise was married to radio and TV
announcer/interviewer Les Crane, with whom she has one daughter, Caprice Crane (born 1974), who became an MTV producer and a
novelist. Crane's first novel, Stupid and Contagious, was published in
2006, and was warmly dedicated to her mother. Louise now resides in New York
City. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a
lifetime member of the Actors Studio. As a literacy and academic advocate, she
became a volunteer teacher at Learning Leaders, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing
tutoring to New York City school children. It has been her passion to help
young students gain not only literary skills, but also confidence,
self-determination and proof of their own potential. She has written two books:
Sunday: A Memoir (1997) and When I Grow Up (2007). The latter is
a children's book that inspires children to believe they can become whatever
they choose through creative and humorous comparisons of animal kingdom
achievements. She published a second children's book named "What Does A
Bee Do?".
Louise made four record albums, two for Concert Hall,
and two for Urania Record (1958 and 1959 respectively). By far the most
sought-after of these is the 1957 album It's Time For Tina (Concert Hall
1521). With arrangements by Jim Timmens and Buddy Weed's Orchestra, 12 tracks
include "Tonight Is The Night" and "I'm
in the Mood for Love". Coleman
Hawkins is featured on tenor sax. A version of this album is planned by UK
label Harkit Records.
To
quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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