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Ann Basart, who appeared in dozens of films as a child billed as Ann E. Todd in the 1930s and ’40s and was a regular on 1950s sitcom The Stu Erwin Show, has died. She was 88. Basart died February 7 in Northern California; she had struggled with dementia for seven years, but no formal cause of death was given.

Born Ann Todd Phillips on August 26, 1931, in Denver, she was raised by her maternal grandparents in Southern California, where they steered her into acting. From 1938-51, she racked more nearly 40 movie credits including Destry Rides Again, Brigham Young, How Green Was My Valley, All This and Heaven Too, Kings Row and The Jolson Story.

During her film career, Basart appeared opposite such top stars of the era as Ingrid Bergman, Shirley Temple, James Stewart, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Marlene Dietrich. A distant cousin of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, she added...

Ann E. Todd, a child actress in the 1930s and '40s who appeared in such films as Intermezzo, All This, and Heaven Too and Three Daring Daughters, died Feb. 7 of complications from dementia, her family announced. She was 88.

Todd also worked alongside Basil Rathbone in Tower of London (1939), with Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again (1939), with Edward G. Robinson in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), with Maureen O'Hara in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) and with Ronald Reagan in Kings Row (1942).

Todd, whose father and future husband were composers, portrayed a young pianist and the daughter ...

Ann E. Todd, a child actress in the 1930s and '40s who appeared in such films as Intermezzo, All This, and Heaven Too and Three Daring Daughters, died Feb. 7 of complications from dementia, her family announced. She was 88.

Todd also worked alongside Basil Rathbone in Tower of London (1939), with Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again (1939), with Edward G. Robinson in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), with Maureen O'Hara in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) and with Ronald Reagan in Kings Row (1942).

Todd, whose father and future husband were composers, portrayed a young pianist and the daughter ...

Virginia Bruce: MGM actress ca. 1935. Virginia Bruce movies on TCM: Actress was the cherry on 'The Great Ziegfeld' wedding cake Unfortunately, Turner Classic Movies has chosen not to feature any non-Hollywood stars – or any out-and-out silent film stars – in its 2015 “Summer Under the Stars” series.* On the other hand, TCM has come up with several unusual inclusions, e.g., Lee J. Cobb, Warren Oates, Mae Clarke, and today, Aug. 25, Virginia Bruce. A second-rank MGM leading lady in the 1930s, the Minneapolis-born Virginia Bruce is little remembered today despite her more than 70 feature films in a career that spanned two decades, from the dawn of the talkie era to the dawn of the TV era, in addition to a handful of comebacks going all the way to 1981 – the dawn of the personal computer era. Career highlights were few and not all that bright. Examples range from playing the...

Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies (photo: Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in ‘The Fan’) (See also: "Jeanne Crain: From ‘Pinky’ Inanity to ‘Margie’ Magic.") Unlike her characters in Margie, Home in Indiana, State Fair, Centennial Summer, The Fan, and Cheaper by the Dozen (and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes), or even in the more complex A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, Jeanne Crain didn’t find a romantic Happy Ending in real life. In the mid-’50s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks aka Paul Brinkman, of infidelity, of living off her earnings, and of brutally beating her. The couple reportedly were never divorced because of their Catholic faith. (And at least in the ’60s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.) In the early ’90s, she lost two of her...