Linda Darnell: Hollywood's Fallen Angel

Linda Darnell was certainly one of the most beautiful women to hit Hollywood, but when she first came on the scene, she was just a girl. This Biography episode covers the actress' tragic life, using home movies, film clips, and interviews with family, friends, and costars.

Linda Darnell's story is compelling and quite sad: Chaotic home, absent father, pushy stage mother, and a Hollywood contract at 14 after a series of beauty pageants. When Zanuck found out her age, he sent her back home, only to sign her again while she was still a teen, when he realized that RKO was going to give her a contract. She was put into adult roles immediately and soon became a huge success in Stardust, The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, and many others. When she married cinematographer Peverell Marley, many years her senior, Zanuck fired him and put Linda on suspension because she wasn't a sweet virgin anymore. She came back, and when she did, she was hotter than ever as a sultry beauty, and some of her best films followed: Unfaithfully Yours, Letter to Three Wives, My Darling Clementine, No Way Out, etc. But a volatile marriage, alcohol, bad investments, and a devastating affair with Joseph Mankiewicz left her bloated and broke. Bad marriages and a bad nightclub act followed.

Stage work brought Linda the confidence she had lost and also reconciled her with her adopted daughter Lola, and when she made her first film in 7 years, the offers started pouring in. Unfortunately, Linda's third go in the movies was not to be. After watching Stardust at her former secretary's house in Chicago, the house caught fire, and Linda died after suffering burns on 90% of her body. She died beautiful, excited about the future, and with the memory of the earlier teen Linda with her whole life ahead of her.

This is truly a heartbreaking story, very well told, and one not to miss.

Well, the first two reviewers do an excellent job of summarizing this Biography of Linda Darnell, so I'll just add a few more details....

Peter Graves narrates this account of the life and career of Monetta Eloyse Darnell, from her October 16, 1923, birth in Dallas, Texas, the second daughter of four children born to a timid, mild-mannered postal, clerk Calvin Roy Darnell, and an eccentric, aggressive stage mother, Pearl Brown, who also has two children from a previous marriage.

Now, we mustn't forget Rudy the Rooster, who play a role as a Darnell family pet. Mother Pearl sees to it that Rudy the Rooster has his own pillow and bed in the family residence, as well as a place service at the table during family meals.

When Monetta travels to Hollywood with two other movie ingénue hopefuls, stage mother Pearl naturally tags along, with Monetta's siblings, as well as Rudy the Rooster, who arrives on the 20th Century Fox lot along with the others.

Once Monetta becomes screen star Linda Darnell (after her second trip to Hollywood), Mother Pearl is eventually barred from the lot, after making many demands, and causing much interference with her eccentricity.

After Linda's film career peaks and parts grow fewer and farther between, Linda begins to shine on the stages of Las Vegas, Broadway and in nation-wide tours. This mentions very little, if anything, of Linda's later television career.

Linda's marriages are with J. Peverell Marley (1942–51), Phillip Liebmann (1954–55), and Merle Roy Robertson (1957–63). With Pev Marley, Linda adopts daughter, Charlotte "Lola" Marley.

Interview Guests for this episode consist of Undeen Darnell Hunter (Sister), Lola Marley (Daughter), Actresses Alice Faye and Dorris Bowdon Johnson, Actors Roddy McDowall and Richard Widmark, A.C. Lyles (Producer), Ronald Davis (Biographer), and James Robert Parish (Film Historian).

Archive footage includes Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Jean Rogers, John Payne, Rita Hayworth, Laird Cregar, Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda, Cornel Wilde, Rex Harrison, Jeanne Crain, Kirk Douglas, Thelma Ritter, Connie Gilchrist, Sidney Poitier, Howard Hughes, J. Peverell Marley, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Phillip Liebmann, Merle Roy Robertson, and Bruce Cabot.

Film Clips include a screen glimpse of Linda Darnell through the years, in scenes from "Hotel for Women" (1939), "Day-Time Wife" (1939), "Star Dust" (1940), "The Mark of Zorro" (1940), "Blood and Sand" (1941), "The Song of Bernadette" (1943), "Buffalo Bill" (1944), "Hangover Square" (1945), "Fallen Angel" (1945), "Anna and the King of Siam" (1946), "My Darling Clementine" (1946), "Forever Amber" (1947), "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948), "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949), "Black Spurs" (1965), plus her screen test for "Wayward Bus" (1957), in addition to MovieTone Newsreel footage of Linda Darnell's hand and footprints ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theater (1940), and WWII era war effort coverage at the Hollywood Canteen.