Ann Sothern (Actor)

Actress Ann Sothern, 1947. (Photo: Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

Classically trained singer who briefly appeared in several films from the late 1920s before making her mark on Broadway. Sothern joined Columbia in 1933 and coasted as a star of B vehicles there; she also teamed five times with Gene Raymond for a series of modest programmer comedies and musicals at RKO. Sothern signed on with MGM in 1939 and emerged as the slightly dizzy but wisecracking lead of the popular, long-running comedy-adventure series, "Maisie." She also went on to enliven a number of musical comedies (even though she was miscast recreating Ethel Merman's stage role in "Panama Hattie" 1942) and exhibited a flair for dramatics in such engaging melodramas as "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949).

Sothern and MGM parted company after a decade and fewer good leading roles came her way in early middle age. So she turned her attention to TV in the early 1950s, starring in two very successful series "Private Secretary" (1953-57) and "The Ann Sothern Show" (1958-61), and intermittently appeared in features from the mid-60s. She did well in the political drama "The Best Man" (1964), and pulled off an especially striking dramatic performance as the mother of a compulsive murderer in Curtis Harrington's harrowing "The Killing Kind" (1973). Sothern also made another noteworthy return to the screen in a supporting role in "The Whales of August" (1987), for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Married to actors Roger Pryor and Robert Sterling and mother of actress Tisha Sterling.