Susanna Foster - Later Life

Later Life

Foster did make several attempts at a comeback. In 1962, Arthur Lubin, the director of her hit film Phantom of the Opera offered her several spots on TV shows at the time including Mr. Ed of which he was producer. One of the stipulations was that she would have to relocate to Los Angeles with her two boys. Evans reportedly became enraged, immediately taking Foster to court suing for custody of the two boys. It was a public fight with articles in many of the New York and Philadelphia papers, with one headline declaring "Wilbur Evans Calls Ex-Wife Beatnik."

Evans lost the custody suit but was successful in keeping his ex-wife from living further than "100 miles of Columbus Circle" in New York City. Ironically, Evans would soon withhold payments for rent, alimony and child support, disappearing from the lives of his two boys. Soon, Foster and her two boys Michael and Philip were evicted and lived for a time in several hotels on the upper west side of Manhattan. Foster found work as a receptionist for several Wall Street firms and an answering service operator. She would often work 80 hours a week trying to make a home for her two boys. For the bulk of this time they lived in a small one bedroom apartment on West 82nd street in New York City. This was when the boys became "latchkey kids" and "things went terribly down hill from there" as Foster would later tell a reporter.

In 1985 Philip lapsed into hepatic coma (liver failure) on Foster's living room floor and died three days later in the Van Nuys Hospital. Her surviving son, Michael, brought her back to the East Coast, where she spent the last five years of her life living at the Lillian Booth Actors Home.