Early Career
Born Doris Jensen, Gray was a farmer's daughter from Nebraska. After graduating from high school, she studied dramatics at Hamline University, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree. She then decided to see America and traveled to California, stopping at La Jolla, where she worked in a restaurant as a waitress. After several weeks there, she moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in a drama school. She had leading roles in the Los Angeles stage productions Letters to Lucerne and Brief Music, which won her a 20th Century Fox contract in 1944. After initially playing a bit part in State Fair (1945), she became pregnant and briefly stopped working, only to return a year later as the love interest of the character played by John Wayne in Red River (1948), which was shot in 1946 but held for release until 1948, by which time she had already graduated to leading roles in films noir such as Kiss of Death (1947) opposite Victor Mature and Nightmare Alley (1947) opposite Tyrone Power.
Read more about this topic: Coleen Gray
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“We passed the Children’s Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)