Noreen Nash(1924-2023)

Brunette, blue-eyed Noreen Nash was born Norabelle Jean Roth in Wenatchee, Washington. Her father was Albert Roth, owner of a Coca Cola bottling plant, her mother Gail was a teacher. At the age of eighteen, Noreen was crowned 'Apple Blossom Queen' in her home town and sent to Washington to promote apples on radio. Though this attracted the attention of a Warner Brothers talent scout, Noreen spurned her first chance to be screen tested and instead completed her secondary education. Before long, she was noticed again, this time at the iconic Brown Derby restaurant, by Bob Hope's agent Louis Schurr. Signed under a stock contract by M-G-M, she first appeared on screen billed as Noreen Roth.

In October 1942, Noreen met Dr. Lee Edward Siegel, a physician, sixteen years her senior, who held the sobriquet of 'doctor to the stars' on the 20th Century Fox lot. Siegel was also a close friend of studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck. Following a whirlwind romance, she married Siegel in Las Vegas just six weeks later. The union proved to be a happy one, enduring until his death 47 years later.

Noreen's tenure at M-G-M, meanwhile, turned out to be rather desultory, consisting of nothing more than ornamental, non-speaking, bit parts. Leaving for greener pastures in 1944, her first break in pictures came courtesy of French director Jean Renoir who cast her as Becky in The Southerner (1945), a rural drama about a struggling family of cotton farmers in 1940s Texas. It won Renoir his only Oscar nomination. Noreen had by now adopted her new stage moniker 'Nash', acting on the suggestion of her agent.

For much of the succeeding decade and a half, Noreen toiled in what she later described as 'forgettable' films at Poverty Row studios like PRC (Producer's releasing Corporation) and Eagle Lion. She commanded leads in juvenile melodrama (The Devil on Wheels (1947)), assorted crime pictures (The Big Fix (1947), Assigned to Danger (1948), The Checkered Coat (1948)), and a slew of westerns directed by the veteran Lesley Selander (The Red Stallion (1947), Storm Over Wyoming (1950), Road Agent (1952)). However, none of these were career enhancers, nor was Phantom from Space (1953), a ludicrous low budget science fiction effort, much of it filmed at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. While it may have sparked Noreen's interest in astronomy, it is fair to say that even "Chubby Rain" (see Bowfinger (1999)) would have been a preferable entertainment...

The most prestigious motion picture Noreen appeared in was Giant (1956), though she later recollected not her small part as the actress Lona Lane, but only the friction that existed on the set between the director George Stevens and James Dean. From 1952 until her retirement from acting ten years later, Noreen also featured in a fair number of early television episodes, including Dragnet (1951), 77 Sunset Strip (1958) and Yancy Derringer (1958). On the advice of her son, she decided to quit show biz in 1962 and went back to study, enrolling at UCLA and graduating in 1971 with a Bachelor's Degree in history. In 1980, she published her first novel, 'By Love Fulfilled', set in the 16th century and following the life of a physician at the court of Catherine de Medici. This was followed by 'Agnès Sorel, Mistress of Beauty' in 2013 and an autobiographical work of recollections, 'Titans of the Muses: When Henry Miller Met Jean Renoir' in 2015.

In 2001, Noreen married the actor James Whitmore. At the time of her death on June 6 2023 at the venerable age of 99, she was known as Noreen Siegel Whitmore. She had two sons from her first marriage: Lee Siegel Jr, an author and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Robert James Siegel, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.