Andrea Leeds Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Andrea Leeds
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Andrea Leeds (August 18, 1914 – May 21, 1984) was an American film actress. A popular supporting player of the late 1930s, Leeds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Stage Door (1937). She was progressing to leading roles, when she retired from acting following her marriage in 1939, and was later a successful horse breeder. She began her film career in 1933 playing bit parts and using her given name. As Andrea Leeds she played her first substantial role in the film Come and Get It (1936) and achieved another success with her next film It Could Happen to You! (1937). As part of an ensemble cast that included Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball, Leeds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as an aspiring actress in Stage Door (1937). She read for the role of Melanie in Gone with the Wind, however the role was given to Olivia de Havilland. Her wholesome quality led to her being cast in The Goldwyn Follies (1938) playing "Miss Humanity" – a woman considered by a jaded Hollywood executive to represent the ideal American woman. The film was not a success and received poor reviews. She next appeared in two films opposite Joel McCrea (who earlier played her brother in Come and Get It), Youth Takes a Fling (1938) and They Shall Have Music (1939), for the first time playing the lead female role. She continued to play the romantic female lead in an adventure film set in the 1906 Philippines, The Real Glory, opposite Gary Cooper and David Niven, and opposite Don Ameche in the first Technicolor biography of Stephen Foster, Swanee River (1939). Her final film, Earthbound (1940), was a fantasy murder mystery in which Leeds' character solves the murder of her husband, aided by his ghost. These films were relatively successful and Leeds remained a popular actress. In 1939 she married Robert Stewart Howard, son of California businessman and racehorse owner Charles S. Howard, and decided to leave films to devote herself to raising a family. Her father-in-law owned and raced Seabiscuit, and with her husband she became a successful horse owner/breeder.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Stage Door
A spirited heiress wishing to break into theatre on her own merit arrives at a boardinghouse where aspiring young actresses and showgirls are brought together through their cynicism and disappointments.
Come and Get It
An ambitious lumberjack abandons his saloon girl lover so that he can marry into wealth, but years later becomes infatuated with the woman's daughter.
Letter of Introduction
An aging actor, trying to make a comeback on Broadway, is surprised when his estranged daughter shows up. It seems that she is an actress and is also trying to make it on Broadway. He tries to re-establish his relationship with her while also trying to hide the fact that she is his daughter from the press.
The Real Glory
Fort Mysang, southern Philippine Islands, under US rule, 1906. A small group of army officers and native troops resist the fierce and treacherous attacks of the ruthless Alisang and his fanatical followers.
They Shall Have Music
The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the basement of a music school for poor children.
Swanee River
Swanee River is a 1940 American biopic about Stephen Foster, a songwriter from Pittsburgh who falls in love with the South, marries a Southern girl, then is accused of sympathizing when the Civil War breaks out. Typical of 20th Century Fox biopics of the time, the film is more fictional than factual biography.
It Could Happen to You
A politically charged story about a man who dabbles in crime, with disastrous results, to gain the capital he needs to purchase a school where immigrants are prepared for American citizenship. The school's European teacher dreams of a fascist America. Based on a story by Nathanael West and Samuel Ornitz, who was one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.
Elinor Norton
A romantic triangle during WW I provides the basis of this drama. The trouble begins when a young wife gets involved with a coffee baron while her husband is off fighting WW I. Her shell-shocked husband finally returns. He is terribly jealous. To help him, the wife takes him to a Western dude ranch. Her lover also goes, and the two men soon become friends. The coffee magnate helps to cure him, but then breaks his heart by telling him that he and the wife are planning to run away.
The Goldwyn Follies
Movie producer chooses a simple girl to be "Miss Humanity" and to critically evalute his movies from the point of view of the ordinary person.
Earthbound
A murdered man helps his widow bring his killer to justice.
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