Eve Arden

The venom on the tip of her tongue

Eunice Mary Quedens changed her name because it sounded like a sneeze, and nobody in Hollywood wanted to hire a cold. She chose Eve after one of her co-stars and Arden after a jar of Elizabeth Arden face cream she saw in her dressing room. And so was born the woman who perfected sarcasm before the movies knew what to do with it.

The industry never quite knew where to place so much intelligence.

She started out in vaudeville and went on to the Ziegfeld Follies, but her real strength was in her words. In 1937 she shot Dames at Sea, where she appeared with a live cat on her shoulders while delivering one-liners that cut like blades. She didn't need to be the ingenue or the femme fatale, because she was the one who always got the last line of the scene.

And that was both her curse and her blessing. The studios typecast her as the smart friend who never marries anyone. But audiences preferred her to many languid leading ladies who only knew how to sigh in front of the camera.

In 1945 she received her only Oscar nomination for Mildred Pierce. In that film she played Ida, the confidante of Joan Crawford who ran a restaurant and dropped uncomfortable truths between cocktails. She managed to steal the scene from the big star without missing a beat and without losing the rhythm of her lines.

A Teacher for the Ages

But movies had become too small for her, and radio came calling. In 1948 she began playing Connie Brooks in Our Miss Brooks, and the entire country fell in love with that high school teacher trying to make ends meet. It was such a massive hit that the series moved to television in 1952 and stayed on the air for four years.

She won an Emmy Award in 1954 for that role. Her character was so believable that many teachers' associations sent her real job offers to teach at their schools. She always replied politely (and with a touch of humor) that she could barely add up without using her fingers.

Before the end of the 1950s, she worked under Otto Preminger's direction in Anatomy of a Murder. She played the secretary to James Stewart and once again proved that comic timing is a matter of milliseconds. In 1959, that film showed that Arden could be serious without losing her bite.

But audiences preferred her.

Through the sixties and seventies, she moved back and forth between Broadway stages and guest spots on television. Her voice became a valuable asset, and her on-screen presence guaranteed that the script would sound better than it was written. Because Arden didn't read lines, Arden fired them off.

In 1978, a new generation discovered her thanks to Grease. As Principal McGee of Rydell High, she brought back that mix of authority and resignation that worked so well for her. She reprised the role in the 1982 sequel and was one of the few actresses to survive that sequel's critical nosedive.

She published her autobiography, The Three Phases of Eve, in 1985, reviewing her decades of work without cheap sentimentality. In 1987, she received a lifetime achievement award at the Kennedy Center Honors alongside figures such as Bette Davis.

She died at her home in Los Angeles on November 12, 1990 from heart failure. She was 82 years old and left behind a career with more than 70 films and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her death certificate notes that she had advanced colorectal cancer at the time of her death.