Lurene Tuttle

Lurene Tuttle

Tuttle in 1947
Born (1907-08-29)August 29, 1907
Pleasant Lake, Indiana, U.S.
Died May 28, 1986(1986-05-28) (aged 78)
Encino, California, U.S.
Cause of death Cancer
Resting place Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Occupation Actress
Years active 1934–1986
Spouse(s) Melville Ruick
(m. 1928; div. 1945)
Frederick W. Cole
(m. 1950; div. 1956)
Children Barbara Ruick
Relatives Joseph Williams (grandson)

Lurene Tuttle (August 29, 1907 – May 28, 1986) was an American character actress and acting coach, who made the transition from vaudeville to radio, and later films and television. Her most enduring impact was as one of network radio's most versatile actresses. Often appearing in 15 shows a week,[1] comedies, dramas, thrillers, soap operas, and crime dramas, she became known as the "First Lady of Radio".

Early years

Tuttle was born August 29, 1907, at Pleasant Lake, Indiana, into a family with strong ties to entertainment. Her father, O.V. Tuttle, had been a performer in minstrel shows before becoming a station agent for a railroad. Her grandfather, Frank Tuttle, managed an opera house and taught drama. She discovered her own knack for acting after moving with her family to Glendale, Arizona. She later credited a drama coach there for "making me aware of life as it really is--by making me study life in real situations."[2]

After her family moved to Southern California, Tuttle appeared in Pasadena Playhouse productions before joining the vaudeville troupe, Murphy's Comedians. By the time of the Great Depression, Tuttle had put her remarkable vocal versatility to work in radio, and within a decade she became one of the most in-demand actresses in the medium.

Radio roles

Tuttle's radio debut came in 1936 when she appeared on Hollywood Hotel with Dick Powell.[2] Despite having never performed before a microphone, Tuttle's audition won her a three-year contract with the program.[3]

Thirteen years later, one newspaper columnist called her "quite possibly the most-heard woman in America."[4]

On radio's The Adventures of Sam Spade she played just about every female role, as well as Spade's secretary Effie Perrine.[1] She appeared in such shows as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a role that testified to her vocal versatility: for while playing Harriet Nelson's on-air mother, she concurrently appeared on The Great Gildersleeve as the niece Marjorie Forrester, a character twenty years her junior. Tuttle had regular roles in such shows as Brenthouse (a soap opera, as Nancy),[5] Dr. Christian (as nurse Judy Price), Duffy's Tavern (as Dolly Snaffle), One Man's Family (another soap opera; various roles), The Red Skelton Show (as Junior's mother and as Daisy June, roles that she shared with Harriet Nelson), Hollywood Hotel, and the soap opera Those We Love.

Dr. Christian was unusual in that the show, according to critic Leonard Maltin in The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age, solicited scripts from listeners (one of whom was a young Rod Serling) and put them on the air — with a little help. Tuttle recalled:

The real writers on the show had to fix them quite often a lot, because they were really quite amateurish. But they had nice thoughts, they had nice plots. They just needed fixing; the dialogue didn't work too well.

Tuttle guest starred on the NBC radio police series Dragnet, starring Jack Webb, Lux Radio Theater, The Screen Guild Theater and Suspense, in the episode "The Sisters", with Rosalind Russell. In The Whistler, she played good and evil twins and used separate microphones to stay in character for each twin.

It was during her time on Hollywood Hotel that Tuttle became an inadvertent co-catalyst in the founding of the American Federation of Radio Artists. According to Maltin, Tuttle's male counterpart on the show, veteran actor Frank Nelson (a frequent guest performer on Jack Benny's program), tried to get both a raise to $35-per-show — at a time when the show paid $5,000 an appearance to headlining guest stars. Nelson eventually got the raises, but the negotiations prompted him to become an AFRA co-founder and one of its active members.

Tuttle later became the first female president of the federation's Hollywood local.[2]

Tuttle also remembered the day the Hollywood Hotel sound effects man was upstaged by a Hollywood legend:

The soundman was supposed to do a little yipping, yappy dog, like a terrier. He sounded like a Newfoundland dog or something, and the director kept saying, "That won't do." So Olivia de Havilland was sitting next to me, and she says, "I can do a very good dog." And I said, "Well, I don't think they'll let you do a dog. This is an audience show; you're a star, you can't do a dog." And Olivia says, "I'm going to do it." So she went over to the director, went into the booth and said, "I'd like to try doing this dog for you." So they put her behind the screen, and she went on the show and she did that yipping dog."

Films and television

Tuttle became a familiar face to millions of television viewers with more than one hundred appearances from 1950 to 1986, often in the role of an inquisitive busybody. On television and in films, Tuttle streamlined herself into a pattern of roles between wise, loving wives/mothers or bristling matrons. She was familiar to the early television audience as wife/mother Lavinia (Vinnie) Day in Life with Father (1953–1955). Columnist Hedda Hopper called the selection of Leon Ames as Father and Tuttle as Mother "what I consider 22 carat casting with two all-Americans."[6]

Heaven Only Knows (1947) was her first film.[2] She went on to roles in other films such as Orson Welles's Macbeth (1948), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), as the wife of Sheriff Chambers. In Don't Bother to Knock (1952) she portrayed a mother who lets a disturbed Marilyn Monroe babysit her daughter. The next year she appeared again with Marilyn in Niagara, as Mrs. Kettering. She had a rare starring role as Ma Barker in Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960). She played Grandma Pusser in the original Walking Tall film trilogy, and also appeared in horror films such as The Manitou (1978), starring Tony Curtis. Her final film role was in the 1983 film Testament.

She guest starred twice on Edmond O'Brien's 1960 syndicated crime drama Johnny Midnight. She then played a supporting role in the 1961 Father of the Bride television situation comedy. She made six guest appearances on CBS's Perry Mason, with Raymond Burr, during the nine-year run of the show between 1957 and 1966. In most of her appearances she played the role of the defendant, such as Anna Houser in "The Case of the Substitute Face" in 1958, Sarette Winslow in "The Case of the Artful Dodger" in 1959, title character Sarah Breel in "The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe" in 1963, and Josephine Kempton in "The Case of the Grinning Gorilla" in 1965. However, in 1966 she played the role of the murderer—Henny McLeod—in "The Case of the Avenging Angel."

In 1958 and 1959, she was cast in two episodes as Gladys Purvis, the mother of series character Kate McCoy, played by Kathleen Nolan, in his ABC sitcom, The Real McCoys, with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna.[7] She appeared twice, as Belle Calhoun in "Skeleton in the Closet" (1958) and as Maude Sorel in "The Painted Lady" (1959), on the NBC western series, The Californians. She guest starred with Andrew Duggan in his ABC/Warner Brothers crime series, Bourbon Street Beat.

Tuttle appeared three times each on the CBS sitcoms The Danny Thomas Show and Petticoat Junction (once as Henrietta Greene, in the 1968 episode "Cannonball for Sale") and twice on the following: Leave It to Beaver, The Bob Cummings Show, The Ann Sothern Show, Pete and Gladys (as Mrs. Slocum), The Andy Griffith Show, Hazel, General Electric Theater, Switch, and Fantasy Island.

In 1960, she was cast as Mrs. Courtland in the episode "The Raffle Ticket" of the CBS sitcom based on the Hank Ketcham comic strip, Dennis the Menace, with Jay North and Joseph Kearns.[8]

Tuttle guest starred in such westerns as Buckskin, The Restless Gun with John Payne, Colt .45 with Wayde Preston, Johnny Ringo with Don Durant as well as The Cowboys, Little House on the Prairie, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Lawman, and The Iron Horse.[7]

Tuttle was cast as Mrs. Grange in the 1963 episode, "The Risk", of the NBC education drama series, Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus as an idealistic high school teacher in Los Angeles. She later appeared on the popular 60s fantasy sitcoms I Dream of Jeannie and The Munsters.

Tuttle's best known role to the general public was her stint as Lloyd Nolan's senior nurse in thirty-two episodes of the Diahann Carroll NBC series Julia (1968–1971) as the humorless but still warm-hearted Hannah Yarby.[7]

In 1980, Tuttle appeared as Mrs. McIntyre in the Bette Davis television movie, White Mama.[7] From 1981 to 1984, Tuttle appeared six times on the CBS medical drama series, Trapper John, M.D., starring Pernell Roberts.

Recognition

In 1944, Tuttle received Radio Life magazine's Distinguished Achievement Award for Best Supporting Feminine Player.[9]

Tuttle has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame -- "Star of Radio" at 1760 Vine Street and "Star of Television" at 7011 Hollywood Boulevard. Both stars were dedicated February 8, 1960.[10]

Personal life

Tuttle married Melville Ruick, an actor whom she had met during her radio years; the couple had a daughter, Barbara Ruick,[11] a musical comedy actress who married famed film composer John Williams before dying unexpectedly in 1974. Tuttle and Ruick eventually divorced. She married Frederick W. Cole, an engineer, November 27, 1950, in Pasadena, California; she sued him for divorce January 4, 1956.[12]

She became a respected acting coach and teacher—something she had always done, even at the height of her acting career (she often re-trained radio actors who had been away from the craft during service in World War II).

Tuttle had a hobby of collecting toy dogs. A 1930 newspaper article reported, "Her dressing room shelf is filled with more than 200 miniature replicas of every variety of dog known."[13]

Death

Tuttle died from cancer May 28, 1986, at Encino Hospital. She was survived by a granddaughter, two grandsons, and a great-granddaughter. Memorial services were held June 2, 1986, at Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.[2]

Her Sam Spade co-star, Howard Duff, who delivered her eulogy, remembered Tuttle:

She could just take hold of a part and do something with it... I think she never met a part she didn't like. She just loved to work; she loved to act. She's a woman who was born to do what she was doing and loved every minute of it.

Filmography

Records

YouTube connections below.

part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIPaS10r-T0

part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JApl4-mgZ0

The story had earlier been adapted for radio by Orson Welles in 1944, featuring a musical score by Bernard Herrmann. It was aired on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame broadcast on December 24, 1944[14] with Lureen Tuttle playing The Swallow and featuring Bing Crosby alongside Orson Welles, with Herrmann's music conducted by Victor Young.

Quotations

Listen to

References

  1. 1 2 "Lurene Tuttle, 79, an Actress In Films and on Radio and TV". New York Times. May 31, 1986. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Thackrey, Ted Jr. (May 30, 1986). "Character Actress Lurene Tuttle, 78, Dies". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
  3. ↑ Tuttle, Lurene (August 1947). "Luck Is Hard Work" (PDF). Radio Mirror 28 (3): 20–21, 81–82. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  4. ↑ Handsaker, Gene (October 26, 1949). "Lurene Tuttle Probably Most-Heard Woman in U. S.". The Hutchinson News. p. 4. Retrieved August 31, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ↑ Dunning, John. (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507678-3. P. 118.
  6. ↑ Hopper, Hedda (October 7, 1953). "Producer Crosses Sea to Sign Cary Grant". Chicago Tribune. p. Part 3-Page 6. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Lurene Tuttle". Internet Movie Data Base. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
  8. ↑ "The Raffle Ticket, Dennis the Menace, December 18, 1960". Internet Movie Data Base. Retrieved February 9, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Distinguished Achievement Awards" (PDF). Radio Life. April 9, 1944. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  10. ↑ "Lurene Tuttle". Hollywood Walk of Fame. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  11. ↑ "Mother and Daughter Suggest Beauty Tips". The Paris News. December 19, 1955. p. 3. Retrieved August 30, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ "Lurene Tuttle Sues for Divorce". Long Beach Independent. January 5, 1956. p. 2. Retrieved August 31, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ "Toy Dogs, Not Real Ones, Are Actress' Hobby". Oakland Tribune. May 6, 1930. p. 27. Retrieved August 31, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Pairpoint, Lionel. "And Here's Bing". BING magazine. International Club Crosby. Retrieved September 4, 2015.

External links

Lurene Tuttle at Find a Grave

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