Anne Francis

Altaira's Uniform

Anne Francis didn't need acting lessons to realize that her looks would be her greatest asset and, at the same time, her biggest obstacle. By age five she was already posing for commercial catalogs, and before turning twelve she was lending her voice to radio serials in New York. She had that porcelain beauty Hollywood studios desperately sought in the 1950s.

In 1956 she showed up on the set of Forbidden Planet wearing a costume that made the censors of the era nervous. That miniskirt designed by Helen Rose was not just an aesthetic choice. It marked the first time a woman showed so much leg in a science fiction blockbuster without the script punishing her for it.

But the actress didn't want to be just a galactic ornament.

She worked under John Sturges in Conspiracy of Silence and shared the screen with Spencer Tracy. It was on that shoot that she learned that silence in front of the camera communicates more than any scream. MGM tried to mold her as the studio's next great blonde, but she preferred the freedom of per-picture contracts.

The Detective Worth Three Thousand Dollars

Television gave her the role in 1965 that pulled her out of the circuit of upscale supporting parts. She stepped into the shoes of Honey West, and the rules of the game changed forever on the small screen. She was the first woman to star in a detective series with a name of her own, rather than as the secretary of whichever hero was in charge.

And the gamble paid off.

She won a Golden Globe for that role and became a style icon with her trained ocelot and her judo skills. The series lasted only one season of thirty episodes because production costs were unaffordable for ABC. Each episode cost a small fortune by mid-decade standards.

After that, her career moved in a steady rotation of episodes of The Twilight Zone and Se ha escrito un crimen.

She never lacked a paycheck.

But Hollywood tends to forget quickly those who don't stay in the front line of movie marquees. She wrote her memoir in 1982 titled Voices from Home to purge the demons of an industry that treated her like fast-consumption product.

Retirement Among Ashes and Desert

She spent her last decades far from the red carpets of Los Angeles. She settled in Santa Barbara and devoted much of her time to meditation and writing. She didn't seek the approval of the new generation of critics, because she knew her work in studio films was already done.

In 2007 she was diagnosed with lung cancer, which marked the start of an exhausting physical battle. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy, but the disease came back with force a couple of years later.

Anne Francis died on January 2, 2011 at a residence in Santa Barbara from complications of pancreatic cancer at the age of 80.