On what would have been her birthday today, my research threw up a few things I never knew about the lovely Carolyn Jones, most famous for her role as Morticia in The Addams Family.
For example, she has the distinction of giving the shortest film performance ever nominated for an Academy Award, for her six-minute role in Bachelor Party (1957). She also appeared in The Tender Trap with Frank Sinatra, and The Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe, and alongside Elvis Presley and Walter Matthau in King Creole.
I also never knew she was married to media mogul Aaron Spelling. They divorced in 1964.
According to press reports Carolyn Jones was one-eighth Native American, and she was a descendant of the famous Apache chief Geronimo In actual fact she was born in humble beginnings in Texas. Her parents had a troubled marriage, and her father, Julius Alfred Jones, abandoned the family in 1934. Many years later, Caroline received a telephone message from a man claiming to be him. She refused, however, to return the call.
She suffered from colon cancer, which she hid from her colleagues (as she always wore a wig to cover the fact that she was naturally blonde this probably wasn't difficult), carrying on working by day and receiving chemotherapy by night. But the cancer spread, and she died in 1983.
A remarkable woman...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a message - I value your comments!
[NB Bear with me if there is a delay - thanks to spammers I might need to approve comments]