Faye Marlowe, a 1940s star best known for her turn opposite the doomed Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell and George Sanders in the film noir classic Hangover Square, has passed away. She was 95.
Marlowe died on May 5 in Cary, North Carolina, her daughter Karen Joseph told The Hollywood Reporter.
In her brief Hollywood career, the dark-haired Marlowe also co-starred with Richard Conte in The spider (1945), another excellent film noir; with Richard Crane in Johnny is flying home (1946); and, as the title character, with Eddie Albert in Appointment with Annie (1946).
After appearing on stage for John Brahm, the German director gave her a key role in her first film, Fox’s Hangover Square (1945). She played the pianist girlfriend of a mild-mannered composer (Cregar) who suffers from blackouts and becomes a serial killer in the London-based turn-of-the-century thriller scored by Bernard Herrmann.
(Cregar, who was on a crash diet during the making of the film, suffered a fatal heart attack during surgery two months before the film’s release and died in December 1944 at age 31.)
Born on October 26, 1926, in a Salvation Army home for single mothers in Los Angeles, Marlowe was adopted by a successful couple in Hollywood.
Her mother, known as Fanchon, produced live shows under the banner Fanchon & Marco that served as prologues to movie house movies – Bing CrosbyMyrna Loy and Judy Garland got their start in those revues — and also produced movies. Her father, William Simon, was a restaurateur (Lyman’s chain).
She attended Beverly Hills High School and Los Angeles University High School, graduating in 1943.
Marlowe also appeared in George Seaton’s Junior Miss (1945), starring teenage Peggy Ann Garner in an adaptation of the long-running Broadway hit.
She worked again with Brahm in The Thief of Venice (1950) and appeared in three episodes of the syndicated anthology series Conrad Nagel Theater in 1955 before leaving acting.
Marlowe also lived in France, Italy and England, and as Faye Hueston she wrote about the search for her birth parents in her memoir, The daughter of Fanchonpublished in 2014.
Survivors include another daughter, Andrea, and grandchildren Kaeli and Kenzy.