Coleen Gray

American actress Coleen Gray (1922-2015) played 'good girls' in such classics as the Western Red River (1946), the Film Noir Kiss of Death (1947) and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956). Still, she never became as big a star as many thought she should have.


French postcard by Editions P.I., La Garenne-Colombes, no. 216. Photo: Paramount, 1949.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 824. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

'Too much for a woman? Put your arms around me, Tom. Hold me.'

Coleen Gray was born Doris Bernice Jensen in Staplehurst, Nebraska, in 1922. Her parents, Arthur and Anna Jensen, were strict Lutheran Danish farmers. After graduating from Hutchinson High School, as Doris Jensen studied art, literature, and music at Hamline University, and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts. She travelled to California and enrolled at UCLA.

She had leading roles in the Los Angeles stage productions 'Letters to Lucerne' and 'Brief Music', which won her a 20th Century Fox contract, a seven-year deal at $150 a week in 1944. She then changed her name to Coleen Gray, sometimes billed as Colleen. After playing a bit part in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical State Fair (Walter Lang, 1945), she became pregnant and briefly stopped working.

Gray played her first significant role alongside John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in the Western Red River (Howard Hawks, 1946-1948). Ronald Bergan writes in his obituary of Gray in The Independent: "In the lyrical Howard Hawks Western, Gray imbues her one scene, in which John Wayne bids her farewell before heading west, with great force and tenderness. 'I want to go with you,' she says. 'I’m strong. I can stand anything you can.'

'It’s too much for a woman,' he replies. 'Too much for a woman? Put your arms around me, Tom. Hold me. Feel me in your arms. Do I feel weak, Tom? I don’t, do I?' Gray is memorably last seen isolated in long shot as the wagon train pulls out."

In 1947, she not only had a significant role opposite Victor Mature and Richard Widmark in the Film Noir Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947) but also performed the important role of Molly alongside Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell in the cult classic Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947). This was followed in 1950 by a leading role opposite Bing Crosby in the comedy Riding High (Frank Capra, 1950). Riding High was not a success, and Fox ended her contract in 1950.


Vintage collector card. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Coleen Gray and Victor Mature in Fury at Furnace Creek (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1948).

A more nuanced proto-feminist film than the cheesy title suggests

In the following years, Coleen Gray worked steadily, but mostly in smaller films, including several Film Noirs. Ronald Bergan: "Gray, with her pretty features, slightly pointed nose and wide eyes, was often the only ethical or innocent element in the dark, doom-laden crime dramas." She played a crooked nurse in the Film Noir The Sleeping City (George Sherman, 1950) with Richard Conte. In Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson, 1952), she was a corrupt cop’s law student daughter, who brings romance into the life of a man (John Payne) unjustly accused of a robbery. She was in a relationship with John Payne from 1952 to 1953.

In Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956), she was the faithful girlfriend of a criminal (Sterling Hayden), who waited five years for him to be released from prison, and who gets drawn reluctantly into a heist. An exception to her 'good girl' roles was the Western Tennessee’s Partner (Allan Dwan, 1955) in which she played a gold digger who tries to trap a cowboy (Ronald Reagan) into marriage for his money.

In the early 1960s, leading roles followed in the B-Horror film The Leech Woman (Edward Dein, 1960) and the Science-Fiction film The Phantom Planet (William Marshall, 1961), both released in double feature shows. Bergan calls The Leech Woman "a more nuanced proto-feminist film than the cheesy title suggests. Gray, as a neglected ageing wife of a scientist, goes to darkest Africa where she discovers an elixir of youth, which entails killing men for their hormones. In the process, she gets her revenge on her despicable husband, who loved her only as long as she was young and beautiful."

Parallel to her film career, Gray was a regular on television, particularly as a guest star on Western series such as Maverick, Have Gun – Will Travel, Rawhide, The Virginian and Bonanza. Her work on television became more and more dominant through the 1960s and 1970s after the films tailed off. Her last film role was that of Marian in Cry From The Mountain (James F. Collier, 1985).

Gray married three times. Her first marriage, to producer and director Rod Amateau, ended in divorce (1945-1949). In 1953, she married aviation executive William Clymer Bidlack, who died in 1978. Her third marriage was in 1979 with biblical scholar Joseph 'Fritz' Zeiser, who died in 2012. She had a daughter, Susan Amateau, from her first marriage, and a son, Bruce Robin Bidlack, from her second marriage. Coleen Gray died in 2015 at the age of 92 and was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, beside Fritz Zeiser.


Dutch postcard by Van Leer's Fotodrukindustrie N.V., Amsterdam. Photo: Paramount Pictures.


Dutch postcard by Sparo (Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam). Photos: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The picture stars are Judy Garland, Betty Hutton, Vivian Blaine (twice), Monica Lewis, Pier Angeli, Ann Blyth and Mario Lanza, Coleen Gray, and Jane Powell. The postcard must date from ca. 1951, when Blyth and Lanza starred together in The Great Caruso (Richard Thorpe, 1951).

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Independent), Bill Hafker (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.