British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. D197. Photo: R.K.O. Radio.
Dutch postcard by Takken, no. A.X. 1081. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Films.
Howard Hughes’ protégée
Faith Domergue was born on the 16th of June 1924 or 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. When she was six weeks old, she was adopted by Adabelle Wemet and, when she was eighteen months old, her adoptive mother married Leo Domergue.
The family soon moved to California and, at the beginning of the 1940s, Faith Domergue signed a contract with Warner Bros.
In 1941, she attended a party aboard Howard Hughes’s yacht. The wealthy businessman was immediately smitten with the pretty teenager. He began courting her and, in October 1941, he gave her an engagement ring. He also bought out her Warner Bros. contract.
They had an on-and-off relationship for several years. She was kept isolated by Hughes, who tried to exercise the most control he could on her life.
Faith allegedly said about this period of her life: "Suddenly, my professional and emotional future were completely in his hands".
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W945. Photo: R.K.O. Radio.
British postcard in the Greetings series. Photo: R.K.O. Radio. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
Groomed for stardom
She finally got tired of Hughes’ philandering and, in 1945, she began dating bandleader Teddy Stauffer, whom she married in January 1946. The romance between Hughes and Faith Domergue was over but their professional relationship didn’t end there.
She played a supporting part in Young Widow (1946), which starred Jane Russell, another Hughes protégée.
He then decided to groom her for stardom in a screen adaptation of Prosper Mérimée’s novel, 'Colomba'. It took several years to be completed. It was first started under the direction of Max Ophüls before Preston Sturges took over from him. Dissatisfied, Hughes then hired Stuart Heisler. In the end, it was Mel Ferrer who finished the movie, which was called Vendetta.
During filming, Faith Domergue, after her divorce from Stauffer, married director Hugo Fregonese in 1947. They had two children in 1949 and 1951 and divorced in 1958. In November 1950, audiences could at last see her in a leading role in the Film Noir Where Danger Lives, in which she co-starred with Robert Mitchum.
In December, Vendetta was eventually released but was not well-received. When tired and pregnant, she told the studio that she couldn’t go on to promote her two movies in New York, Howard Hughes suddenly lost interest in her and she never heard of him anymore.
Dutch postcard by Takken, no. A.X. 1753. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Films.
Spanish postcard by Cine Mundo.
Her post-Howard Hughes career
She pursued her career by being featured in Westerns such as The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), The Great Sioux Uprising (1953) and Santa Fe Passage (1955). In 1954, she played Linda Darnell’s sister in This Is My Love (1954) and was then a mysterious lady who was able to transform herself into a snake in the Horror movie Cult of the Cobra (1955).
She is fondly remembered by Science-Fiction movie buffs for her role as a scientist in This Island Earth (1955). In the same vein, she had to cope with a giant radioactive octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). She then went to Great Britain for Timeslip (1955) and also starred there in two crime dramas, Soho Incident (1956) and Man in the Shadow (1957). After an Italian movie, Il cielo brucia (1958), she came back to Hollywood for the Western Escort West (1959), opposite Victor Mature.
At the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, she was very active on TV before resuming her movie career with the Western California (1963). In 1965, she appeared in Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. In fact, this was a 1962 Soviet movie called Planeta Bur whom Roger Corman had purchased the rights for the American market. To make the film more marketable for local audiences, he decided to incorporate new scenes filmed with Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone.
In the last part of her career, she performed in several Italian movies such as Una sull’altra (1969) or L’uomo dagli occhi di ghiaccio (1971). In the U.S., she also starred in three low-budget Horror movies: Legacy of Blood (1971), The House of Seven Corpses (1974) and So Evil, My Sister (1974). Her filmography ended with the Italian film Amore grande, amore libero (1976).
In 1992, Faith Domergue was widowed from her third husband, Paolo Cossa, whom she had married in 1966. She spent the last years of her life with her daughter and passed away on the 4th of April 1999.
Dutch postcard by Takken, no. A.X. 828. Photo: RKO Radio Films.
Argentinian postcard by Cromocart G.W., no. 82. Photo: RKO Radio Films.
Text and postcards: Marlene Pilaete.
No comments:
Post a Comment