Virginia Mayo(1920-2005)
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Virginia Clara Jones was born on November 30, 1920 in St. Louis,
Missouri, the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. The family
had a rich heritage in the St. Louis area: her
great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution and
later founded the city of East Saint Louis, Illinois, located right
across the Mississippi River from its namesake. Virginia was interested
in show business from an early age. Her aunt operated a dance studio
and Virginia began taking lessons at the age of six. After graduating
from high school in 1937, she became a member of the St. Louis
Municipal Opera before she was signed to a contract by
Samuel Goldwyn after being spotted by an
MGM talent scout during a Broadway revue.
David O. Selznick gave her a screen
test, but decided she wouldn't fit into films. Goldwyn, however,
believed that her talent as an actress was there and cast her in a
small role in 1943's
Jack London (1943). She later had a
walk-on part in Follies Girl (1943)
that same year. Believing there was more to her than her obvious
ravishing beauty, producers thought it was time to give her bigger and
better roles. In 1944 she was cast as Princess Margaret in
The Princess and the Pirate (1944),
with Bob Hope and a year later appeared
as Ellen Shavley in Wonder Man (1945).
Her popularity increasing with every appearance, Virginia was cast in
two more films in 1946,
The Kid from Brooklyn (1946),
with Danny Kaye, and
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946),
with Dana Andrews, and received
good notices as Andrews' avaricious, unfaithful wife. Her roles may
have been coming in slow, but with each one her popularity with
audiences rose. She finally struck paydirt in 1947 with a plum
assignment in the well-received
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
as Rosalind van Hoorn. That same year she married
Michael O'Shea and would remain
with him until his death in 1973 (the union produced a daughter, Mary
Catherine, in 1953). She got some of the best reviews of her career in
James Cagney's return to the gangster
genre, White Heat (1949), as Verna,
the scheming, cheating wife of homicidal killer Cody Jarrett (Cagney).
The striking beauty had still more plum roles in the 1950s. Parts in
Backfire (1950),
She's Working Her Way Through College (1952)
and South Sea Woman (1953) all
showed she was still a force to be reckoned with. As the decade ended,
Virginia's career began to slow down. She had four roles in the 1960s
and four more in the following decade. Her last role was as Lucia in 1997's The Man Next Door. She died on
January 17, 2005.
