"Little Women" star Jean Parker dead at 90

Posted:
Dec 10, 2005

Petite brunette actress Jean Parker, the star of such 1930s and 1940s hits Little Women, Sequoia and The Ghost Goes West, died November 30 at 90.

The 5-foot-3-inch actress died at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital of complications from a stroke, son Robert Hanks told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. Parker, who appeared in over 70 movies, had lived at the retirement home since 1998, he added.

Parker portrayed Linda in the 1939 Republic Pictures comedy She Married a Cop, whichwas nominated for an Oscar for best motion picture score. The live-action film contained an animated sequence produced by Leon Schlesinger at Leon Schlesinger Studios.

The animated sequence was set in a New York animation studio where an Irish policeman is tricked into giving the voice of Paddy Pig singing to his girlfriend Peggy Pig.

Parker was born Louise Stephanie Zelinska, on August 11, 1915 at Deer Lodge in Powell County, Montana. In 1932, she debuted as Duchess Maria in Rasputin and the Empress.

Such MGM films as The Secret of Madame Blanche, Operator 13 and Gabriel over the White House offered her more ingenue roles.

In 1933 alone, she made seven movies, such as Frank Capra's Lady for a Day.

Other studios provided her most distinguished film roles: as Beth March in Little Women, the famous 1933 film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel (with Katherine Hepburn); and Rene Clair's The Ghost Goes West.

The 1939 Laurel and Hardy classic The Flying Deuces cast her as the love interest who induced Ollie Hardy to join the Foreign Legion.

She was also in The Gunfighter, starring Gregory Peck.

On the stage, Parker replaced Judy Holliday as the lead in Born Yesterday. In addition, she starred in several plays on the West Coast.

For a while in the 1970s, Parker coached young actors. However, she eventually gained a reputation as a recluse in Hollywood.

Jean Parker was married and divorced four times: to New York newsman George MacDonald, radio commentator Douglas Dawson, Los Angeles insurance broker Curtis Grotter, and actor Robert Lowery, with whom she had a son. She separated from Lowery, who died in 1971.