Eleanor Parker

The Punishment of Not Having a Fixed Face

Eleanor Parker signed her contract with Warner Bros. on the very day she turned eighteen. It wasn't a birthday gift but the result of an almost obsessive determination to leave Ohio and reach the stages of Pasadena.

In 1941, she debuted in They Died with Their Boots On, but her scenes ended up on the editing room floor. That early stumble didn't stop her. She worked in minor productions until 1946, when she starred in Of Human Bondage. Critics began to notice how her face changed dramatically depending on hairstyle or lighting.

That gift for disguise was her greatest strength and her worst curse.

Parker wasn't after cover-girl stardom. She was after the nerve of the character. Her technique was based on total disappearance into the role she was given. As a result, the general public recognized her performances but rarely remembered her name when leaving the theater.

Three Nominations and a Snub

The 1950s placed her at the center of the industry. In 1950, she played an inmate in Caged. To prepare for the role, she visited real prisons and asked for her hair to be cut carelessly in front of the camera. She earned her first Oscar nomination. Just one year later, she was nominated again for Detective Story under William Wyler's direction.

Hollywood didn't quite know where to pigeonhole her.

In 1955, she received her third nomination for Interrupted Melody. She played opera singer Marjorie Lawrence, and many critics assumed she would win. But she left the ceremony empty-handed. She amassed three Oscar nominations in just five years without ever taking home the award.

That string of recognition without a trophy pulled her away from the pursuit of commercial stardom. So she began accepting supporting roles where she could explore darker or more complex nuances. In 1955, she also made The Man with the Golden Arm alongside Frank Sinatra (in which she feigned paralysis to keep her husband).

The Elegance of Defeat

Most viewers remember her today as the woman who didn't end up with Captain von Trapp. In 1965, she filmed The Sound of Music. She accepted the role of Baroness Elsa Schraeder knowing that audiences would love Julie Andrews. Yet she brought an icy elegance that kept the character from becoming a cardboard villain.

That was her last major hit at the global box office.

From the seventies on, movies called on her less often. She took refuge in television and appeared in series such as Hawaii Five-O and Murder, She Wrote. In 1991, she made her final professional appearance in the TV movie Dead on the Money.

She kept her private life under an absolute shield that lasted for decades. She married four times and had four children, but she never fed the Los Angeles gossip columns. Parker preferred that people talk about her characters rather than her divorces.

She finished her career with zero Oscars on her shelf, despite being one of the most precise actresses of her generation.

She spent her last decades away from the spotlight at her home in Palm Springs. Eleanor Parker died on December 9, 2013 from complications of pneumonia. She was ninety-one years old.