Frances Dee

Trivia

• First grew interested in acting when she was cast as the lead in a senior play at Hyde Park High School.
• She accepted the role in I Walked with a Zombie (1943) so that she could use her salary to purchase a new automobile for her mother.
• In 1995 she donated 220 acres of her Thousand Oaks, California ranch to the Conejo Recreation and Park District to be preserved as parkland. Earlier, in 1981, she and Joel had given 75 acres to the District.
• The nonagenarian actress was a huge hit at the 1998 Memphis Film Festival in Tunica, Mississippi. Dee's biographer Andrew Wentink said she gained new fame in the 1990s for her role in films that forced the adoption of a Hollywood code on morality in the 1930s.
• In 1935, she and her husband Joel McCrea separated, but soon reconciled. In 1966, McCrea filed for divorce, charging Frances with cruelty, however, the couple stayed married until McCrea's death.
• Initially had a screen test for the role of "Scarlett O'Hara" and was actually George Cukor's first choice for the role of "Melanie" in Gone with the Wind (1939), but was deemed by David O. Selznick as being too similar in beauty to Vivien Leigh to play the role. Olivia de Havilland was then given the part.
• Frances Marion Dee was an American actress.

Quotes

• "I wanted to give up my career when I married Joel, but he wouldn't let me. I thought marriage, a home, husband and family were all I wanted. Joel knew I was sincere in my belief but he was wise enough to realize that sooner or later I might miss my work and blame him."