EVE ARDEN

'Eve Arden' (April 30 1908 – November 12 1990) was an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning American actress, who established a lengthy career as a supporting and character actor rather than as a lead actress due, in large part, to the fact, that while tall and slim, she was not a beauty. Her work in film, television, and theatre, and especially her expertise at delivering sharp, wry lines never concealed her warmth as a person and as a performer, which made her among the most fondly remembered actresses of her era.
She is best remembered for playing the sardonic but engaging high school teacher in the classic ''Our Miss Brooks'' (radio and television), and as the sardonic high school principal in the films ''Grease'' and ''Grease 2''.

Contents

Early life and career

Career

Film

Radio and television

Other credits

Personal life and death

Filmography

Trivia

Notes

External links

Early life and career

Arden was born 'Eunice Quedens' (pronounced kwuh-DENZ) in Mill Valley, California to Lucille and Charles Peter Quedens. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Arden said that she was an insecure child, declaring later in life that she needed therapy because her mother was so much more beautiful than she.
At 16, Arden left Tamalpais High School^[1] and joined a stock theater company. She made her film debut, under her real name, in the backstage musical ''Song of Love''. She plays a wisecracking showgirl who becomes a rival to the film's star, singer Belle Baker. The film was one of Columbia Pictures' earliest successes.
Eve Arden's Broadway debut came in 1934, when she was cast in that year's ''Ziegfeld Follies'' revue.

Career

Film

Her film career began in earnest in 1937 when she appeared in the films ''Oh Doctor'' and ''Stage Door''. Her performance in ''Stage Door'', where she portrayed a fast-talking, witty supporting character, gained Arden considerable notice and was to be a template for many of Arden's future roles.
Her many memorable screen roles include a supporting role as Joan Crawford's wise-cracking pal in 1945's ''Mildred Pierce'' (for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress), and James Stewart's wistful secretary in Otto Preminger's then-explicit murder mystery, ''Anatomy of a Murder'' (1959). (One of her co-stars in that film was husband Brooks West.) She also performed some acrobatics while trying to steal a wallet from Groucho Marx in the Marx Brothers film ''At the Circus'' (1939).

Radio and television

Arden's quick wit made her a natural talent for radio; she became a regular on Danny Kaye's short-lived but memorably zany comedy-variety show in 1946, which also featured swing bandleader Harry James and gravel-voiced character actor-comedian Lionel Stander.
Kaye's show lasted one season, but Arden's display of comic talent and timing set the stage for her to be cast in the role for which she is best known, as Madison High School English teacher Connie Brooks in ''Our Miss Brooks.'' Arden portrayed the character on radio from 1948 to 1957, as well as in a television version of the program, which ran from 1952 to 1956. (She would also portray the character in a feature film.) Arden's character clashed with the school's principal, Osgood Conklin (played by Gale Gordon), and nursed an unrequited crush on fellow teacher Philip Boynton (played originally by future film star Jeff Chandler and later in the series by Robert Rockwell).
Arden's portrayal of the character was so popular that she was made an honorary member of the National Education Association, received a 1952 award from the Teachers College of Connecticut's Alumni Association "for humanizing the American teacher," and even received teaching job offers.
Arden won a radio listeners' poll by ''Radio Mirror'' magazine as the top ranking comedienne of 1948-1949, receiving her award at the end of an ''Our Miss Brooks'' broadcast that March. "I'm certainly going to try in the coming months to merit the honor you've bestowed upon me, because I understand that if I win this (award) two years in a row, I get to keep Mr. Boynton," she joked. But she was also a hit with the critics; a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors taken by ''Motion Picture Daily'' named her the year's best radio comedienne.
Arden tried another series in 1957 with the eponymous ''The Eve Arden Show,'' but it was cancelled after only a few episodes.
Arden also co-starred with Kaye Ballard in the 1967-1969 situation comedy ''The Mothers-in-Law,'' which was produced by her old friend Desi Arnaz after the dissolution of Desilu. A few years afterward,
she made a new sitcom pilot co-starring Don Knotts, but it failed to attract a network buyer.

Other credits

She was one of many stars to take on the title roles in ''Hello, Dolly!'' and ''Auntie Mame'' in the 1960s; in 1967, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.
She became familiar to a new generation of film-goers when she played harassed Principal McGee in both 1978's ''Grease'' and 1982's ''Grease 2'', as well as making appearances on such television shows as ''Alice'' and ''Falcon Crest''. In 1985 she appeared as the wicked stepmother in the ''Faerie Tale Theatre'' production of ''Cinderella''.
Arden published her biography, ''The Three Phases of Eve'', in 1985. It is notable for its discretion in regard to Arden's many co-stars, and her loyalty to the Hollywood studio system that nurtured her career.
In addition to her Academy Award nomination, Arden also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6714 Hollywood Boulevard. She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

Personal life and death

She was married to Ned Bergen from 1939 to 1947, and to actor Brooks West from 1952 until his death in 1984 from a heart ailment. She and West had four children, three of whom were adopted.
Arden died of advanced colorectal cancer and heart disease at her home in Los Angeles, California at the age of 82, and is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California.

Filmography

★ ''Song of Love'' (1929)

★ ''Dancing Lady'' (1933)

★ ''Oh Doctor'' (1937)

★ ''Stage Door'' (1937)

★ ''Cocoanut Grove'' (1938)

★ ''Having Wonderful Time'' (1938)

★ ''Letter of Introduction'' (1938)

★ ''Women in the Wind'' (1939)

★ ''Big Town Czar'' (1939)

★ ''The Forgotten Woman'' (1939)

★ ''Eternally Yours'' (1939)

★ ''At the Circus'' (1939)

★ ''A Child Is Born'' (1939)

★ ''Slightly Honorable'' (1940)

★ ''Comrade X'' (1940)

★ ''She Couldn't Say No'' (1940)

★ ''No, No, Nanette'' (1940)

★ ''That Uncertain Feeling'' (1941)

★ ''Ziegfeld Girl'' (1941)

★ ''She Knew All the Answers'' (1941)

★ ''San Antonio Rose'' (1941)

★ ''Whistling in the Dark'' (1941)

★ ''Manpower'' (1941)

★ ''The Last of the Duanes'' (1941)

★ ''Sing for Your Supper'' (1941)

★ ''Bedtime Story'' (1941)

★ ''Obliging Young Lady'' (1942)

★ ''Hit Parade of 1943'' (1943)

★ ''Let's Face It'' (1943)

★ ''Cover Girl'' (1944)

★ ''The Doughgirls'' (1944)

★ ''Earl Carroll Vanities'' (1945)

★ ''Patrick the Great'' (1945)

★ ''Pan-Americana'' (1945)

★ ''Mildred Pierce'' (1945)

★ ''My Reputation'' (1946)

★ ''The Kid from Brooklyn'' (1946)

★ ''Night and Day'' (1946)

★ ''Song of Scheherazade'' (1947)

★ ''The Arnelo Affair'' (1947)

★ ''The Unfaithful'' (1947)

★ '' (1947) (short subject)

★ ''The Voice of the Turtle'' (1947)

★ ''One Touch of Venus'' (1948)

★ ''Whiplash'' (1948)

★ ''My Dream Is Yours'' (1949)

★ ''The Lady Takes a Sailor'' (1949)

★ ''Paid in Full'' (1950)

★ ''Curtain Call at Cactus Creek'' (1950)

★ ''Tea for Two'' (1950)

★ ''Three Husbands'' (1951)

★ ''Goodbye, My Fancy'' (1951)

★ ''We're Not Married!'' (1952)

★ ''The Lady Wants Mink'' (1953)

★ '' (1954) (short subject)

★ ''Our Miss Brooks'' (1956)

★ ''Anatomy of a Murder'' (1959)

★ ''The Dark at the Top of the Stairs'' (1960)

★ ''Sergeant Dead Head'' (1965)

★ ''The Strongest Man in the World'' (1975)

★ ''Grease'' (1978)

★ ''Under the Rainbow'' (1981)

★ ''Pandemonium'' (1982)

★ ''Grease 2'' (1982)

Trivia

★ Legend has it that Arden selected her stage name after seeing the phrases "Evening in Paris" and "Elizabeth Arden" at a cosmetics counter.

★ Arden made a cameo appearance as herself in one of the episodes of ''I Love Lucy'' where the Ricardos and the Mertzs were in Hollywood. In episode 114 ("L. A. at Last") Lucy, Fred and Ethel have lunch at the Brown Derby restaurant. Seated in a booth, Lucy and Ethel try to determine whose caricature is drawn on one of the wall tiles in the adjoining booth, both Lucy and Ethel believing that it is of different actresses. To settle the issue, Ethel taps the shoulder of a lady in the adjoining booth, and asks her if the caricature on the tile in their booth is of the actress that she believes that it is, or the actress that Lucy believes that it is. The lady turns around to reveal herself as Eve Arden and answers Ethel, "Neither. It’s Eve Arden."

★ Arden was in the cast of one of the most notable Broadway flops, the 1983 play ''Moose Murders''. Arden, who was 75 at the time of production, had difficulties with remembering her lines in the play and was eventually replaced by actress Holland Taylor. The show opened and closed in the same evening.

Notes

1. Tamalpais High School Alumni Directory. 2002. Harris Publishing Co., p 237. Lists "Quedens, Eunice M." in the Class of 1926.

External links

★

★ Eve Arden's biographic sketch at Find A Grave