Throughout Hollywood history there have been actors and actresses who seemed to have a shot at stardom and then fizzled. We like to highlight those folks every once in a while.
Warner Brothers had high hopes for Andrea King when they signed her in 1944 after she had bombed her screen test at Paramount Pictures. She was in her mid-20s at the time. At Chez Jack Warner, she flourished. By one count, she appeared in nine movies in 18 months.
Warner didn’t particularly like her name — King was born Georgette Andre Barry in Paris in 1919. Her mother drove an ambulance in France during World War I. She was also a dancer and hung out with the likes of Isadora Duncan.
Getting back to the history of her marquee name, Warner Bros. at the time of her studio signing dubbed her “Georgia King.” She hated the monicker, claiming that it made her sound like a “burlesque queen on the Mississippi.” Warner then decreed that forever more, she should be known as “Andrea.” The actress consented gleefully — “that I like.”
In 1945, in what was undoubtedly a publicity ploy to hype her burgeoning career, King was voted by Warner photogs as the year’s most “photogenic” actress. Okay. No doubt King was a looker (see below).
Among her notable films was Delmer Daves 1944 outing, The Very Thought of You.
Another notable title for Andrea was 1945’s Hotel Berlin, a wartime thriller starring Faye Emerson (now there is a name to conjure with).
Andrea worked pretty steadily throughout the Forties and Fifties, usually in secondary roles as women of mysterious origins or outright “bad girls.” But as capable as she was, the movie public never really took to her. So, in the Fifties, Andrea wisely shifted her career to television, perhaps most memorably on the Perry Mason series.
King, who died in 2003 at the age of 84, never became anything like a top line star. Today, perhaps except for her tv appearances, she is virtually forgotten. Stardom is a fiendishly elusive thing, and despite her winsome looks and talent to match, King never quite achieved it.
ANDREA KING her fame was a lot more than just FLEETING…
She managed to carve out a 54 year career that was mostly spent in television, for which she was among the first to be honored for with a star on HOLLYWOOD’s Walk of Fame.
Andrea worked on the whole gambit of TV shows, and appeared in the first of two pilot movies made before Columbo became part of the Mystery Movie wheel that played on NBC for most of the 1970’s.
For someone in 1945 who was voted the most photogenic actress on the Warner lot by it’s staff photographers, unlike so many other starlets that were once poster name attractions, Andrea King didn’t go the way of those that simply faded-out and hit the skids, she adjusted to the times and worked…
And she must have made a comfortable living, as it is reported that –
“She never cooked a meal nor purchased any kinds of groceries in her entire life, she would dine out all three meals a day.”
ANDREA KING also had a career as a children’s book author, but the book written on her, and her mother – More Than Tongue Can Tell: The Story of Andrea King and Her Mother Belle McKee by Paul Miles Schneider and published in 2014, would make a good movie itself…
“Two strong-willed women. One incredible century. Their extraordinary, true story. MORE THAN TONGUE CAN TELL is the one-hundred-year saga (1885-1985) of screen beauty and film star Andrea King and her equally indomitable, cigar-smoking mother Belle McKee.
Imagine, for a moment, what it must have been like growing up in the 1880’s on a farm across the street from Thomas Edison, experiencing the first burst of electric light illuminating your childhood home. Belle’s father George Hart was an inventor himself, and as the family’s prosperity grew, so did Belle’s private aspirations. She dreamed of a life in the theatre, and against her parents wishes, she studied in secret, dancing with the legendary Isadora Duncan in New York. But when Isadora left the country for France, Belle volunteered as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross in order to avoid asking her parents for traveling expenses. Belle found herself on the front lines in World War I, and the experience changed her forever. She soon had a daughter, Georgette, and in 1919, upon learning of her father’s grave illness, Belle returned to the States with her baby. Now a single mother with few options available to her, Belle agreed to marry a wealthy banker and settle down in New York. Raised in Forest Hills and Palm Beach, Georgette also dreamed of a life in the theatre. She was spotted by a representative of the Shubert brothers in a boarding school recital and, at the age of fourteen, made her Broadway debut weeks later.
Georgette came to be known as Andrea King, a name given to her by movie mogul Jack Warner when she rose to fame at Warner Bros. in the mid-1940s. Follow Andrea on her turbulent path to stardom in Hollywood’s heyday—and pick up fascinating, personal anecdotes about Montgomery Clift, Tallulah Bankhead, Thomas Mitchell, Lillian Gish, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Peter Lorre, Ida Lupino, Bob Hope, and Edward G. Robinson, just to name a few.
But Andrea’s story delves deeper into private struggles: rape, abortion, child molestation, alcoholism, domestic violence, disputed judgment, and missed opportunities—as well as the triumphs of romance and ingenuity. Throughout their lives, and a century of change and turmoil unlike any other, these two women possessed a bond that endured. They loved each other “more than tongue can tell.”
I knew of Andrea’s work through an extensive project I did on writer/director/producer DELMER DAVES, a man who’s work that has always been grossly under-rated, and who’s iconic films are certainly worthy of a whole series of articles on Classic Movie Chat, even if no one bothers to comment!
Thank you for that synopsis on Andrea King. She appears in two of my favorite movies, “Band of Angels” and “Darby’s Rangers.” I was always curious about her.