Irene Ryan
Irene Ryan was born in El Paso, Texas, United States on October 17th, 1902 and is the TV Actress. At the age of 70, Irene Ryan biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, TV shows, and networth are available.
At 70 years old, Irene Ryan has this physical status:
Ryan began her performing career at the age of 11, when she won $3 for singing "Pretty Baby" in an amateur contest at the Valencia Theater in San Francisco.
At 20, she married writer-comedian Tim Ryan. They performed in vaudeville as a double act, known in show business as a "Dumb Dora" routine, and epitomized by George Burns and Gracie Allen. Known professionally as "Tim and Irene" (and billed formally as Tim Ryan and Irene Noblette), they starred in 11 short comedies for Educational Pictures between 1935 and 1937. The films were usually vehicles for their vaudevillian dialogue, with Irene as the flighty young woman who drives Tim to distraction. Tim's frequent admonition, "Will you stop?", became a catchphrase and then the title of one of their shorts. Substituting for Jack Benny in 1936, they starred in The Jell-o Summer Show on NBC's Red Network.
The Ryans had no children and divorced in 1942, although Irene kept the surname. She toured with Bob Hope, and was on his radio program for two years. She played Edgar Kennedy's wife in two of his RKO short films in 1943. That same year, she appeared in the country music film O, My Darling Clementine.
By 1943, Tim Ryan had become a prolific character actor in movies; Monogram Pictures reunited Tim and Irene for four feature films, the last being the 1944 musical feature Hot Rhythm with Dona Drake.
In 1946, Irene married Harold E. Knox, who worked in film production (they divorced in 1961, having had no children). She continued to work in motion pictures into the late 1940s and early 1950s, generally playing fussy or nervous women. In 1946, she joined the cast of The Jack Carson Show on CBS Radio, playing "a neighborhood storekeeper who operates a combination candy shop and lending library." In January 1955, she made her first television sitcom appearance in an episode of the CBS series The Danny Thomas Show. She appeared with Walter Brennan in the 1959 episode "Grandpa's New Job" on the ABC sitcom The Real McCoys. In the 1960-1961 CBS sitcom Bringing Up Buddy, starring Frank Aletter, she was cast in three episodes as Cynthia Boyle, and she appeared as Rusty Wallace in "The Romance of Silver Pines", a 1962 episode of My Three Sons, starring Fred MacMurray. She guest-starred as Ellie McCabe in "The Old Stowe Road," a 1962 episode of the CBS sitcom Ichabod and Me. In 1966, Ryan was a contestant/celebrity guest star on the game show Password.
Ryan was cast in what was her best known role in 1962 as Daisy "Granny" Moses, mother-in-law of patriarch Jed Clampett, in The Beverly Hillbillies (although Ryan was only five and a half years older than Ebsen). The character was named in honor of the artist Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma" Moses, who had died aged 101 the previous year, and only started her professional career as a painter in her later years.
According to Filmways publicist Ted Switzer, series creator and producer Paul Henning had decided to cast Bea Benaderet as Granny, but when Ryan read for the role "with her hair tied back in a bun and feisty as all get-out," everyone was taken with her performance. Executive producer Al Simon and Henning immediately said, "That's Granny!" Later, when Benaderet saw Ryan's audition, she agreed. Benaderet was cast as Jed Clampett's cousin, Pearl Bodine.
In 1966, Irene Ryan played Granny in the comedy Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, co-starring Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam.