Sheree North, a platinum blond bombshell of 1950s musicals who is remembered by younger audiences for her continuing television roles as Lou Grant’s sultry girlfriend on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Kramer’s mother Babs on “Seinfeld,” has died. She was 72.
North, who had been in good health, died unexpectedly Friday at a Los Angeles hospital of complications following surgery, said her daughter, Dawn Bessire of Santa Monica.
Groomed as a studio glamour girl who could substitute for the more famous but often unreliable Marilyn Monroe, North was later interviewed or cast in documentaries and shows about Monroe. Among them were the 1980 television movie, “Marilyn: The Untold Story,” in which she played Monroe’s mother; and the documentaries “Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend” in 1987 and “Intimate Portrait: Marilyn Monroe” in 1996.
Hollywood insiders originally whispered that 20th Century Fox hired North only as a threat to the troublesome Monroe – whom she did replace in the 1955 “How to Be Very, Very Popular,” in which she outdanced and outshone the leggy Betty Grable. North not only shared Monroe’s blond coiffure but almost exactly matched her height and measurements.
Unlike other studio-styled blondes such as Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren, North tried to change her bombshell image, allowing herself to age gracefully, work without makeup and segue into older character parts. She worked steadily, enjoying a half-century career on stage, television and in film. But she never quite shook the initial image as a beauty, which she blamed on studio-generated press coverage in the 1950s.
“Even today,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1983, lamenting that she had been rejected for several dramatic roles because of her looks, “there’s still the same reaction when producers hear my name. They remember me as the blonde who was to have taken over from Marilyn Monroe.”
Los Angeles Times
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