Una Merkel Biography
Born: December 10, 1903
Died: January 02, 1986
Although she is best known for her later work, Una Merkel actually started in film in 1920 as Lillian Gish's stand-in for Way_Down_East. After a stage career in the 1920s, she returned to films as Ann Rutledge in D. W. Griffith's Abraham_Lincoln (1930). The vivacious character actress brightened up dozens of films, playing mostly comic roles interspersed with an occasional dramatic part. Films to watch include Dangerous_Female (1931); Private_Lives (1931); Red-Headed Woman (1932); 42nd_Street (1933), the film in which she memorably says of Ginger Rogers' character Anytime Annie: "The only time she ever said no she didn't hear the question;" The_Merry_Widow (both 1934 and 1952); Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935); Born to Dance (1936); Destry_Rides_Again (1939), where she and Marlene_Dietrich have a frenzied hair-pulling battle over the hapless Mischa Auer; On_Borrowed_Time (1939); The_Bank_Dick (1940); Road to Zanzibar (1941); This Is the Army (1943); With a Song in My Heart (1952); and The_Parent_Trap (1961), among many others. In 1956, she won a Tony Award for The Ponder Heart and in 1961 was nominated for an Academy Award for Summer and Smoke in the role she had originated on the stage. Rovi
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