Jeanne Crain in The Fan with Madeleine Carroll.
Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies
(See previous post: “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-1950s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks a.k.a. 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 1960s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.)
In the early 1990s, she lost two of her seven children: One was a chronic alcoholic; the other died from a heroin overdose.
As she grew older, Crain, her beautiful figure long gone, developed a severe and debilitating alcohol problem. Two months after the death of Paul Brooks, who had become a successful businessman and manufacturer of missile parts, Jeanne Crain suffered a fatal heart attack at age 78 in December 2003 in Santa Barbara, California.
Fantasy vs. Reality
Unlike the mentally ill out there, I’m fully aware that real life and movie life are not the same thing.
Having said that, watching Margie I find it impossible not to believe that the young Jeanne Crain could have been anything but like the shy, hopeful, warm-hearted, somewhat clumsy youth who, however bloomer-less, finds love and ever-lasting happiness with a handsome and caring Prince Charming.
Hollywood fantasy or no, Margie is not to be missed. That movie is proof that Jeanne Crain was and remains one of the loveliest actresses to have ever graced the screen.
Jeanne Crain movies: TCM’s ‘Summer Under the Stars’ schedule (EDT) – Aug. 25
6:00 AM THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE (1956)
Director: Russell Rouse. Cast: Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, Broderick Crawford, Russ Tamblyn, Allyn Joslyn, Leif Erickson, John Dehner, Noah Beery Jr., J.M. Kerrigan, Rhys Williams, Virginia Gregg, Chubby Johnson, John Doucette, William ‘Bill’ Phillips, Christopher Olsen, Paul Birch, Joseph Sweeney.
B&W | 89 min. | Letterbox.7:45 AM GUNS OF THE TIMBERLAND (1960)
Director: Robert D. Webb. Cast: Alan Ladd, Jeanne Crain, Gilbert Roland, Frankie Avalon, Lyle Bettger, Noah Beery Jr., Verna Felton, Alana Ladd, Regis Toomey, Johnny Seven, Paul E. Burns, Henry Kulky.
Color | 91 min. | Letterbox.9:30 AM TWENTY PLUS TWO (1961)
Director: Joseph M. Newman. Cast: David Janssen, Jeanne Crain, Dina Merrill, Jacques Aubuchon, William Demarest, Agnes Moorehead, Brad Dexter, Robert Strauss, Fredd Wayne, Will Wright.
B&W | 103 min. | Letterbox.11:15 AM MARGIE (1946)
Director: Henry King. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Glenn Langan, Lynn Bari, Alan Young, Barbara Lawrence, Conrad Janis, Esther Dale, Hobart Cavanaugh, Ann E. Todd, Hattie McDaniel.
Color | 94 min.1:00 PM YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME (1948)
Director: Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Dan Dailey, Oscar Levant, Barbara Lawrence, Selena Royle, Percy Kilbride, Herbert Anderson, Erskine Sanford.
B&W | 92 min.2:45 PM APARTMENT FOR PEGGY (1948)
Director: George Seaton. Cast: Jeanne Crain, William Holden, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart, Griff Barnett, Randy Stuart, Betty Lynn, Marion Marshall, Charles Lane, Gene Nelson, Almira Sessions.
Color | 96 min.4:30 PM THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER (1951)
Director: George Cukor. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Scott Brady, Thelma Ritter, Zero Mostel, Michael O’Shea, Helen Ford, Frank Fontaine, Dennie Moore, John Alexander, Jay C. Flippen, Tommy Noonan.
B&W | 103 min.6:30 PM DANGEROUS CROSSING (1953)
Director: Joseph M. Newman. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Michael Rennie, Casey Adams.
B&W | 76 min.8:00 PM PINKY (1949)
Director: Elia Kazan. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan, Basil Ruysdael, Kenny Washington, Nina Mae McKinney, Griff Barnett, Frederick O’Neal, Evelyn Varden, Raymond Greenleaf.
B&W | 102 min.10:00 PM TAKE CARE OF MY LITTLE GIRL (1951)
Director: Jean Negulesco. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Dale Robertson, Mitzi Gaynor, Jean Peters, Jeffrey Hunter, Betty Lynn, Helen Westcott, Lenka Peterson, Carol Brannon, Natalie Schafer, King Donovan, Margaret Field, John Litel, George Nader.
Color | 94 min.12:00 AM LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)
Director: John M. Stahl. Cast: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price, Mary Philips, Ray Collins, Gene Lockhart, Reed Hadley, Darryl Hickman, Chill Wills, Grant Mitchell.
Color | 110 min.2:00 AM THE FAN (1949)
Director: Otto Preminger. Cast: Jeanne Crain, Madeleine Carroll, George Sanders, Richard Greene, Martita Hunt, John Sutton, Hugh Dempster, Richard Ney, Virginia McDowall, Colin Campbell.
B&W | 79 min.4:00 AM SKYJACKED (1972).
Director: John Guillermin. Cast: Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin, Claude Akins, Jeanne Crain, Susan Dey, Roosevelt Grier, Mariette Hartley, Walter Pidgeon, Ken Swofford, Leslie Uggams, Ross Elliott, Nicholas Hammond, Mike Henry, John Hillerman, Maureen Connell, Lorna Thayer.
Color | 101 min. | Letterbox.
notes/references
Jeanne Crain “Summer Under the Stars” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain The Fan image: 20th Century Fox.