Whenever one thinks of the great screen femme fatales, certain names automatically come to mind—Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street. For some reason, no one immediately thinks of Andrea King in Hotel Berlin, which is a shame. Andrea’s devious Nazi sympathizer Lisa Dorn can slink right along with the best screen villainesses, using her feminine wiles to lure her willing victim—in this case, underground hero Martin Richter (Helmut Dantine)—into a carefully constructed trap. And like all good bad girls, she eventually meets her well-deserved end.
During her all-too-brief period at Warner Bros., Andrea carved a niche playing such duplicitous females. Like her Warners colleague Alexis Smith, Andrea possessed a cool reserve that suggested a woman of social standing or a woman of danger. On several occasions it meant both. Even in lighter fare, such as My Wild Irish Rose, Andrea’s Lillian Russell, with her Park Avenue airs and bedroom eyes, seemed as if she was corrupting the innocent Chauncey Olcott (Dennis Morgan). We all knew he would be better off with Arlene Dahl’s doe-eyed innocent, but it was Andrea who supplied the fire and excitement. On those rare occasions when Andrea got to play a sympathetic role, such as Ida Lupino’s hard-working sister in The Man I Love, she showed herself to be an actress of great sensitivity.
Andrea’s career at Warners seemed to parallel that of Nancy Coleman’s—both began their careers on the stage and both were cited by critics as potential stars in their first major screen roles. In Andrea’s case, the studio had great plans to mold her into another Bette Davis by giving her important roles in The Corn Is Green and Ethan Frome. Intervention from Davis and the collapse of the studio system put an end to Andrea’s career at Warner Bros. Though Andrea never achieved the stardom of Davis or Stanwyck, she did develop into a versatile and dependable supporting player who often left a more indelible impression than the leading players.
It seems unlikely that Andrea would have ever chosen any other career path, given the influence of her mother, Lovinia Belle Hart. Belle, as she was known, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1885, and was the youngest daughter of George and Deborah Hart. George’s claim to fame was that he was the inventor of the grain elevator.
From an early age, Belle yearned for a career on the stage, but her staid parents didn’t consider acting a dignified profession and encouraged her to get an education. She later made her way to New York, where she found work as a teaching companion for the child of Alonso Robert Yates, a prominent American diplomat. After that job Belle became a disciple of dancer Isadora Duncan, then living in New York. When Duncan fled the United States for France in 1917, Belle decided to join her. Belle’s parents were unaware of her dancing endeavors, so she couldn’t ask them to pay for her trip. Instead, the resourceful Belle signed up with Ann Morgan, daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, as a volunteer ambulance driver with the American Red Cross in Paris.
In Paris Belle once again encountered Yates, and the two of them spent a great deal of time together, despite the fact that he was married. Supposedly, Belle also became enamored of a handsome young pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille named George Andre Barry, the man who, as she later told her daughter, was Andrea’s father. The facts surrounding Andrea’s birth, though, are decidedly fuzzy. Belle maintained that she and Barry were married in 1918, and in the fall of that year he was killed when German fliers shot down his plane. Belle at the time was six months pregnant.
Belle gave birth on February 1, 1919, in Paris to Andrea nee Georgette Andre Barry, who was named for the father she never knew. Shortly after Andrea was born, Belle became gravely ill with Childbirth Fever and might surely have died if Yates had not obtained an experimental saline solution from Madame Marie-Louise Vallery-Radot, daughter of Louis Pasteur.
Andrea always found the circumstances of her birth to be somewhat nebulous. In later years her suspicions seemed grounded when she learned there were no birth or death records of George Barry, and, for that matter, no marriage certificate for her parents’ union.
It seemed more likely that the attentive Yates might have been her actual father, a theory that was corroborated by Evelyn Yates Inman, Yates’ daughter, who confessed to Andrea in 1980 that they were half-sisters. Belle, however, denied her claim and stuck to her original story about George Barry until her death in 1986 at 101. To this day, Andrea remains uncertain as to her actual birthright, although she seems certain that her mother’s version was a pure fabrication.
Whatever the circumstances, Belle was faced with the difficulty of raising a child by herself. Financial necessity forced Belle to return to her family in Cleveland, Ohio. Belle had been notified prior to leaving Paris that her father was in deteriorating health. Sadly, he died while she and Andrea were en route to the States.
“We went to Cleveland to live with my grandmother. Mother came with sixteen canaries and a French nurse that didn’t speak any English. Mother was wrapped up in fur to look very French. I’m sure my grandmother was horrified,” Andrea said.
Belle had a difficult time getting reacclimated to Cleveland after the glitter and excitement of Paris. Belle again expressed interest in heading to New York to become an actress, and again met with the same opposition from her mother. She did get to go to New York, but it was as a student at Columbia University. For Andrea, those early childhood years of separation from her mother were difficult. She remained with her grandmother in Cleveland and then when Belle’s mother moved to Palm Beach, Florida, a couple of years later.
Mother and daughter were finally reunited when Andrea was four. Belle married Douglas McKee, vice president of the Title Guarantee & Trust Company, and for the first time Andrea finally experienced some semblance of family life. Belle was relieved that the years of financial burden had at long last come to an end. The family settled into a large home in Forest Hills, New York, and welcomed another child, Anne Douglas McKee, who was born in 1926.
When Andrea was a little older, Belle sent her to an art camp in the Adirondacks, an establishment owned by another close friend of Isadora Duncan. At the camp, Andrea was exposed to theatrics, singing and dancing, and she loved every minute of it. Clearly her mother’s daughter, Andrea’s mind was already set on becoming an actress.
Belle did her best to make her daughters’ home life as pleasant as possible, but McKee admittedly didn’t understand or particularly like children. By the time she was eleven, Andrea became so unhappy with her home life that she attempted to run away, with Hollywood as her goal. She only made it as far as the Long Island freight yards and was returned home safely.
A few years later Andrea was enrolled in the renowned Edgewood School, a boarding school in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the first progressive school in the United States. The school proved to be a haven for Andrea, one in which she felt free to indulge her love of the arts. Lessons in drama, dance and most of the other art forms filled Andrea’s curriculum.
Andrea pursued her love of drama passionately and showed a tremendous aptitude for her craft. She was especially delighted during the 1932 school year when she landed the dream role of Juliet in the Christmas production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Andrea worked extra hard preparing for opening night, unaware of just how pivotal that performance would be to her career. Her hard work showed and the program met with cheers from the audience.
Warners had big plans for Andrea King until Bette Davis got in the way.
After the show, Andrea and Belle met the uncle of Andrea’s roommate, who was introduced to both simply as Mr. Grenecker. They soon learned that C.P. Grenecker was the head of public relations for theatrical producer Lee Shubert and was looking for thirty teenagers to fill many roles in a new play he was preparing called Growing Pains. He approached Belle by telling her that he was impressed with Andrea’s performance as Juliet and thought she might be right for one of the parts. Belle discussed the matter with Andrea, who was anxious to try out for the role.
Andrea’s audition was a success, and she appeared with the Growing Pains company, in an ensemble role, billed as Georgette McKee. Junior Durkin starred as a teenager coming to terms with love for the first time. Growing Pains opened at Broadway’s Ambassador Theater on November 23, 1933, to mixed notices, and closed after just six weeks.
Andrea had better luck in Fly Away Home, Dorothy Bennett and Irving White’s seriocomic play with Thomas Mitchell as an errant father who returns home after a long absence to attend his ex-wife’s wedding. During his visit he has a chance to get reacquainted with the five children he left behind. Mitchell also staged the play, which was produced by Theron Bamberger and, coincidentally, Warner Bros. Warners eventually filmed the play as Daughters Courageous (1939), with the Lane Sisters, John Garfield and Claude Rains.
Andrea portrayed Buff, the second-youngest of Mitchell’s children. Also in the cast as her brother was a gifted newcomer named Montgomery Clift, who became a great friend. Clift and Andrea shared many enjoyable moments during the run of the play, as well as the same aspirations.
According to Bamberger, the lively Andrea captivated him so during her audition that she was hired on the spot. “She came in one day last June, deeply tanned from a visit in Florida and full of the same bubbling personality which comes over the footlights,” he told The New York Times. “I felt so sure of her merely from talking with her in the office that I did not ask her to read, but told her she was engaged. She was a great success at Stockbridge and when rehearsals were called in New York, Thomas Mitchell was so pleased with her that he did a good deal to build up her role. Georgette is gay, irrepressible, high-spirited. Her personality on the stage is as free, simple and genuinely childlike as it is off.”
Andrea has fond memories of Fly Away Home—in particular, the surprising turn of events when the play opened on January 20, 1935, at the Forty-Eighth Street Theater. Mitchell appeared in the play every day except Wednesdays and Saturdays, when he was directing Tallulah Bankhead in Reflected Glory. When the curtain came up for the first time on Fly Away Home, Andrea and Clift were onstage, directing their lines to Trigger, a cat who was placed in a large bay window.
“Imagine our dismay when we rushed to enfold the cat, saying, ‘Come on Trigger, we have a surprise for you,’ to see in the window a glamorous head of hair and a graceful hand holding a glass of champagne and to hear it say, ‘Oh my God, what a daahling kitty.’ The body and voice tumbled over the bay window with a screeching cat, onto our stage,” Andrea recalled.
The curtain fell immediately and Mitchell announced there was an electrical malfunction so that the audience would not know that Bankhead had wandered onto the wrong stage.
Fortunately, the incident didn’t throw the actors and the play opened to rave reviews. “Excepting the midriff section, when the tale goes pretty much to pieces, Fly Away Home is hilarious stuff,” wrote the estimable Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times. He added that, “it is acted with sufficient animal vigor to keep the play as racy as the dialogue,” and found Andrea “artless enough to be charming.”
The following year Andrea scored another hit in the Bella and Sam Spewack comedy Boy Meets Girl, in which she understudied the lead, a pregnant waitress. The farce, which nicely lampooned Hollywood, concerned two eccentric studio publicity men who turn the waitress’ baby into a popular child star even before it is born.
After finishing with Boy Meets Girl, Andrea went on several auditions, including one for the Lillian Gish company of Life with Father in Chicago. Based on Clarence Day’s humorous novel about his youth in turn of the century New York—in particular, growing up under the iron thumb of his Victorian-thinking father—the play had been a tremendous hit in New York. Andrea was assigned the role of Mary Skinner, young Clarence’s first love.
Andrea remembered Gish as a quiet person who generally kept to herself. However, she was protective of the members of her company, often referring to them as her “flock of children.”
Life with Father enjoyed a lengthy run, which was fortuitous for Andrea from both a professional and a personal standpoint. It was during the run of Life with Father that she met Nat Willis, a young lawyer who charmed Andrea with his tall good looks and outgoing personality. Just as impressive to Andrea was that Willis was a direct descendant of George Washington. It also helped that Willis respected Andrea’s desires to pursue her theatrical career and thus had no qualms about asking her to become his wife. “Before we married I told him I couldn’t possibly continue without acting. That was mentioned right up front and it was never a problem. He always understood,” she said. They wed on October 6, 1940.
Prior to her marriage, Andrea made her film debut in a docudrama called The Ramparts We Watch (1940). RKO distributed the film, which was produced by Time Inc., and which combined newsreel footage with live action. The film focused on the inhabitants of a typical American town during World War I, with the intent to show how Americans on the brink of a second World War needed to understand the events of the past to protect their current freedom. Producer-director Louis de Rochemont used scenes from the March of Time newsreel Baptism of Fire, a Nazi propaganda film, to help illustrate how a mechanically trained Army could destroy an unprepared foe. Billed as Georgette McKee, Andrea had a pivotal role as one of the townspeople.
Flush from her success in Life with Father, Andrea was chosen to appear in the road company of the Victorian thriller Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton in 1941. The classic chiller about a murderous husband’s plan to drive his wife insane had already been a hit on both the London and Broadway stages, as well as a popular British film in 1940. Andrea had her first bad girl role as Nancy, the Cockney maid who has a fling with her nefarious employer. Once again both she and the play were a success.
It was also around this time that Andrea had her first encounter with Errol Flynn, whom she would later get to know while working at Warner Bros. It was also her first taste of his wicked sense of humor. She was heading home to her husband in Chicago on the Twentieth Century Limited, which, coincidentally, had Flynn and his bodyguard, named Wiles, among the passenger list. Shortly after boarding, a porter handed her a note from Flynn which said, “Would you join Mr. Wiles and myself in compartment No. 12 for cocktails? I love your hat and would like to see what is under it.”
Andrea clutched her purse and a copy of Sister Carrie and headed over to Flynn’s quarters. Flynn apparently liked what was under her hat, since he then invited Andrea for dinner with Wiles and himself. After dinner, Wiles excused himself, saying that he was meeting a producer in the bar. Andrea, likewise, grabbed her purse and thanked Flynn for the evening before heading back to her cabin.
The next day, as Andrea was embracing Nat at the station, the same porter who had given her Flynn’s note tapped her on the shoulder and handed her Sister Carrie. “You left this in Errol Flynn’s compartment last night,” he said. Andrea explained the incident to her husband and they both had a good laugh.
Andrea’s happiness was temporarily interrupted when the United States entered World War II and Nat enlisted in the Coast Guard the day after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nat was stationed in New York in the Judge Advocate’s department as an attorney handling court-martial cases. In 1943 Nat was notified that he was being sent overseas. He set sail from San Francisco as Andrea watched his ship leave the harbor. Although Andrea was unaware of where he was going at the time, she later learned that he was stationed at Guadalcanal.
It was Montgomery Clift who suggested to Andrea before she left for San Francisco that she should go to Hollywood and see if the Myron Selznick Agency, which was handling him at the time, could possibly help her find some work in motion pictures. Andrea followed his advice and impressed the Selznick agency enough so that they took her on as a client. She and her agent began making the studio rounds to see if any might be willing to offer her a screen test, starting at Paramount. “The casting man there was so nice,” Andrea recalled. “He said, ‘We have five young ladies the same age as you under contract right now.’ And they did. They had Diana Lynn, Gail Russell and quite a few others. He told my agent to take me to Warner Bros.”
To prepare for her test, Andrea worked with Warners acting coach Sophie Rosenstein, who had served as a sort of surrogate mother for most of the young contract players at the studio. It was Rosenstein’s job to teach them all of the basics, from correct posture and speech to emoting for the camera. Like most of the Warners players, Andrea had great respect for Rosenstein, and she became a good friend to Andrea during her years at Warners. “For my test, Sophie had me pick one of three scenes. There was one called ‘The Man,’ which was a very emotional scene between a father and a daughter, that I really wanted to do, but Sophie said, ‘No, Andrea, it’s not right for you.’ I picked it anyway and it went well. I also did another test, which was a scene from The Philadelphia Story. Warners liked both and they signed me.” The first thing Jack Warner did was change her name from Georgette McKee to Georgia King, which she hated.
“It sounded like the name of a burlesque queen,” Andrea joked.
The Selznick office also arranged for Andrea’s lodgings during her first month in California, a small home in fashionable Brentwood. Andrea remembers her first night there, an evening that began uneventfully but which was sparked by an unexpected caller.
“The day I moved in there was an announcement about submarines being spotted off of Malibu,” Andrea recalled. “At about 6:00 the doorbell rang. I opened the door and there was Gary Cooper. I almost fainted. He said, ‘I’m an air raid warden and I wanted you to know that in about four minutes there’s going to be an air raid test. I’m going to bring you to Frank Capra’s house.’ That was where we were supposed to meet in case of an air raid. The next night it was Fred MacMurray at my door, then after that it was Tyrone Power, then Cesar Romero. I thought to myself, ‘Where am I living?’ I was dumbfounded. I loved the whole thing.”
At about 5:30 p.m. the second day she was in Brentwood, Andrea received a call from Warner Bros. She was told to report to wardrobe at 4:30 the next morning and get fitted for a nurse’s uniform for a scene with Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington. Andrea was elated about the prospect of appearing with Davis, an actress whom she held in high esteem. Understandably, she was also filled with tremendous anxiety.
Andrea arrived on time the following morning and was fitted for her costume. Once that was done, she headed to the set where her scene was to be shot. “I was very nervous. The whole place was like a beehive. I was only twenty-three and here I was working with one of my idols,” Andrea said.
One important factor that helped ease Andrea’s nerves was the congenial behavior of Davis. “Bette Davis was very nice. She asked me to join her in her trailer for a cup of tea. She understood I was new and she was very gracious.”
Mr. Skeffington was a first-class Davis vehicle, with the star chewing up the scenery as shallow Fanny Skeffington, a socialite whose selfishness and vanity destroy her marriage to a kind-hearted Jewish banker (Claude Rains). In one of the film’s most humorous scenes, Fanny pays a visit to a psychiatrist (George Coulouris), who quickly loses his patience with her and tells her exactly what’s wrong with her. Andrea has a brief appearance as the doctor’s nurse.
Despite Andrea’s jitters about doing the scene, everything went beautifully. “I thank God I only had a few lines,” she joked.
Vincent Sherman, who directed Mr. Skeffington, was quite impressed with Andrea. “Andrea King I recall as a nice-looking young actress who performed well,” he said. “I never had a chance to get to know her well, but I thought she was most capable and would have a big career at Warner Bros.”
Mr. Skeffington served as a good launching pad for Andrea’s introduction to moviemaking. She had just enough screen time to get used to working before the camera without being overwhelmed. Thus she was far more relaxed for her next, far more substantial role in The Very Thought of You (1944), a bittersweet wartime romance starring Dennis Morgan and Eleanor Parker as a soldier and his girl, Janet, who want to get married. With the exception of Janet’s father (Henry Travers) and a younger sister, no one in Janet’s unlikable family approves of their relationship, which causes considerable conflict. Andrea had a juicy role as Janet’s cold-hearted sister Molly, a war wife who goes out on the town every night while her husband is overseas.
The Very Thought of You was not only Andrea’s first featured role at Warners, but it marked the first time she was billed as Andrea King. It was during filming that Andrea fought Jack Warner about getting her name changed from Georgia King. Warner next suggested adapting her middle name to Andrea, which she liked immediately. Her new name also proved to be a good luck charm. In a cast which boasted such impressive performers as Parker, Travers, Dane Clark and Beulah Bondi, it was newcomer Andrea that critics cited as the standout.
“Andrea King, whom the Warners could pass off for Ida Lupino in a pinch, gives a venomous portrait of Molly. Miss King is definitely a newcomer with a bright future,” raved The New York Times.
Indeed, Andrea’s scenes in The Very Thought of You gave the film some much-needed spark. Director Delmer Daves gave Andrea a great deal of guidance during the making of the film, and helped her make the unsavory Molly a wonderfully loathsome character.
Those hours when Andrea wasn’t needed on the set were spent working with Rosenstein and other studio instructors, who gave Andrea lessons in fencing, dialects, ballet and film technique, among other things. “It was hard work, but we learned everything. And I loved it,” recalled Andrea with affection.
Little of those lessons came in handy for Andrea’s cameo in Hollywood Canteen (1944), Warners’ flag-waving musical that boasted appearances by more than forty Hollywood stars. She then appeared in two equally patriotic documentary shorts: Proudly We Serve (1944), in which Sergeant Tex Gordon (Gordon Douglas) is shocked to learn that his aerial gunnery instructor is a female sergeant (Andrea); and Navy Nurse (1945), with Andrea in the title role.
Having been impressed with the response to Andrea’s nasty turn in The Very Thought of You, Warners decided to take full advantage of her flair for playing scheming vixens. As such, Andrea played a femme fatale in Hotel Berlin (1945), a dramatization of the Vicki Baum novel. With its multiple plots and subplots, and an assortment of colorful characters, Hotel Berlin was obviously patterned after Baum’s signature novel, Grand Hotel, which was transformed into the 1932 Best Picture winner. Hotel Berlin depicted a weary Germany on the brink of defeat as World War II nears an end. Unlike most Hollywood films at the time, several of the Germans are presented in a sympathetic manner, including a Nazi commandant (Raymond Massey) being forced to commit suicide after a botched military objective. Other assorted hotel dwellers included Martin Richter (Helmut Dantine), a freedom fighter disguised as a hotel waiter; Tillie (Faye Emerson), the hotel’s “hostess,” who is willing to pay more than she should to get a pair of shoes; and Lisa Dorn (Andrea), Berlin’s most celebrated actress, who is also the commandant’s mistress. When Lisa discovers Martin hiding in her room, she agrees to help him, but only if he can help her flee Germany. Eventually, her deceitful ways jeopardize the lives of the commandant and Martin.
Although Hotel Berlin was an ensemble piece, and Faye Emerson, who had just married First Son Elliott Roosevelt, was top-billed, Andrea’s performance was most definitely a star turn. She worked extra hard to hone her performance, which included studying with a German coach to affect a convincing accent The end result was an excellent portrait in evil, with Lisa depicted as a walking Venus flytrap, complete with beautifully coifed blonde hair, the nattiest finery and a velvet tongue. Andrea’s flair for histrionics were especially effective during her final confrontation with Dantine after he discovers she has betrayed him to the Nazis. She was also able to display Lisa’s tender side in her poignant scenes with Massey.
“I loved doing that film. It was a great part because it allowed me to do everything from A to Z,” Andrea said fondly.
Andrea was also thrilled to be in the company of a distinguished group of character actors, including Alan Hale as a German sergeant, Steven Geray as the defeatist hotel clerk, Henry Daniell as a fleeing underground figure, Peter Lorre as a scientist and Helene Thimig, who was especially touching as the mother of Emerson’s fiancé.
Hotel Berlin plays like a Wagnerian opera sans the arias, yet its ninety-eight minutes of melodrama move far more swiftly thanks to Peter Godfrey’s brisk direction. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times enthused: “There’s no question that Warner Brothers has got a sleek and suspenseful show.” He found Andrea King “ultra-svelte” as Lisa.
The schedule for Hotel Berlin was a demanding one because the studio was anxious to get the picture released to coincide with the end of the war. As such, a typical day of filming lasted eighteen hours. In order to accurately depict the bustling activity in the hotel, as well as the turmoil going on in Berlin, hundreds of extras were required for many scenes. Despite the hectic pace, there was a period when Andrea found herself with two days in which she wasn’t needed on the set. Since Warners never liked to have idle players on the lot, Andrea reported for a small role in Roughly Speaking (1945), directed by the studio’s most important filmmaker, Michael Curtiz. That film, based on Louise Randall Pierson’s bestselling autobiography, starred Rosalind Russell as the free-thinking Pierson, who longs for a place in the world of business. In the course of two hours she finds romance with a dull salesman (Donald Woods), raises a family of six children, divorces her husband, struggles to keep her family together and finds happiness with her second husband, a likable eccentric played with charm by Jack Carson.
Curtiz was unhappy with the actress playing one of Russell’s grown daughters in the last quarter of the film, and asked for Andrea to replace her. Although Andrea’s screen time was minimal and the role undemanding, she still appreciated the chance to work with Curtiz. “He was to the point, and very dramatic, but a brilliant director,” she said.
Shortly after Hotel Berlin was released, Andrea went on her first studio tour, along with her friend and co-star Dantine. The stars were sent to New York to promote another Dantine release, Escape in the Desert (1945), a misguided remake of The Petrified Forest (1936) in which the diner patrons were held at gunpoint by Nazis, rather than gangsters. At the Strand Theater, where Escape in the Desert was showing, Andrea and Dantine displayed their comic gifts by appearing eight times a day in a stage show before each screening of the movie.
“I had a wonderful comedy skit with (comedian) Lew Parker,” Andrea said. “We got to make fun of the love scenes in Hotel Berlin. The audiences loved it. That’s when Helmut and I became good friends. Helmut had a great sense of humor. He was in his element on the stage.”
In between shooting Hotel Berlin and making the tour, Andrea appeared as Dennis Morgan’s wife in God Is My Co-Pilot (1945), a popular war drama based on Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr.’s bestseller about his exploits in World War II. As the only female in the cast, Andrea supplied the romantic interest during the homefront scenes. Since most of the action took place in the combat zone, Andrea was able to shoot all of her scenes in one day. Despite mostly negative reviews, which dismissed the film as heavy-handed, God Is My Co-Pilot was Warners’ biggest financial success of the year.
While God Is My Co-Pilot was Andrea’s most notable on-screen war effort, she spent much of her free time visiting convalescing soldiers. Twice a week she organized a group of performers to go to a huge hospital in the valley and would visit paralyzed veterans. She often took time to talk with the soldiers and did her best to make them feel better.
Andrea’s life as an Army wife also came to an end in 1945, just around the time Hotel Berlin was released. Nat returned from the service and the two picked up exactly where they had left off four years earlier. Andrea was at her most content having both her Warners family and able to finally begin establishing a home with her husband.
Not that she found her next film assignment especially rewarding. Shadow of a Woman (1946) reunited Andrea and Dantine in a bargain basement version of Suspicion (1941). The unconvincing screenplay by Whitman Chambers and C. Graham Baker found Andrea as the bride of the seemingly charming Dantine, a handsome dietician she marries after a whirlwind courtship. Shortly after their marriage she discovers that he’s been divorced and has a young son who stands to claim a large inheritance. More devastating is that her husband is trying to starve the boy to death in order to take possession of the fortune. As she uncovers more hidden truths, she also places her own life in jeopardy.
Joseph Santley, best known for directing Ann Sothern B films at RKO, and Broadway musicals, failed to pack much suspense into the slight film, although Andrea and Dantine did the best they could with their roles. Andrea, in fact, was quite effective in many of her scenes and helped supply what little interest the film generated. Variety called it “a heavy melodrama that packs little dramatic weight.”
Andrea agreed: “I was not pleased with it. It was a bad script.”
Shadow of a Woman had to be even more distasteful for Andrea because it came after she lost out on two roles far more worthy of her abilities. Andrea initially won the role of the Cockney trollop whose unplanned pregnancy causes havoc for a Welsh miner with dreams of going to Oxford in The Corn Is Green, based on Emlyn Williams’ celebrated play. The rights to the play were purchased as a vehicle for Bette Davis, who had been so helpful to Andrea in Mr. Skeffington. This time, however, Davis proved to be an adversary.
“I really wanted to play that part. But Bette Davis and Errol Flynn had star power, and they were the only ones at the studio who could always get what they wanted. She said I was too young and pretty, and I got removed from the film. I knew I could do it—I had played a Cockney before in Angel Street—but that didn’t matter. That was one beautiful Academy Award nomination I never got,” Andrea remarked with a tinge of bitterness.
Davis instead gave her consent when the studio auditioned Joan Lorring, a talented seventeen-year-old actress who lacked Andrea’s glamour. To make matters worse for Andrea, Lorring did indeed earn a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, losing to Anne Revere for National Velvet.
It was also no secret that part of the conflict stemmed from Davis’ resentment when Andrea was chosen to play Lisa Dorn in Hotel Berlin, a part Davis had publicly campaigned for.
Soon after that incident Andrea was edged out of another dream role, again because of Davis. The studio wanted Andrea to play Mattie, the doomed heroine in Edith Wharton’s classic Ethan Frome. “I was all set to play the ingenue. Then came word that Bette wanted to play the young girl. But the studio thought she was too old and that was that,” Andrea said.
Considering that Bette was thirty-eight at the time and, because of stress related to her personal problems, looked several years older, the studio’s refusal to let her play Mattie seems justified. The project was aborted, and the novel was not filmed until 1993, as an American Playhouseproduction with Patricia Arquette and Liam Neeson.
If nothing else, the one positive aspect of the situation was that the studio did at least recognize Andrea’s potential. Even if Shadow of a Woman was a dubious effort, at least Andrea was given a lead role. All the more reason that she balked at her next assignment, an unlikely horror film entitled The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), which curiously was released on Christmas Day. Robert Florey, who had directed Andrea previously in God Is My Co-Pilot, helmed Beast, a macabre tale of an Italian pianist (Victor Francen) who is mysteriously murdered. Since his death, the villagers have been afraid to go near his estate because they believe his spirit still lives on in the form of his severed hand, which is determined to seek revenge. Andrea was cast as Julie, the pianist’s nurse to whom he bequeathed his estate.
After hearing the ludicrous title, Andrea had no desire at all to make this picture, but since the alternative was suspension, she reluctantly agreed. Her co-star, Robert Alda, was equally indignant about the project. Warners originally had high hopes for Alda when he was cast as George Gershwin in the composer’s biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945). But when neither Alda nor the film clicked, he was relegated to dismal supporting roles for the remainder of his Warners contract. The only one who didn’t seem to mind being cast in Beast was Peter Lorre, for whom the film was reminiscent of his earlier Mad Love (1935). Beast proved to be a tour de force for Lorre, who had a scenery-chewing role as a demented astronomer in love with Julie.
The casting of Lorre turned out to be the smartest move Warners could have made. His wicked sense of humor made the film one of the most pleasurable of Andrea’s Warners assignments. In particular, Lorre’s animosity toward the far more sober Francen resulted in some unexpected hijinks that kept the rest of the cast entertained. “Victor Francen was a top character actor. He was very distinguished and took himself very seriously. Peter just didn’t care for him, so he would purposely try to do things to upset him,” Andrea remembered gleefully.” We had this one huge dining room scene where there were about twelve of us sitting at the table. We were all supposed to be having dinner while Victor was talking about his will. Whenever Victor would start saying his lines, Peter would stick parsley out of his ear, or out of his nose. Well, that would break us all up. Victor would have none of this, but Peter would just say, ‘Who cares?’ Finally, Peter got a note from the front office to behave better to Victor. It took us two days to film that one scene.”
Fortunately, Francen’s character was killed off early in the film, or else The Beast with Five Fingers might have gone several months beyond schedule.
Critics, however, didn’t seem to think the film was nearly as much fun to watch as it had been to make. “This Christmas package which was opened at the Victoria yesterday is hardly a thing of joy,” carped The New York Times.
Time felt Beast, “Is for strong stomachs only…. Director Robert Florey plainly untroubled by considerations of taste, concentrated on peddling gooseflesh to cinema goers who dote on being frightened.”
Seen today, The Beast with Five Fingers is rather tame compared to the gore of modern horror films. Lorre’s wildly over-the-top performance, however, enlivened the Grand Guignol-ish proceedings, and elevated the movie from minor horror to first-rate camp. As such, it made a tidy profit for Warners and has since attained a devoted cult following. “Since then it’s shown up a lot on television. Every Halloween it’s playing somewhere,” Andrea pointed out with pride.
Andrea followed Beast with one of her best performances as Ida Lupino’s hard-working sister in Raoul Walsh’s sudser The Man I Love (1946). Lupino starred as Petey, a sultry torch singer who comes to New York to visit her two sisters and soon finds herself caught up in the problems of everyone she encounters. Andrea portrayed her more stable, married sibling who struggles to raise her children while also coping with her war-weary husband, who’s in the hospital for psychiatric treatment. Petey also tries to find a beau for her shy kid sister (Martha Vickers), and becomes involved in the amorous entanglements of a shady club owner (Robert Alda) having an affair with her sisters’ married neighbor (Dolores Moran). Petey also has her own romantic difficulties in the form of a turbulent relationship with a brooding composer (Bruce Bennett). By the end of the film Petey manages to solve everyone’s problems—except her own.
The Man I Love is the type of “woman’s” picture that Warners excelled at in the 1940s, with Lupino smoldering seductively through a haze of cigarette smoke. Andrea, in the film’s quieter moments, came through with a thoughtful portrait of a compassionate woman who deserved a better fate than she’d been handed. Andrea was pleased to play a normal person for a change, rather than the seductresses or women in danger she had played of late. She also had a wonderful time working with Lupino.
“Ida and I felt like sisters,” Andrea said. “People often said we looked alike, which is probably why we were cast as sisters.”
When filming began, Andrea was struck by the bond between Lupino and Walsh, old friends who had worked together on They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941). Andrea was thrilled when she was taken into their inner circle. “They were like father and daughter. The two of them liked their cooking sherry and would often have a drink during shooting. I was so excited when one day I was invited into Ida’s dressing room for some sherry,” Andrea gleamed.
In spite of Andrea’s excellent work in The Man I Love, Warner seemed to think that she was better suited to bitchy roles, and, as such, cast her as the woman determined to break up the romance of Alexis Smith and Ronald Reagan in the equine yarn Stallion Road (1947). Andrea was uninterested in another bitch role, especially one that wasn’t even a lead, and went on suspension. Since she had only been at the studio eighteen months and was still not an established star, such a move was risky. Warner’s wrath was piqued and Andrea was let go.
For Andrea, it was difficult to leave her many friends at Warners. “It was hard, hard work.” she said. “You often worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day and worked on Saturdays. You only had Sundays off. But I couldn’t wait to get to the studio. It was what I wanted all my life. We all got to know each other. If someone was giving a party, we were all invited. We all knew how to sing or dance or play piano. It really was like a family.”
Andrea was fortunate to find work at other studios, and began a successful career as a freelancer. For her first project she was back to playing a dangerous woman in Ride the Pink Horse (1947), a brooding film noir directed by Robert Montgomery and released by Universal-International. Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht’s complex screenplay takes place in the bordertown of San Pablo, Mexico, which is in the process of preparing for its annual Mexican Fiesta. A new arrival in town is Gagin (Montgomery), a tough, mysterious and laconic stranger who’s out to find enigmatic crime boss Frank Hugo. Also after Hugo is an FBI agent. Meanwhile, trailing Gagin is a local peasant girl named Pila (Wanda Hendrix in her most memorable film role), who foresees danger and possibly death for the cynical stranger. Eventually we discover the real reasons behind Gagin’s interest in Hugo, as well as a number of other secrets. Andrea had a showy role as Hugo’s girlfriend, another in her gallery of femme fatales. Like the other characters in this film, she also has her own hidden objectives.
Of Montgomery’s two attempts at directing film noir in the ’40s (Lady in the Lake, made the previous year, is the other), Ride the Pink Horse is the more interesting one. Montgomery did a neat job of creating a dark and cynical atmosphere, and in bringing to life the complicated characters of the script, a motley lot enshrouded in layer upon layer of secrecy and deception.
Ride the Pink Horse is one of Andrea’s favorites, even though she admits “people either liked it or they didn’t understand it.” She also remembered Montgomery as, “very, very hard working and a very quiet man. He never showed much emotion, but he knew what he was doing.”
Apparently so, since the movie got glowing reviews. “Mr. Montgomery, as director and star, has contrived to make it look shockingly literal and keep it moving at an unrelenting pace,” said The New York Times. Twenty-five years later, Pauline Kael described Ride the Pink Horse as, “One of a kind; no one in his right mind would imitate it.”
The same could not be said of director David Butler and My Wild Irish Rose (1947), another of the many questionable musical biopics cranked out by Hollywood in the 1940s. This time the unlucky subject whose life story was distorted was Irish tenor Chauncey Olcott (Dennis Morgan). Peter Milne’s free-wheeling screenplay (from a story provided by Rita Olcott) followed Chauncey’s path to success in turn of the century New York, which was complicated by his affections for a beautiful colleen named Rose (the stunning Arlene Dahl in her film debut) and famed entertainer Lillian Russell (played with gusto by Andrea). Also mixed up in this mild Irish stew were Ben Blue as Olcott’s best friend, George O’Brien as boxer Iron Duke Muldoon, William Frawley as singer William Scanlon and Sara Allgood as Olcott’s mother.
Filmed in vibrant Technicolor, My Wild Irish Rose was stuffed with more than twenty Irish ditties, most of them sung pleasantly by Morgan. Andrea’s musical numbers, however, were dubbed. “I had never sung professionally, so there was no question of my doing the numbers. It was just a matter of being able to breathe at the right times and singing to the music,” she said.
Virginia Bruce was set to play Lillian Russell but dropped out. Physically, Andrea was a an ideal fit, and she relished the part. “My costumes were the most beautiful I’d ever seen, and the jewelry I wore was real. I had two armed guards with me at all times,” she said.
My Wild Irish Rose also meant a return to Warners and the chance to again work with Dennis Morgan, whom she became friendly with during the making of The Very Thought of You.
Despite the fact that Warners opened My Wild Irish Rose during the Christmas season, the critics were not charitable. “To say that My Wild Irish Rose tells a story is a gross overstatement, and even in this season of benevolence, one cannot truthfully say that there is a recommendable spirit to the interminable song, dance and specialty interludes that fill out this picture,” wrote The New York Times reviewer. He added that, “the Lillian Russell of Andrea King is garish.”
Audiences didn’t mind and My Wild Irish Rose was one of Warners’ top grossers of 1948.
Having enjoyed the light touch of My Wild Irish Rose, Andrea was delighted to land a comedic role in the romantic fantasy Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) for Universal-International. Inspired by the English comedy Miranda (1947), Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid told of a New Englander (William Powell) who catches a lovely mermaid (Ann Blyth) during one of his fishing trips. The problem is that everyone believes he’s crazy when he tells them what happened. Andrea had a showy role as a flirtatious actress with designs on Mr. Peabody. Once again she was playing a bitchy character, although one with more of a mischievous nature than a sadistic streak. She relished the more playful aspects of the part—in particular, an amusing scene where she was bitten by Ann Blyth underwater.
An extra perk was the chance to work with Powell, whom Andrea adored. “He was just incredible.” she said. “He was very ill. He had a kidney disease and he had his male nurse by his side all the time. But he was just a delight to work with. Ann Blyth and I both adored him.”
If there was one drawback to the movie, it was the cold temperatures the cast had to deal with, especially during any scenes involving water. “The water was cold.” Andrea recalled. “The film was supposed to be made in August, but instead it got pushed to December. They had a huge water tank built on the back lot. It was horrendous.”
The reception to Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid was, unfortunately, as chilly as the water. “The film swims along with gay urbanity until the novelty of the ichthyic lady has worn thin. Then, disastrously, the joke begins to dry up, leaving the mermaid flopping around in a scenario which doesn’t know where to go,” wrote The New York Times. The reviewer said that Andrea performed her role with “standard competence.”
Andrea went to Paramount for the soapy Song of Surrender (1949), with Claude Rains and Wanda Hendrix, followed by a good turn in MGM’s Dial 1119 (1950). The nifty thriller marked the feature length directorial debut of Gerald Mayer, whose previous experience making short subjects shone through in his ability to keep the action moving at a fast clip. Andrea played one of six restaurant patrons held hostage by a demented gunman (Marshall Thompson).
“Dial 1119 comes off with more suspense and conviction than is found in the average minor melodrama from the coast,” raved The New York Times. “Andrea King lends competent support as a girl debating whether to try an illicit weekend with Leon Ames, an oily salesman.”
Unfortunately, her other 1950 releases—Southside 1-1000, Buccaneer’s Girl and I Was a Shoplifter—were less impressive. The last two were part of a picture deal for Universal-International, which became a frequent venue of employment for Andrea after leaving Warners. “I wasn’t signed to Universal, although I did so many pictures there that they said they should have signed me since they paid me very well,” Andrea said.
The Lemon Drop Kid (1951), with Bob Hope was, at least, a huge moneymaker, even though Marilyn Maxwell was the lead actress while Andrea had a supporting role. Following a routine adventure, Mark of the Renegade (1951), Andrea teamed up with Peter Graves for her first endeavor into science fiction, an odd concoction called Red Planet Mars (1952). Graves and Andrea played a married pair of scientists who believe they have made contact with Mars. They discover from the information they receive that the red planet is a Christian Utopia. The message from Mars is that Earth’s people can be saved by reconnecting in worship to God. Instead of inspiring faith, the messages from Mars produce fear and revolution, as the messages spread to Russia. There’s also uncertainty as to the validity of the messages, as an ex–Nazi (Marvin Miller) claims he was duping the Americans.
Red Planet Mars was imaginative, but its incredible theme of Mars as a Christian haven and its attempt to convert Earth was a difficult selling point for United Artists, which distributed the movie. “I thought it was a wonderful script and I adored Peter Graves,” Andrea said. “The problem was that the studio didn’t publicize it. So it didn’t really go anywhere. Once it was shown on television, people began to see it and they loved it, and now it’s become a cult movie.”
As far as the performances, The New York Times noted that “Peter Graves and Andrea King are serious and competent if slightly callow in appearance as the indomitable scientists.”
Andrea finished the year by appearing in the adventure yarn The World in His Arms, once again at Universal. The film about the exploits of a seagoing adventurer (Gregory Peck) was typical of the male-oriented fare Universal cranked out in the ’50s. Andrea and leading lady Ann Blyth had little to do but look decorative.
In general, her roles in recent years had been far less interesting than the characters she played in most of her Warners movies. It probably didn’t help that Andrea missed the kinship of her Warners colleagues. “As a freelance, I was like a fish out of water.” she said. “You felt so protected at the studio. It was like home. You knew who you were working with. Working as a freelancer, I knew professionally what I had to do, but it was lonely.”
With a lack of rewarding film roles, Andrea began accepting work on television, which at the time was still looked upon with resentment and uncertainty by many in the film community. Andrea, however, felt the fledgling medium held great promise. Her first small screen venture was opposite Charles Boyer in “The Officer and the Lady,” an episode of Four Star Theater, in 1952.
The following year Andrea signed on for her first live television appearance in an adaptation of the Agatha Christie courtroom thriller Witness for the Prosecution for Lux Video Theater. Andrea played Romaine Vole, a cold-blooded wife whose husband is on trial for murdering a rich widow. Her distinguished co-star was Edward G. Robinson as the wily barrister defending her husband. Andrea recalled that she was extremely anxious about the live performance, but was put somewhat at ease when she discovered that the veteran Robinson was just as fearful as she was that something might go wrong.
“Eddie said, ‘I’ll break your leg and you break my leg.’ Eddie was one of the quietest, gentlest men I knew,” Andrea said. To everyone’s relief, the program went off without a hitch.
After the minor suspense film Silent Fear (1954), Andrea took her first break from acting in 1955 with the birth of her daughter Deborah Ann. When she returned to work a year later, she found television to be conducive to her dual roles as mother and actress. “I did about 300 television shows. I never went back to the stage, however. My daughter was born and I didn’t want to be away from her. The theater would have taken up too much of my time.”
Andrea was lucky to find continued and varied work on television for the next two decades, landing guest spots on such popular series as The Donna Reed Show, 77 Sunset Strip, Bourbon Street Beat, Hawaiian Eye, Surfside Six, Family Affair and Dragnet. She was also featured in numerous episodes of Maverick, Perry Mason and Fireside Theater, and had a small role in Prescription Murder (1967), the telefilm that led to the Columbo series with Peter Falk.
In between her television work Andrea made film appearances in The Outlaw Queen (1957); Band of Angels (1957), with Clark Gable and Yvonne De Carlo; and Darby’s Rangers (1958), with James Garner. The last two brought Andrea back to Warner Bros., but she wasn’t waxing nostalgic. “It felt very different.” she said. “Everything still looked the same, but there were all new people there, and I felt like I didn’t belong. It was wonderful when I was under the studio system there, but now I just felt like a stranger.”
Andrea later turned up in supporting roles in the melodrama Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969) and an oddity called Blackenstein (1973), an unintentionally comic horror flick that put a trendy racial spin on the legend of Frankenstein’s Monster.
When Andrea wasn’t working she could usually be found outdoors. Rarely a weekend would pass for Andrea without getting in a few sets of tennis. Another of her loves was swimming, and she enjoyed horseback riding as well. She also maintained a close relationship with her sister Ann, who was now happily married to professional golfer Richard Chapman.
Andrea was crushed in 1970 when her beloved husband, Nat, died after a bout with lung cancer. A few years later she was introduced by Chapman to her second husband, a Cuban golf champion. Andrea described the union as “a huge mistake,” and they divorced within a year. She never married again.
These days Andrea leads a pleasant, active life in Los Angeles. Deborah Ann now lives in Connecticut with her husband Tim Callahan and her three children, Kate, Drew and Christopher, and Andrea tries to visit them several times a year.
Andrea also still enjoys acting and has remained in demand in recent years. Her last notable television appearance was in a 1990 episode of Murder, She Wrote. She was also a welcome presence in the 1992 comedy The Linguine Incident, with David Bowie and Roseanna Arquette, and supplied the film with its only enjoyable moment. Andrea’s two most recent films—The Color of Evening (1994), with Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn, and Inevitable Grace (1994), with Maxwell Caulfield and Tippi Hedren—have never been released.
Andrea spends much of her spare time writing. She has written a series of unpublished children’s stories, as well as More Than Tongue Can Tell, a memoir of her relationship with her mother, co-authored with Paul Miles Schneider, which is awaiting publication.
For many fans, Andrea remains one of the most enduring members of the Warners’ family during its golden age. Actor Rand Brooks summed up what made Andrea so appealing: “Andrea King is one of the loveliest and most unappreciated actresses in the world. Warner Brothers was an elegant studio. If you went to sit down, you’d find a chair right under you. Andrea fit in.”
The Ramparts We Watch (RKO Radio, 1940) Directed by Louis de Rochemont. Cast: John Adair, Andrea King (billed as Georgette McKee), Almira Sessions.
Mr. Skeffington (Warner Bros., 1944) Directed by Vincent Sherman. Cast: Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, Richard Waring, George Coulouris, Jerome Cowan. (Andrea was unbilled.)
The Very Thought of You (Warner Bros.,1944) Directed by Delmer Daves. Cast: Dennis Morgan, Eleanor Parker, Dane Clark, Faye Emerson, Beulah Bondi, William Prince, Andrea King.
Hollywood Canteen (Warner Bros., 1944) Directed by Delmer Daves. Cast: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Janis Paige, Dane Clark, Richard Erdman. Guest Stars: The Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Cantor, Kitty Carlisle, Jack Carson, Joan Crawford, Helmut Dantine, Bette Davis, Faye Emerson, John Garfield, Sydney Greenstreet, Alan Hale, Paul Henreid, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Ida Lupino, Irene Manning, Joan McCracken, Dolores Moran, Dennis Morgan, Eleanor Parker, William Prince, Joyce Reynolds, Roy Rogers, Zachary Scott, Alexis Smith, Barbara Stanwyck, Craig Stevens, Jane Wyman.
Proudly We Serve (Warner Bros., 1944) Directed by Crane Wilbur. Screenplay by Crane Wilbur. Documentary short starring Andrea and Gordon Douglas.
Navy Nurse (Warner Bros., 1944) Documentary short with Andrea as the title character.
God Is My Co-Pilot (Warner Bros., 1945) Directed by Robert Florey. Cast: Dennis Morgan, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Dane Clark, Alan Hale, John Ridgeley, Stanley Ridges.
Hotel Berlin (Warner Bros., 1945) Directed by Peter Godfrey. Cast: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Henry Daniell, George Coulouris.
Roughly Speaking (Warner Bros., 1945) Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: Rosalind Russell, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, Robert Hutton, Andrea King, Jean Sullivan, Donald Woods, Ann Doran.
Shadow of a Woman (Warner Bros., 1946) Directed by Joseph Santley. Cast: Helmut Dantine, Andrea King, Don McGuire, Dick Erdman, William Prince, Elvira Curci.
The Beast with Five Fingers (Warner Bros., 1946) Directed by Robert Florey. Cast: Peter Lorre, Robert Alda, Andrea King, J. Carrol Naish, Victor Francen, Charles Dingle.
The Man I Love (Warner Bros., 1947) Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Ida Lupino, Andrea King, Robert Alda, Bruce Bennett, Martha Vickers, Alan Hale, Dolores Moran, John Ridgeley.
Ride the Pink Horse (Universal-International, 1947) Directed by Robert Montgomery. Cast: Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, Andrea King, Fred Clark, Thomas Gomez, Art Smith.
My Wild Irish Rose (Warner Bros., 1947) Directed by David Butler. Cast: Dennis Morgan, Arlene Dahl, Andrea King, Ben Blue, George O’Brien, Sara Allgood, William Frawley.
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (Universal-International, 1948) Directed by Irving Pichel. Cast: William Powell, Ann Blyth, Irene Hervey, Andrea King, Clinton Sundberg.
Song of Surrender (Paramount, 1949) Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Cast: Wanda Hendrix, Claude Rains, Macdonald Carey, Andrea King, Henry Hull, Elizabeth Patterson, Art Smith.
Southside 1-1000 (Allied Artists, 1950) Directed by Boris Ingster. Cast: Don De Fore, Morris Ankrum, Andrea King, Barry Kelley, Charles Cane, George Tobias, Robert Osterloh.
I Was a Shoplifter (Universal-International, 1950) Directed by Charles W. Lamont. Cast: Mona Freeman, Scott Brady, Charles Drake, Andrea King, Nana Bryant, Tony Curtis.
Dial 1119 (MGM, 1950) Directed by Gerald Mayer. Cast: Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Andrea King, Leon Ames, Keefe Brasselle, Richard Rober, James Bell, William Conrad.
Buccaneer’s Girl (Universal-International, 1950) Directed by Frederick de Cordova. Cast: Yvonne De Carlo, Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Elsa Lanchester, Andrea King.
The Lemon Drop Kid (Paramount, 1951) Directed by Sidney Lanfield. Cast: Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell, Lloyd Nolan, Jane Darwell, Andrea King, Fred Clark, Jay C. Flippen.
Mark of the Renegade (Universal-International, 1951) Directed by Hugo Fregonese. Cast: Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Cyd Charisse, J. Carrol Naish, Andrea King, George Tobias.
Red Planet Mars (United Artists, 1952) Directed by Harry Horner. Cast: Peter Graves, Andrea King, Walter Sande, Marvin Miller, Herbert Berghof, Willis B. Bouchey, Tom Keene.
The World in His Arms (Universal-International, 1952) Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Gregory Peck, Ann Blyth, Anthony Quinn, John McIntire, Andrea King, Carl Esmond.
Silent Fear (Allied Artists, 1954) Directed by Edward L. Cahn. Cast: Andrea King, Peter Adams, Henry Brandon, Eduardo Alcaraz, Víctor Alcocer, Malcolm Atterbury.
Outlaw Queen (Globe Releasing, 1957) Directed by Herbert Greene. Cast: Andrea King, Harry James, Robert Clarke, Vince Barnett, Kenne Duncan, William Murphy, Harold Peary.
Band of Angels (Warner Bros., 1957) Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Clark Gable, Yvonne De Carlo, Sidney Poitier, Patric Knowles, Torin Thatcher, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Andrea King.
Darby’s Rangers (Warner Bros., 1958) Directed by William A. Wellman. Cast: James Garner, Jack Warden, Edd Byrnes, Torin Thatcher, Peter Brown, Murray Hamilton, Andrea King.
House of the Black Death (Medallion, 1965) Directed by Harold Daniels. Cast: Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Tom Drake, Dolores Faith, Andrea King, Sabrina, Jerome Thor.
Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (National General, 1969) Directed by Mark Robson. Cast: Carol White, Paul Burke, Scott Hylands, Mala Powers, Andrea King, Rachel Ames, Barry Cahill.
Blackenstein (Exclusive Productions, 1973) Directed by William A. Levey. Cast: Joe di Sue, John Hart, Roosevelt Jackson, Andrea King, James Cougar, Liz Renay, Ivory Stone.
The Linguini Incident (Rank/Solar, 1991) Directed by Richard Shepard. Cast: Rosanna Arquette, David Bowie, Buck Henry, Viveca Lindfors, Marlee Matlin, Andrea King.
Inevitable Grace (1994) Directed by Alex Monty Canawati. Cast: Maxwell Caulfield, Stephanie Knights, Jennifer Nicholson, Tippi Hedren, Samantha Eggar, Andrea King.
The Color of Evening (Christara, 1994) Directed by Stephen Stafford. Cast: Gretchen Becker, Kyle Chandler, Ione Skye, Bill Erwin, Martin Landau, Stuart Whitman, Andrea King.