Lola Jean Albright (July 20, 1924 – March 23, 2017) was an American singer and actress who appeared on screen in more than 40 films from the late 1940s. She was best known for playing the sultry singer Edie Hart, the girlfriend of private eye Peter Gunn, on all three seasons of the TV series Peter Gunn.
Albright was born in Akron, Ohio, to Marion A. (née Harvey) and John Paul Albright, both of whom were gospel music singers. Lola's mother also was born in Ohio but her father was a native of North Dakota, who in 1930 supported the family by working as an inspector in a local insulating business.Albright attended King Grammar School and graduated from West High School in Akron in 1942. She sang in public at a young age and studied piano for 20 years. Beginning when she was 15 years old, she worked after school as a receptionist at radio station WAKR in Akron. She left WAKR at the age of 18 and moved to Cleveland, taking a job as a stenographer at WTAM radio. There she met and quickly
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married, in 1944, the radio announcer Warren Dean. The couple moved to Chicago, but divorced five years later, after which she went to Los Angeles and was soon spotted by a talent scout from MGM during a modelling shoot, which led to her moving to Hollywood at the age of 23.
The studio changed her name to Lola Deem and cast her as a singing extra in The Pirate with Gene Kelly and Easter Parade (both 1948) with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. Snapped up by Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures, and now calling herself Lola Albright, she appeared in almost 20 features between 1949 and 1951 including the romantic drama Tulsa (1949), the thriller Frightened City and the western
Sierra Passage (all 1950). Throughout the early 1950s she also modelled for the pin-up painter Gil Elvgren.
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| Lola with Kirk Douglas |
After featuring in the spy-drama Arctic Flight (1952), she appeared in the romantic drama The Brave and the Beautiful (1955) with Anthony Quinn and Maureen O’Hara. In 1950, Lola Albright had married the actor Jack Carson. But cracks in the marriage appeared early on; he wanted a wife and homemaker, she wanted the movies, and they divorced in 1957, the same year that Peter Gunn debuted.
She then became one of television’s busiest actresses, guest-starring on popular television shows such as Gunsmoke and, from 1955-57, appearing as Kay Michaels on The Bob Cummings Show. She also released the albums Lola Wants You (1957), and Dreamsville (1959), for which she collaborated with Henry Mancini, the composer of the Peter Gunn theme.
In 1961 she married the pianist and restaurant owner William Chadney. They separated shortly afterwards, finally divorcing in 1974. Also in 1961, she starred in Alexander Singer's A Cold Wind in August. Her performance gave fresh impetus to her film career, leading to roles in Elvis Presley's musical Kid Galahad in 1962, in which she played the hard-boiled, long-time girlfriend of a cynical boxing manager played by Gig Young; and in French director René Clément's Joy House as a wealthy widow with a passion for handing out meals to the poor (albeit with an ulterior motive). In Lord Love a Duck (1966) she portrayed a
cocktail waitress who turns suicidal when she thinks she has ruined her daughter Tuesday Weld's life. The next year she was in the Western epic The Way West.
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| Lola with Henry Mancini |
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| Lola & Elvis |
She spent the early 1960s predominately on the small screen with appearances in The Beverly Hillbillies and Wagon Train. When the actress Dorothy Malone fell ill, Lola Albright was drafted in to play her role as Constance McKenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place (1964). Thereafter she cropped up in comedies such as Lord Love a Duck (1966), as well as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, with David Niven, The Impossible Years (1968), after which she announced her retirement. Chadney objected to her long working hours in the studios. “I’ve always put the man in my life ahead of my happiness and my career,” she said, before divorcing him and returning to work.
Following her retirement from acting, Albright spent her remaining years living in Toluca Lake, California. In 2014, she fell and fractured her spine, an injury that contributed to a general decline in her health over the next three years, but despite her problems she continued to dress with a style that left those who met her in no doubt that she had once been a star. “Your forties are your best time,” she said in one of her last interviews. “If I had my druthers about when to live a whole life, I would say in the forties. Just stay there.”
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On March 23, 2017, Albright died of natural causes in a home in the Toluca Lake enclave of Los Angeles at the age of 92. (Edited from Wikipedia & The Telegraph)
Here's a clip of Lola Albright performing "How High the Moon." from the television series Peter Gunn (Season 1, Episode 5, entitled "The Frog") Featuring Shorty Rogers on the flugelhorn.
Here's a clip of Lola Albright performing "How High the Moon." from the television series Peter Gunn (Season 1, Episode 5, entitled "The Frog") Featuring Shorty Rogers on the flugelhorn.