Audrey Totter

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Audrey Totter
from the trailer for The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Born	December 20, 1918 (1918-12-20) (age 89) Joliet, Illinois

Audrey Totter (born December 20, 1918 in Joliet, Illinois) is an American actress.

Totter began her acting career in radio in the late 1930s and after success in Chicago and New York, was signed to a seven-year film contract with MGM Studios.

She made her film debut in Main Street After Dark (1945) and during the 1940s established herself as a popular female lead. Although she appeared in various film genres, she became most widely known to movie audiences in film noir productions. Initially MGM groomed her to become an important player, and she was paired opposite some of their biggest stars. Among her successes were The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with John Garfield and Lana Turner, Lady in the Lake (1947) with Robert Montgomery and Jayne Meadows, The Unsuspected (1947 for Warner Brothers Studios) with Claude Rains, High Wall (1947) with Robert Taylor, The Saxon Charm (1948) with Montgomery and Susan Hayward, Alias Nick Beal (1949) with Ray Milland, The Set-Up (1949) with Robert Ryan, Any Number Can Play (1949) with Clark Gable and Alexis Smith, and Tension (1950) with Richard Basehart.

By the early 1950s the tough talking "dames" she was best known for portraying were no longer fashionable, and as MGM began to work towards creating more family themed films, Totter was released from her contract. Totter, for her part, was reported to have grown dissatisfied with MGM's handling of her career, only agreeing to appear in Any Number Can Play after Gable intervened.

She worked for Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox but the quality of her films dropped sharply, and by the end of the decade her career was in decline. A continuing role in the television series Medical Center, that of highly efficient Nurse Wilcox, from 1972 until 1976 was the biggest success of her later years. She was married to Leo Fred, assistant dean of the UCLA School of Medicine from 1953 to his death in 1995.

Totter's most recent TV appearance was in a 1987 episode of Murder, She Wrote.

[edit] Films

City Killer (1984) (TV)
The Great Cash Giveaway Getaway (1980) (TV)
The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979) as Martha Osten (Blind Cabin Widow)
The Nativity (1978) (TV) as Elizabeth
U.M.C. (1969) (TV) as Eve Wilcox
Chubasco (1968) as Theresa
The Outsider (1967) (TV) as Mrs. Bishop
Harlow (1965) as Marilyn
The Carpetbaggers (1964) as Prostitute
My Darling Judge (1961) (TV)
Man or Gun (1958) as Fran Dare
Jet Attack (1958) as Tanya Nikova
Ghost Diver (1957) as Anne Stevens
The Vanishing American (1955) as Marion Warner
A Bullet for Joey (1955) as Joyce Geary
Women's Prison (1955) as Joan Burton
Massacre Canyon (1954) as Flaxy
Mission Over Korea (1953) as Kate, nurse-lieutenant
Champ for a Day (1953) as Miss Gormley
Cruisin' Down the River (1953) as Sally Jane
Man in the Dark (1953) as Peg Benedict
Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) as Kate Quantrill aka Kitty McCoy
My Pal Gus (1952) as Joyce
Assignment: Paris (1952) as Sandy Tate
The Sellout (1952) as Cleo Bethel
FBI Girl (1951) as Shirley Wayne
The Blue Veil (1951) as Helen Williams
Under the Gun (1951) as Ruth Williams
Tension (1950) as Mrs. Claire Quimby
Any Number Can Play (1949) as Alice Elcott
The Set-Up (1949) as Julie Thompson
Alias Nick Beal (1949) as Donna Allen
The Saxon Charm (1948) as Alma
High Wall (1947) as Dr. Ann Lorrison
The Unsuspected (1947) as Althea Keane
The Beginning or the End (1947) as Jean O'Leary
Lady in the Lake (1947) as Adrienne Fromsett
The Secret Heart (1946) (voice) (uncredited) as Dinner Party Guest
The Cockeyed Miracle (1946) as Jennifer Griggs
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) as Madge Gorland
Ziegfeld Follies (1946) (voice) (uncredited) as Telephone Operator
The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945) as Lisa
Adventure (1945) (uncredited) as Ethel
The Hidden Eye (1945) (uncredited) as Perfume saleslady
Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945) (uncredited) as Mildred
Bewitched (1945) (voice) as Karen
Dangerous Partners (1945) as Lili Roegan
Main Street After Dark (1945) as Jessie Belle Dibson