In the 1950s, Eleanor Parker was a three time Oscar nominee for Best Actress (1950, 1951 & 1955) and a fairly major star. Her career never scaled the heights you’d assumed from those facts. She later was nominated, again for Best Actress, for an Emmy and a Golden Globe award, and didn’t win either of those, either. The movie business is tough, and tougher by far for women, at least since the industry’s salad days of the ’30s when women like Joan Crawford would be top box office attractions.
Few of Ms. Parker’s titles are overmuch remembered today, except to devotees. Again, her films of the ’50s are surely the most remembered; The Man with the Golden Arm opposite Sinatra, Detective Story opposite Kirk Douglas, etc. Even so, she’s probably best remembered today for her supporting role as The Baroness in The Sound of Music.
In these ratified climes, however, Ms. Parker will always be remembered as one of the veritable parade of Oscar-winning and nominated actors to embarrass themselves in support of ‘stars’ Stephen Boyd and Elke Sommer in The Oscar. Despite being of the greatest movies ever reviewed on this site, the film still hasn’t received even an official DVD-R release, as such of its brethren as Liberace’s Sincerely Yours has.
Ms. Parker also starred opposite Charlton Heston in the killer ant epic The Naked Jungle (1954),. Aside from the fantastic climatic ant battle, this features the two spouting some hilariously ripe dialogue. Ms. Parker is a bride by mail ordered by the rigid and humorless Heston, the owner of a South American plantation. Heston is infuriated to discover after her arrival that Ms. Parker is a widow, and hence not virginal (implied, as opposed to stated outright, given the time period). “If you knew anything about music,” Ms. Parker icily opines during one confrontation, “you’d know that the best piano is one that’s been played.” Man, they don’t write ’em like that anymore.
As Ms. Parker grew older and her ’50s heyday fell behind her, she naturally transitioned in supporting roles and television work. She continued to regularly appear on the small screen until the mid-’80s.
Ms. Parker was 91 at the time of her passing.
