Coleen Gray - Early Career

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:

    Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.
    Andre Maurois (1885–1967)

    From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)