Coleen Gray, best
known for her role in Stanley Kubrick’s heist thriller “The Killing,” died of
natural causes on Monday at her home in Bel Air, Calif. She was 92.
“My last dame is
gone. Always had the feeling she’d be the last to go,” Eddie Muller, founder
and president of the Film Noir Foundation, wrote on Facebook. He became friends
with Gray while collaborating on his 2001 book “Dark City Dames: The Wicked
Women of Film Noir.”
Gray played the
accomplice of Sterling Hayden, the leader of a gang of thieves, in Kubrick’s
“Killing.” She famously uttered the line, “I may not be pretty and I may not be
smart …”
Gray appeared in a
slew of films in the late 1940s and ’50s, primarily noir thrillers, including
Henry Hathaway’s “Kiss of Death” (1947), as the film’s narrator and ex-con
Victor Mature’s love interest; Tyrone Power’s aide in Edmund Goulding’s
“Nightmare Alley” (1947); opposite John Wayne in Howard Hawks’ classic Western
“Red River” (1948); as the mastermind behind a bank heist in Phil Karlson’s
noir “Kansas City Confidential” (1952); and in Sidney Salkow’s “Las Vegas
Shakedown” (1953).
She also starred on
Broadway in 1949 alongside Charlton Heston in “Leaf and Bough.”
Her final film role
came in 1985, with James F. Collier’s action drama “Cry From the Mountain.”
Gray had several TV
guest-starring roles in the 1960s, including stints on the shows “Rawhide,”
“Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “77 Sunset Strip” and “Family Affair.”
Gray married three
times. Her last husband, Joseph “Fritz” Zeiser, died in 2012 after more than 30
years of marriage. She is survived by her daughter, Susan; son, Bruce;
stepsons, Rick and Steve; and grandchildren.
A memorial service
will be held in her honour at Bel Air Presbyterian Church.
---- Extract from Variety
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