Biography

Dee was born in Los Angeles, where her Army officer father was stationed, and grew up in Chicago after her father was transferred there. In 1929, he was re-assigned to L.A., and, as a lark, the 19 year old Dee began working in motion pictures as an extra. Her debut was in Words and Music (1929) with Lois Moran. After her breakthrough role in Playboy of Paris (1930) opposite Maurice Chevalier, she met Joel McCrea on the set of the 1933 film The Silver Cord (1933).

Following a whirlwind courtship, the two were married later that year in Rye, New York. Their 57-year marriage ended in 1990, when McCrea died. In the 70s, she and McCrea were rumored to be worth between fifty and one hundred million dollars. Dee hasn't acted since the mid-1950s, and said she didn't miss it. The nonagenarian actress was a huge hit at the 1998 Memphis Film Festival in Tunica, Mississippi. She died in 2004.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tom Weaver < [email protected]>

Actress Frances Dee, hailed as one of the most beautiful women in motion pictures, was born Jane Dee in Los Angeles, on November 26, 1909. An "Army brat", her officer father was transferred to Chicago shortly thereafter. Her movie career was the result of her father's being re-assigned to L.A. in 1929, when Dee was 19 years old. She began appearing in movies as an extra, making her uncredited debut in Words and Music (1929). Her looks brought her attention, and she soon established herself in Playboy of Paris (1930) opposite Maurice Chevalier. By the next year, she would claim one of the female leads in Josef von Sternberg's prestigious adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1931), as the débutante whose desired lifestyle seduces a young man to commit murder to obtain it through her.

Dee established herself as a movie actress by skillfully underplaying her roles in comedies, dramas and Westerns. In the early part of her career, she was typically cast as sensible, good-hearted women in support of larger-than-life female stars, including Katharine Hepburn in Little Women (1933), Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage (1934) and Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935). Occasionally, she would assay a lead role in A-pictures, such as Frank Lloyd's If I Were King (1938), opposite Ronald Colman.

One of the more memorable roles of her early career, a pre-Production Code film, was Blood Money (1933). The movie was re-discovered by a new generation of film-goers in the 1990s, with the burgeoning interest in pre-Code films, and helped acquaint Dee with a new, younger audience. Her biographer, Andrew Wentnik, said that, "When a friend recently admonished her for playing a prostitute in Blood Money (1933), she denied it saying, 'I played a masochistic nymphomaniacal kleptomaniac, not a prostitute.'"

She met Joel McCrea, on the set of the 1933 film The Silver Cord (1933). They would also appear together in Wells Fargo (1937) and Four Faces West (1948). The couple married in 1933 and were together for 57 years, until his death in 1990.

Film critic James Agee wrote that Dee was "one of the very few women in movies who really had a face...and always used this translucent face with delicate and exciting talent". Pauline Kael, believed a close-up of Dee in So Ends Our Night (1941) was comparable to Greta Garbo's famous close-up in Queen Christina (1933).

Dee was in several films produced by or associated with David O. Selznick, but ironically, she lost her chance to be in Selznick's greatest picture, Gone with the Wind (1939), due to her beauty. Selznick considered casting Dee as Melanie Wilkes, but backed off when he thought that her beauty might overshadow newcomer Vivien Leigh. Olivia de Havilland got the role instead, won an Oscar nomination and went on to a highly successful career. Dee's career, in contrast, never reached its potential, although she remained a working actress in Hollywood for as long as she wanted. Perhaps her most memorable film was I Walked with a Zombie (1943). Dee said she accepted the role in Jacques Tourneur's low-budget thriller because of the fee as she wanted to buy her mother a new automobile.

She retired in 1953 to devote herself to her husband and to raising their sons after making Gypsy Colt (1954) and Mister Scoutmaster (1953). Dee and McCrea, who retired from films in 1962 while still a star, devoted their time to cultivating their ranch in Thousand Oaks, California. They donated 75 acres of the ranch for use as park land in 1981, and Dee donated 220 of the remaining 300 acres to the park in 1995.

One of the last of the Golden Age of Hollywood stars, Frances Dee died on March 6, 2004 at a hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut, near the home of one of her sons, due to complications of a stroke. Her family listed her age as 94, though many biographical sources listed her as 96, as her year of birth had been long misrepresented as 1907. She was survived by her three sons, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood