| Lurene Tuttle | |
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Lurene Tuttle (left) and Rosalind Russell in "The Sisters" on Suspense in 1948. |
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| Born | August 29, 1907 Pleasant Lake, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | May 28, 1986 (aged 78) Encino, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1934-1987 |
| Spouse | Mel Ruick (?-?) (divorced) 1 child Frederick W. Cole (1950-1956) (divorced) |
Lurene Tuttle (August 29, 1907 - May 28, 1986) was a character actress, who made transitions from vaudeville to radio, to films and television. Her most enduring impact was as one of network radio's most versatile actresses. Often appearing in 15 shows a week, comedies, dramas, thrillers, soap operas, and crime dramas, and back she became known as the First Lady of Radio.
She became interested in acting after her family moved to Southern California, appearing in Pasadena Playhouse productions before joining the vaudeville troupe, Murphy's Comedians. By the Great Depression, Tuttle had put her remarkable vocal versatility to work in radio, and within a decade she became one of the most in-demand actresses in the medium.
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On radio's The Adventures of Sam Spade she played just about every female role, as well as Spade's man-hungry secretary Effie Perrine. She appeared in such shows as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a role that testified to her vocal versatility: she played Harriet Nelson's on-air mother at a time when she played, concurrently, a young adult onThe Great Gildersleeve as the niece Marjorie Forrester, a character 20 years her junior. Tuttle also had regular roles in such shows as Brenthouse (a soap opera, as Nancy), Dr. Christian (as nurse Judy Price), Duffy's Tavern (as Dolly Snaffle), One Man's Family (another soap; various roles), The Red Skelton Show (as Junior's mommy and as Daisy June, roles she shared with Harriet Nelson), Hollywood Hotel and the soap opera Those We Love.
She made numerous guest appearances on such shows as John Payne's The Restless Gun, Dragnet, Lux Radio Theater, The Screen Guild Theater and Suspense (in "The Sisters", with Rosalind Russell). In The Whistler she played good and evil twins and used separate microphones to stay in character for each twin.
Dr. Christian was unusual in that the show, according to critic Leonard Maltin (in The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age), solicited scripts from listeners (one of whom was a young Rod Serling) and put them on the air — with a little help. Tuttle recalled:
It was during her time on Hollywood Hotel that Tuttle became an inadvertent co-catalyst in the founding of the American Federation of Radio Artists. According to Maltin, Tuttle's male counterpart on the show, veteran actor Frank Nelson (a frequent guest performer on Jack Benny's program), tried to get both a raise to $35-per-show — at a time when the show paid $5,000 an appearance to headlining guest stars. Nelson eventually got the raises, but the negotiations prompted him to become an AFRA co-founder and one of its active members.
Tuttle also remembered the day the Hollywood Hotel sound effects man was upstaged by a Hollywood legend:
Tuttle became a familiar face to millions of television viewers with over 100 TV appearances from 1950 to 1986. On TV and in films, Tuttle streamlined herself into a pattern of roles between wise, loving wives/mothers or bristling matrons. She was familiar to the early television audience as wife/mother Lavinia (Vinnie) Day in Life with Father (1953–1955), while concurrently graduating to film roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and such other films as Heaven Only Knows, Orson Welles's Macbeth, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Fortune Cookie and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. In Don't Bother to Knock (1952) she portrayed a mother who lets a disturbed Marilyn Monroe babysit her daughter, and had a rare starring role as Ma Barker in Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960).
She guest starred twice on Edmond O'Brien's 1960 syndicated crime drama Johnny Midnight. She then played a supporting role in the short-lived Father of the Bride (1961) television situation comedy.
Lurene Tuttle's best known role to the general public was her stint as Lloyd Nolan's senior nurse in the Diahann Carroll series Julia (1968–1971) as the humorless but still warm-hearted Hannah Yarby. In 1980, Tuttle appeared in the Bette Davis television movie, White Mama.
Tuttle married Melville Ruick, an actor she had met during her radio years; the couple had a daughter, Barbara Ruick, a musical comedy actress who married famed film composer John Williams before dying unexpectedly in 1974. Tuttle and Ruick eventually divorced; Tuttle remarried, but her second marriage didn't last long. She became a respected acting coach and teacher—something she had always done, even at the height of her acting career (she often re-trained radio actors who had been away from the craft during service in World War II)—until her death from cancer in 1986, aged 78. She was survived by three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Her Sam Spade co-star, Howard Duff, who delivered her eulogy, remembered Tuttle: