Jeff Donnell

Actor

About

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Also Known As

Jean Marie Donnell, "Miss" Jeff Donnell

Birth Place

South Windham, Maine, USA

Born

July 10, 1921

Died

April 11, 1988

Cause of Death

Apparent Heart Attack

Biography

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As frequent confidante or comic sidekick, sprightly character actress Jeff Donnell played supporting parts in a range of film and television productions, including such highly regarded pictures as "Sweet Smell of Success" and "In a Lonely Place." Born Jean Marie Donnell in South Windham, Maine, she self-appointed her nickname from an obsession with the comic strip "Mutt and Jeff." She gr...

Filmography

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Portrait of a Stripper (1979)

Rendezvous Hotel (1979)

Murder by Natural Causes (1979)

Spider-Man (1977)

McNaughton's Daughter (1976)

Stand Up and Be Counted (1972)

Photos & Videos

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Roughshod (1949) -- (Movie Clip) I'm Not In His Shoes

Easy Living (1949) -- (Movie Clip) I Like You Chubby

Family & Companions

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Aldo Ray

Husband

Actor. Married 1954, divorced 1956.

Biography

As frequent confidante or comic sidekick, sprightly character actress Jeff Donnell played supporting parts in a range of film and television productions, including such highly regarded pictures as "Sweet Smell of Success" and "In a Lonely Place." Born Jean Marie Donnell in South Windham, Maine, she self-appointed her nickname from an obsession with the comic strip "Mutt and Jeff." She graduated from the Yale School of Drama and made her first appearance in the 1942 screwball comedy "My Sister Eileen." She landed occasional larger roles in many of her '40s pictures, including several Western musicals, though she stepped up a notch for the 1950 noir "In a Lonely Place" as best friend to the tormented Gloria Grahame. Subsequent films included "Thief of Damascus," as renowned storyteller Scheherazade, and "The Blue Gardenia," a late work by German director Fritz Lang. In the grim and gritty "Sweet Smell of Success," she played the needy secretary of desperate publicist Tony Curtis, and on the other end of the spectrum, she played the mother of the beach-loving heroine in "Gidget Goes Hawaiian." After a number of '50s television appearances, she moved more squarely into guest spots on series in the '60s and beyond, with only a few more film roles, including a part in the drama of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" Throughout the '80s, Donnell played a recurring role on the soap "General Hospital" as a housekeeper until her sudden death from a heart attack in 1988.

Filmography

Cast (Feature Film)

Portrait of a Stripper (1979)

Rendezvous Hotel (1979)

Murder by Natural Causes (1979)

Spider-Man (1977)

McNaughton's Daughter (1976)

Stand Up and Be Counted (1972)

Love, Hate, Love (1971)

Congratulations, It's a Boy! (1971)

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

The Comic (1969)

Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)

Dorothy Lawrence

The Swingin' Maiden (1963)

Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961)

Dorothy Lawrence

Force of Impulse (1961)

Destination 60,000 (1957)

The Guns of Fort Petticoat (1957)

My Man Godfrey (1957)

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Magnificent Roughnecks (1956)

Massacre Canyon (1954)

Flight Nurse (1954)

Lt. Ann Phillips

So This Is Love (1953)

Henrietta Van Dyke

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Thief of Damascus (1952)

Lady Sheherazade

The First Time (1952)

Skirts Ahoy! (1952)

Because You're Mine (1952)

Three Guys Named Mike (1951)

Walk Softly, Stranger (1950)

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Big Timber (1950)

Redwood Forest Trail (1950)

The Fuller Brush Girl (1950)

Easy Living (1949)

Outcasts of the Trail (1949)

Stagecoach Kid (1949)

Post Office Investigator (1949)

April Shaughnessy

Roughshod (1949)

Mr. District Attorney (1947)

Throw a Saddle on a Star (1946)

The Phantom Thief (1946)

Singing on the Trail (1946)

That Texas Jamboree (1946)

Cowboy Blues (1946)

It's Great to Be Young (1946)

Georgia Johnson

The Unknown (1946)

Night Editor (1946)

Martha Cochrane

Tars and Spars (1946)

The Power of the Whistler (1945)

Eadie Was a Lady (1945)

Song of the Prairie (1945)

Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944)

She's a Soldier Too (1944)

Nine Girls (1944)

"Butch" Hendricks

3 Is a Family (1944)

Dancing in Manhattan (1944)

Stars on Parade (1944)

Carolina Blues (1944)

Charlotte Barton

Once Upon a Time (1944)

What's Buzzin' Cousin? (1943)

There's Something About a Soldier (1943)

Doughboys in Ireland (1943)

A Night to Remember (1942)

The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)

My Sister Eileen (1942)

Life Events

1942

Film acting debut

Photo Collections

The Guns of Fort Petticoat - Movie Posters

Here are a variety of movie posters for Columbia Pictures' The Guns of Fort Petticoat (1957), starring Audie Murphy and Kathryn Grant.

Videos

Roughshod (1949) -- (Movie Clip) I'm Not In His Shoes Rancher Clay (Robert Sterling) and kid brother Steve (Claude Jarman Jr.) are standing guard when Clayton (George Cooper) rides up, looking to rescue Marcia (Martha Hyer), one of the working girls (Gloria Grahame as Mary, with Myrna Dell and Jeff Donnell) they’re escorting to safety, in director Mark Robson’s Roughshod, 1949.

Easy Living (1949) -- (Movie Clip) I Like You Chubby Opening neglects to mention the profession of Tim (Sonny Tufts) and visiting Pete (Victor Mature), whom his wife Penny (Jeff Donnell) is very happy to receive at their New York apartment, in the not-very athletic football drama Easy Living, 1949, co-starring Lizabeth Scott and Lucille Ball.

My Sister Eileen (1942) -- (Movie Cilp) He's Not The Drug Store? Random gent (Chick Chandler) arrives looking for the previous tenant, confusing Eileen (Janet Blair) then Ruth (Rosalind Russell), "Wreck" (Gordon Jones) and wife (Jeff Donnell) then summoned, in My Sister Eileen, 1942.

In A Lonely Place (1950) -- (Movie Clip) You're The Killer Screenwriter Dix (Humphrey Bogart) is a dinner guest imagining the murder in which he's a suspect for cop-pal Brub (Frank Lovejoy) and his wife Sylvia (Jeff Donnell) in Nicholas Ray's In A Lonely Place 1950.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) -- (Movie Clip) Your Meaty Sympathetic Arms One of Tony Curtis' best scenes ever, as press agent Sidney Falco with assistant Sally (Jeff Donnell), having failed to get an item published for restauranteur Joe (Joseph Leon), and at the mercy of still not-seen columnist Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), early in Sweet Smell Of Success, 1957,

Blue Gardenia, The (1953) -- (Movie Clip) Dear Norah Long takes and a quick rebound as Norah (Anne Baxter) sits down to dine with a letter from her boyfriend in Korea, then takes a call from Harry (Raymond Burr), worrying roommate Sally (Jeff Donnell) in Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia, 1953.

My Man Godfrey (1957) -- (Movie Clip) Next Cage On The Left His first day on the job, the until-now vagrant David Niven (title character) with mother Angelica (Jessie Royce Landis) then daughter Irene (June Allyson), neither immediately recalling the circumstances of his hiring, maid Jeff Donnell swooning between, in the 1957 re-make, My Man Godfrey.

Carolina Blues (1944) -- (Movie Clip) Pucker Up Opening schtick, band leader Kay Kyser as himself, sax-player sidekick Sully Mason, Jeff Donnell as publicist "Charlotte," comic Ish Kabibble, Victor Moore as industrialist "Carver," and singer Georgia Carroll, who had just become Mrs. Kyser, in Columbia's Carolina Blues, 1944.

Guns Of Fort Petticoat -- (Movie Clip) Use Your Muscles Hewitt (Audie Murphy) stops rowdy Kettle (Sean McClory) fooling around, then organizes his Texan women-folk (Kathryn Grant, Hope Emerson, Patricia Livingston, Jeanette Nolan et al) against Indian attacks, in The Guns Of Fort Petticoat, 1957.

Fuller Brush Girl, The - (Re-issue Trailer) Lucille Ball stars as a daffy door-to-door saleswoman who blunders into a murder investigation in The Fuller Brush Girl (1950).

Sweet Smell Of Success - (Original Trailer) Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis in their best roles as a power-mad newspaper columnist and the press agent who supplies him with dirt in Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

Companions

Aldo Ray

Husband

Actor. Married 1954, divorced 1956.

Bibliography

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