Eve Arden

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Eve Arden (born Eunice Mary Quedens, 1908-November 12, 1990) was an American film, radio, stage, and television actress, as well as a comedienne.

She worked in leadership and support positions for almost six decades. Arden's first big role in RKO Radio Pictures' Stage Door (1937), opposite Katharine Hepburn, was followed by roles in the Marx Brothers' At the Circus (1939), beginning her film career in 1929 and Broadway in the early 1930s.

Arden will continue to be nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945). She played the sardonic yet affecting title role of a high school teacher in Our Miss Brooks, winning the first Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Grease (1978) and Grease 2 (1982).

Early life

Eunice Mary Quedens was born in Mill Valley, California, on April 30, 1908, to Charles Peter Quedens, Henry Augustus Quedens and Eunice Meta Dierks, and Lucille Frank, Bernard Frank's niece. Lucille, a milliner, divorced Charles because of his gambling, and started a new one for herself.

Eunice, a young boy who was not Catholic, was taken to a Dominican convent school in San Rafael, California. She continued to attend Tamalpais High School, a public high school in Mill Valley, until age 16. After leaving school, she joined Henry "Terry" Duffy's stock theater company.

Personal life

Arden was married to Edward Grinnell "Ned" Bergen 1939-47; she is believed to have had a long association with Danny Kaye in the 1940s (mostly starting from their Broadway appearance on Let's Face It! (1941) A.K.A. Arden lived with actor Brooks West from 1952 to his death in 1984 from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 67. After her divorce from Bergen, she adopted her first child and a second child as a single mother; she gave birth to her youngest (with West) at the age of 46 in 1954. Both four children survived their parents.

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Career

In the backstage musical Song of Love (1929), she made her film debut as a sarcastic, homewrecking showgirl who becomes a threat to the film's actor, singer Belle Baker. Columbia Pictures' film was one of the company's earliest successes. She migrated to New York City in 1933, where she appeared in several Broadway stage revivals. In 1934, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies revue, the first role in which she was credited as Eve Arden. Arden was encouraged to choose a stage name for the performance and "stole my first name from Evening in Paris and Elizabeth Arden's second." She appeared in Broadway plays of Parade between 1934 and 1941, and Let's Face It!

Arden's film career began in earnest in 1937, when she joined RKO Radio Pictures and appeared in the films Oh Doctor and Stage Door. Arden's portrayal of a quick-talking, witty supporting role on Stage Door garnered considerable attention, and served as a model for several of Arden's future roles.

She appeared in the comedy Having a Wonderful Time in 1938, starring Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball. This was followed by appearances in The Forgotten Woman (1939), and the Marx Brothers' At the Circus (1939), which required her to perform acrobatics.

In 1940, she appeared in Comrade X opposite Clark Gable, followed by the film Manpower (1941) opposite Marlene Dietrich, Edward G. Robinson, and George Raft. She appeared in The Whistling in the Dark (1941), and the romantic comedy Obliging Young Lady (1942).

In Joan Crawford's critically acclaimed film role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she was named Academy Award winning actor; and as James Stewart's wistful secretary in Otto Preminger's wonderful Anatomy of a Murder (1959), which also featured her husband, Brooks West). Exhibitors named her as the sixth most awaited "star of tomorrow" in 1946.

When Arden appeared in Grease (1978) and Grease 2 (1982), she became familiar with a new generation of filmgoers. Arden was known for her comedic delivery.

Arden's ability with witty scripts made her a natural performer on radio. She appeared 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 Lionel Stander.

Kaye's show lasted one season, but Arden's comedic talent led to her best-known role, that of Madison High School English teacher Connie Brooks in Our Miss Brooks. Arden appeared on radio from 1948 to 1957 in a television version of the program from 1952 to 1956, as well as in a 1956 feature film. Osgood Conklin, the school's principal, was portrayed by Gale Gordon, and Nursed an unexpected crush on fellow teacher Philip Boynton (played originally by Jeff Chandler, and later on radio and TV by Robert Rockwell). Except for Chandler, the entire radio cast of Arden, Gordon, Richard Crenna (Walter Denton), Robert Rockwell (Mr. Philip Boynton), Gloria McMillan (Harriet Conklin), and Jane Morgan (landlady Margaret Davis) appeared on television, except for Chandler.

Miss Brooks' portrayal was so popular that she was made an honorary member of the National Education Association in 1952, and she has received teaching job offers. Her wisecracking, deadpan appearance eventually became her public persona as a comedienne.

She was named top-ranking comedienne 1948-1949 in a listener's poll by Radio Mirror magazine, and she received her award at the end of an Our Miss Brooks broadcast in March. "I'm definitely going to try to earn the esteem you've bestowed upon me in the coming months," she joked, because she knows that if I win this (award) two years in a row, I'll keep Mr. Boynton." She was also a hit with the critics in a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors by Motion Picture Daily, named her the year's best radio comedienne.

Arden appeared in a 1955 I Love Lucy episode titled "L.A. at Last," where she appeared herself. Lucy Rizo (Lucille Ball) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) debate whether a certain portrait on a nearby wall is Shelley Winters or Judy Holliday, depending on their food preferences. Lucy begs Ethel to question a lady in the next booth, who turns and says, "No one." Eve Arden is the product of Eve Arden's "ethnic". Arden passes Lucy and Ethel's table to leave the restaurant as the pair gawk, recognizing that she just spoke to Arden herself.

Desi Arnaz and Ball's marriage joint venture, Desilu Productions, was the production house for the Our Miss Brooks television show, which was shot during the same years as I Love Lucy. Ball and Arden costarred in the 1937 film Stage Door. According to many radio historians, Ball argued for Our Miss Brooks after Shirley Booth auditioned for but didn't land the role and Ball—could not.

In the fall of 1957, Arden Showdown, a CBS show, but after 26 episodes, it was cancelled in spring of 1958. In 1966, she appeared as Nurse Kelton in an episode of Bewitched. In the 1967–1969 NBC situation comedy The Mothers-in-Law, produced by Arnaz after Desilu Productions' dissolution, she costarred with Kaye Ballard as her neighbor and in-law Eve Hubbard. Arden made appearances on television shows ranging from Bewitched, Alice, Maude, Hart, Hart, Hart to Hart, and Falcon Crest during her time in her later years. In 1985, she appeared in Cinderella's Faerie Tale Theatre production as the wicked stepmother.

Arden was one of many actresses to play title roles in Hello, Dolly! Auntie Mame in the 1960s; in 1967, she received the Sarah Siddons Award for her role in Chicago theater. Arden was originally cast as the leading lady in Moose Murders, but she reacted with a much younger Holland Taylor after one preview performance, citing "artistic differences." On the same night, the show opened and closed, becoming a well-known Broadway flop.

In 1985, Arden published The Three Phases of Eve, an autobiography. Arden has two actors on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Radio and Television (see a list of actors on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for addresses). In 1995, she was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

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