“She fit the bill perfectly,” the producer-director once said. “We engaged her and she was wonderful in the part, a sort of light ‘heavy’ that was also ultimately quite touching. I have great admiration for Eleanor Parker, an artist of first rank.”
Eleanor Parker, who was nominated for Academy Awards three times, was nominated for Oscars in 1950, 1951 and 1955. Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio. The actress was nicknamed “the woman of a thousand faces,” and died at age 91 on Monday. Her last memorable role came in 1965’s “The Sound of Music,” in which she played the scheming baroness who loses Christopher Plummer to Julie Andrews. After moving to Pasadena, she was cast in her first movie role at 19, a bit part in “They Died with Their Boots On,” starring Errol Flynn. Parker later appeared on such series as Hawaii Five-O; The Love Boat; Fantasy Island; and Murder, She Wrote.
“Eleanor Parker was and is one of the most beautiful ladies I have ever known,” said Plummer in a statement, according to Fox News. “Both as a person and as a beauty. I hardly believe the sad news for I was sure she was enchanted and would live forever.”
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the actress who played Sound of Music’s Baroness Elsa Schraeder began her career after being discovered at the Pasadena Playhouse. During a career that spanned more than half a century, the Ohio native also starred as the smothering wife of recovering heroin addict Frank Sinatra in Otto Preminger’s tense The Man With the Golden Arm (1955).
“I’m primarily a character actress,” she said in a 1988 interview, explaining why she never achieved the stardom of so many of her co-stars. “I’ve portrayed so many diverse individuals on the screen that my own personality never emerged.” Her last credit was the 1991 TV movie Dead on the Money. Family friend Richard Gale said she died on Monday due to complications from pneumonia in Palm Springs.
Image Credit: Hollywood Reporter