Gloria Jean

Gloria Jean

Born: April 14, 1926
Died: August 31, 2018
in Buffalo, New York, USA
Gloria Jean (born Gloria Jean Schoonover, April 14, 1926 – August 31, 2018) was an American actress and singer who starred or co-starred in 26 feature films from 1939 to 1959, and made numerous radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances. She is probably best remembered today for her appearance with W.C. Fields in the film Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941).

Gloria Jean was three years old when she first sang on radio; in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she sang, under the name "Baby Skylark", with Paul Whiteman's orchestra on radio broadcasts. When she was 12, she was engaged by a New York opera company and became the youngest member of an opera troupe in the United States.

Gloria Jean was being trained as a coloratura soprano when her voice teacher took her to an audition held by Universal Pictures movie producer Joe Pasternak in 1938. Pasternak had guided Deanna Durbin to stardom, and with Durbin now advancing to ingénue roles, Pasternak wanted a younger singer to make the same kind of musicals. He held auditions for a film called The Under-Pup. Up against hundreds of others, Gloria Jean won the audition.

Newly under contract to Universal, she was given the leading role in the 1939 feature. The film did well and Gloria Jean became instantly popular with moviegoers. She then co-starred with Bing Crosby in If I Had My Way (1940), then starred in the well-received A Little Bit of Heaven (1940).

Her fourth picture became her best known: Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), in which she co-starred with W.C. Fields.

Gloria Jean became one of Universal's most prolific performers during the war years; she made 14 feature films. Most were "hepcat" musicals, which were geared to the teenage market of the day. In May 1944 she turned eighteen.

After leaving Universal when her contract expired at the end of 1944, Gloria Jean made personal appearances across America; the successful tour prompted a tour of Europe.

She then resumed her movie career as a freelance performer appearing in United Artists, Columbia Pictures, and Allied Artists productions, the best-known being Copacabana (1947). Subsequently she began appearing on TV shows. Gloria Jean continued to appear in feature films, albeit low-budget ones.

Her last motion picture (in which she appears as an extra with no dialogue) was released in 1961. Her final television appearance was in 1962.

In that year she married Franco Cellini, an actor. By 1966 they were divorced. The union produced a son.

In 1965 Gloria Jean signed on with an employment agency, which sent her to a cosmetics company, where she worked as a receptionist until 1993.

In December 1991, she was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star "Lifetime Achievement" Award, recognizing her achievements within the film industry as a juvenile performer. She also participated in various nostalgia and autograph shows, meeting fans and displaying memorabilia. She had always retained her fan following.

During her final years she moved to Hawaii to live with her son and his family. Gloria Jean suffered health problems, including two serious falls and a heart condition. She died on August 31, 2018.

Her authorized biography, Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven, was published in 2005.

Movies for Gloria Jean...

W.C. Fields: Straight Up
Title: W.C. Fields: Straight Up
Character: Self
Released: January 2, 1986
Type: Movie
Documentary directed by Joseph Adamson.
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The Ladies Man
Title: The Ladies Man
Character: Gloria
Released: June 21, 1961
Type: Movie
After his girl leaves him for someone else, Herbert gets really depressed and starts searching for a job. He finally finds one in a big house which is inhabited by many, many women. Can he live in the same home with all these females?
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Title: Lock-Up
Released: September 28, 1959
Type: TV
Lock-Up is an American legal drama series that premiered in syndication in September 1959 and concluded in June 1961. The half-hour episodes had little time for character development or subplots and presented a compact story without embellishment.
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Air Strike
Title: Air Strike
Character: Marg Huggins
Released: May 6, 1955
Type: Movie
Tasked with training a group of untested new recruits, a no-nonsense Navy commander faces a host of challenges as he attempts to transform the greenhorns into a squadron of crackerjack jet pilots. Don Haggerty co-stars as the unit's second-in-command who clashes bitterly with the cocky young upstart of the team after the lad shows off with some reckless aerial acrobatics.
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Title: The Colgate Comedy Hour
Character: Self
Released: September 10, 1950
Type: TV
The Colgate Comedy Hour is an American comedy-musical variety series that aired live on the NBC network from 1950 to 1955. The show starred many notable comedians and entertainers of the era, including Eddie Cantor, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Fred Allen, Donald O'Connor, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, Ray Bolger, Gordon MacRae, Ben Blue, Robert Paige, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Broadway dancer Wayne Lamb and Spike Jones and His City Slickers.
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There's a Girl in My Heart
Title: There's a Girl in My Heart
Character: Ruth Kroner
Released: December 19, 1949
Type: Movie
A Gay-Nineties musical set in NYC's Bowery and East-Side explores the life of its inhabitants---an Irish policeman and his tap-dancing daughter and music-hall wife; a German professor of music and his singing daughter; and an Italian café-owner, a kindly priest, a struggling young doctor and a saloon-keeper. And a political ward-heeler, Terrence Dowd, who has a deceptive and dishonest plan to sell them all out in order to build a fight arena. But he meets his match in property-owner Claire Adamson.
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Manhattan Angel
Title: Manhattan Angel
Character: Gloria Cole
Released: March 17, 1949
Type: Movie
Gloria Cole and Eddie Swenson are working to keep an old fire house, now being used as a youth center, from being razed to make room for a new skyscraper in Manhattan.
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An Old-Fashioned Girl
Title: An Old-Fashioned Girl
Character: Polly Milton
Released: January 19, 1949
Type: Movie
A music teacher in 1870s Boston works hard to succeed, while her wealthy distant relatives find their fortunes turning.
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I Surrender Dear
Title: I Surrender Dear
Character: Patty Nelson aka Patty Hart
Released: October 6, 1948
Type: Movie
Patty Nelson lands a job as a singer with orchestra leader Al Tyler, and tours with the band as "Patty Hart." Patty's father Russ is dismissed from his radio-station job, and the disc jockey selected to replace him is Al Tyler. Patty rushes home to keep Russ company on the air for the final few days, and Al wonders why she suddenly walked out on him. The new "Patty and Russ" radio show catches on, causing complications with Al and the radio-station bosses.
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Copacabana
Title: Copacabana
Character: Anne Stuart
Released: May 30, 1947
Type: Movie
A talent agent sells his girlfriend to a nightclub -- as two separate acts. The deception and constant costume changes are too much for his girl.
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River Gang
Title: River Gang
Character: Wendy
Released: September 21, 1945
Type: Movie
An orphan girl lives with apparently kind uncle who turns out to be a murderer.
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Easy to Look At
Title: Easy to Look At
Released: June 1, 1945
Type: Movie
In this musical, a talented aspiring costume designer leaves her small town to seek her fortune in the Big Apple. The girl, who is also a singer, soon begins establishing herself in the fashion industry, but when a rival accuses her of stealing a pattern, her career is nearly destroyed. Fortunately, a handsome, romantic hero is around to help her clear her name. Songs include: "Come Along My Heart", "That does It", "Swing Low Sweet Lariat" and "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?".
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I'll Remember April
Title: I'll Remember April
Character: April Garfield
Released: April 1, 1945
Type: Movie
The daughter of a formerly wealthy man tries to get a job singing on a radio show, but gets involved in a feud and murder.
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Destiny
Title: Destiny
Character: Jane Broderick
Released: December 22, 1944
Type: Movie
Framed for two crimes he didn't commit, and betrayed by his girl, Cliff Banks finds himself on the run from the police. Now distrustful of everyone, he finds a safe haven hiding out at a quaint country cottage under the care of a kindly old farmer and his daughter, a Cinderella-like blind woman who seems to be able to communicate with nature. There he is forced by their love to question his misanthropy.
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Reckless Age
Title: Reckless Age
Character: Linda Wadsworth
Released: August 1, 1944
Type: Movie
Linda Wadsworth rebels against her millionaire grandfather, J. H. Wadsworth, and runs away from home. Unknown to Mr. Wadsworth, she gets a job at one of his many five-and-ten-cents stores as a clerk.
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Ghost Catchers
Title: Ghost Catchers
Character: Melinda Marshall
Released: June 16, 1944
Type: Movie
Two zanies get mixed up with a Southern colonel, his beautiful daughters, a nightclub and a haunted mansion.
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Pardon My Rhythm
Title: Pardon My Rhythm
Character: Jinx Page
Released: May 1, 1944
Type: Movie
A high school bandleader captures the interest of a popular co-ed.
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Moonlight in Vermont
Title: Moonlight in Vermont
Character: Gwen Harding
Released: December 24, 1943
Type: Movie
A poor country girl from Vermont travels to New York City to attend a theatrical school.
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Mister Big
Title: Mister Big
Character: Patricia Davis
Released: May 28, 1943
Type: Movie
Students at the Davis School of the Theatre are assigned "Antigone" as their class play, but they conspire to do a swing musical instead.
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It Comes Up Love
Title: It Comes Up Love
Character: Victoria Peabody
Released: April 9, 1943
Type: Movie
This modest bit of comedy and romance in the adolescent vein is about a couple of spirited juveniles, Donald O'Connor and Gloria Jean, who carry on a flirtation parallel with that of their elders, Louise Allbritton and Ian Hunter.
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When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Title: When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Character: Marilyn Benton
Released: December 24, 1942
Type: Movie
By popular consensus, Allan Jones' best Universal mini-musical of the 1940s was the timely When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Jones is cast as war hero Johnny Kovacs, who wearies of the adulation heaped upon him and takes refuge under an assumed name in a theatrical boarding house. Here he befriends orchestra leader Phil Spitalny and his all-girl aggregation, including the inimitable Evelyn and Her Magic Violin. When Army officials trace Johnny to the boarding house, his new friends assume that he's a deserter and try to convince him to return to duty.
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Get Hep to Love
Title: Get Hep to Love
Character: Doris Stanley
Released: October 2, 1942
Type: Movie
Orphan prodigy singer runs away from her oppressive aunt and tricks a rural couple into adopting her.
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What's Cookin'?
Title: What's Cookin'?
Character: Sue Courtney
Released: February 20, 1942
Type: Movie
J. P. Courtney wants to update the music on the radio program he sponsors, but his wife, Agatha Courtney, is the final authority and addicted to the classics and won't allow him to replace Professor Bistell and his symphonic orchestra. Conspiring with his daughter Sue and her friends, Marvo the Great, the Andrews Sisters, Anne Payne and bandleader Woody Herman, they devise a sabotage plot that gets rid of Professor Bistell, and a new sound is soon heard on the program.
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Jingle Belles
Title: Jingle Belles
Character: herself
Released: December 24, 1941
Type: Movie
Gloria Jean sings two songs in the Universal musical short, which also features The Sportsman Quartette, the Milt Herth Trio, the singing trio of Lee, Lyn and Lou, and the Schuplatter Dancers
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Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Title: Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Character: His Niece
Released: October 10, 1941
Type: Movie
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 film about a man who wants to sell a film story to Esoteric Studios. On the way he gets insulted by little boys, beaten up for ogling a woman, and abused by a waitress. W. C. Fields' last starring role in a feature-length film.
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A Little Bit of Heaven
Title: A Little Bit of Heaven
Character: Midge Loring
Released: October 10, 1940
Type: Movie
A child from the New York tenements sings on a radio quiz show and is eventually hired to a big-bucks contract, which allows her and her family to move into a posh apartment, with all the usual problems that accompany sudden wealth.
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If I Had My Way
Title: If I Had My Way
Character: Patricia 'Pat' Johnson
Released: May 5, 1940
Type: Movie
Construction worker Buzz Blackwell becomes the guardian of 12-year-old Pat Johnson after one of his buddies, her father, is killed. Buzz and Pat, along with their chum Axel Swensen, head to New York to look for the girl's uncle. The trio soon unexpectedly become owners of a tired restaurant.
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The Under-Pup
Title: The Under-Pup
Character: Pip-Emma Binns
Released: August 31, 1939
Type: Movie
A young city girl from a poor family is invited to spend the summer at a camp for girls from wealthy families. At first made fun of and ridiculed because of her background, she determines to show the snooty rich girls she's just as good as they are.