Current:Home > InvestBarbara Rush, actor who co-starred with Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman among others, dies at 97-LoTradeCoin
Barbara Rush, actor who co-starred with Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman among others, dies at 97
View Date:2024-12-23 16:54:57
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Barbara Rush, a popular leading actor in the 1950 and 1960s who co-starred with Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman and other top film performers and later had a thriving TV career, has died. She was 97.
Rush’s death was announced by her daughter, Fox News reporter Claudia Cowan, who posted on Instagram that her mother died on Easter Sunday. Additional details were not immediately available.
Cowan praised her mother as “among the last of ”Old Hollywood Royalty” and called herself her mother’s “biggest fan.”
Spotted in a play at the Pasadena Playhouse, Rush was given a contract at Paramount Studios in 1950 and made her film debut that same year with a small role in “The Goldbergs,” based on the radio and TV series of the same name.
She would leave Paramount soon after, however, going to work for Universal International and later 20th Century Fox.
“Paramount wasn’t geared for developing new talent,” she recalled in 1954. “Every time a good role came along, they tried to borrow Elizabeth Taylor.”
Rush went on to appear in a wide range of films. She starred opposite Rock Hudson in “Captain Lightfoot” and in Douglas Sirk’s acclaimed remake of “Magnificent Obsession,” Audie Murphy in “World in My Corner” and Richard Carlson in the 3-D science-fiction classic “It Came From Outer Space,” for which she received a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.
Other film credits included the Nicholas Ray classic “Bigger Than Life”; “The Young Lions,” with Marlon Brando, Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift and “The Young Philadelphians” with Newman. She made two films with Sinatra, “Come Blow Your Horn” and the Rat Pack spoof “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” which also featured Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
Rush, who had made TV guest appearances for years, recalled fully making the transition as she approached middle age.
“There used to be this terrible Sahara Desert between 40 and 60 when you went from ingenue to old lady,” she remarked in 1962. “You either didn’t work or you pretended you were 20.”
Instead, Rush took on roles in such series as “Peyton Place,” “All My Children,” “The New Dick Van Dyke Show” and “7th Heaven.”
“I’m one of those kinds of people who will perform the minute you open the refrigerator door and the light goes on,” she cracked in a 1997 interview.
Her first play was the road company version of “Forty Carats,” a comedy that had been a hit in New York. The director, Abe Burrows, helped her with comedic acting.
“It was very, very difficult for me to learn timing at first, especially the business of waiting for a laugh,” she remarked in 1970. But she learned, and the show lasted a year in Chicago and months more on the road.
She went on to appear in such tours as “Same Time, Next Year,” “Father’s Day,” “Steel Magnolias” and her solo show, “A Woman of Independent Means.”
Born in Denver, Rush spent her first 10 years on the move while her father, a mining company lawyer, was assigned from town to town. The family finally settled in Santa Barbara, California, where young Barbara played a mythical dryad in a school play and fell in love with acting.
Rush was married and divorced three times — to screen star Jeffrey Hunter, Hollywood publicity executive Warren Cowan and sculptor James Gruzalski.
___
Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary. AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report from New York.
veryGood! (2)
Related
- Special counsel Smith asks court to pause appeal seeking to revive Trump’s classified documents case
- Morale down, cronyism up after DeSantis takeover of Disney World government, ex-employees say
- Republican Peter Meijer, who supported Trump’s impeachment, enters Michigan’s US Senate race
- C.J. Stroud's monster day capped by leading Texans to game-winning TD against Buccaneers
- Panel advises Illinois commemorate its role in helping slaves escape the South
- See Corey Gamble's Birthday Message to Beautiful Queen Kris Jenner
- The Fate of The Bear Will Have You Saying Yes, Chef
- MTV EMAs 2023 Winners: Taylor Swift, Jung Kook and More
- Beyoncé course coming to Yale University to examine her legacy
- USC fires defensive coordinator Alex Grinch after disastrous performance against Washington
Ranking
- MVSU football player killed, driver injured in crash after police chase
- Investigators headed to U.S. research base on Antarctica after claims of sexual violence, harassment
- 3 cities face a climate dilemma: to build or not to build homes in risky places
- Ailing Pope Francis meets with European rabbis and condemns antisemitism, terrorism, war
- Benny Blanco Reveals Selena Gomez's Rented Out Botanical Garden for Lavish Date Night
- Ukraine says 19 troops killed by missile at an awards ceremony. Zelenskyy calls it avoidable tragedy
- Polish president to appoint new prime minister after opposition coalition’s election win
- Trump’s business and political ambitions poised to converge as he testifies in New York civil case
Recommendation
-
Hill House Home’s Once-A-Year Sale Is Here: Get 30% off Everything & up to 75% off Luxury Dresses
-
Florida's uneasy future with Billy Napier puts them at the top of the Week 10 Misery Index
-
Polish president to appoint new prime minister after opposition coalition’s election win
-
Taylor Swift walks arm in arm with Selena Gomez, Brittany Mahomes for NYC girls night
-
FBI offers up to $25,000 reward for information about suspect behind Northwest ballot box fires
-
USC fires defensive coordinator Alex Grinch after disastrous performance against Washington
-
Ryan Blaney wins first NASCAR Cup championship as Ross Chastain takes final race of 2023
-
Luis Diaz appeals for the release of his kidnapped father after scoring for Liverpool