Doris Nolan

Biography

Lovely blonde stage actress Doris Nolan, a one-time model, was born on July 14, 1916, in New York City and raised there. The daughter of an importer, she first appeared in plays at New Rochelle High School. Invited to join the Provincetown Players in 1933 following graduation, she worked as a secretary to the director as compensation for her tuition. She then played summer stock in plays such as "The Late Christopher Bean." Nolan's first movie contract was with Fox Film Corporation. Set to make her debut with a small role in the Shirley Temple vehicle Our Little Girl (1935), Doris kept blowing her scene to the point it was deleted from the film and Fox quickly dropped her. Undeterred, Doris sought out Broadway and took her first bow in 1935 with the mystery "Night of January 16th" as the femme fatale lead. Other plays followed including "Arrest That Woman," "Tell Me Pretty Maiden" and "Lorelei." Doris' Broadway stage visibility led to a return to films and she won a Universal contract. This time she made a distinct impression starring in two "B"-level Universal pictures directed by Ralph Murphy. The first, a drama The Man I Marry (1936), paired Doris opposite Michael Whalen; the second was a musical comedy Top of the Town (1937) that had her co-starring with song-and-dance man George Murphy. She then starred in the romantic comedy As Good as Married (1937) alongside John Boles. Doris' best-remembered role, by far, was in the second lead category, as Katharine Hepburn's chic, high-society sister in the delightful Columbia comedy classic Holiday (1938). Doris would alternate between the stage and film after this film success. Returning to her theatre roots, she appeared in "Cue Passion" and "The Cat Screams" before co-starring successfully in the long-running New York war-era hit "The Doughgirls" for two years (1942-1944). As for the large screen, she returned to second-string filming co-starring as cop Charles Bickford's girlfriend in the crime drama One Hour to Live (1939). She then moved down the credits line in the Anna Neagle/Ray Milland musical romance Irene (1940); had the second femme lead as Dorothy Lamour's romantic rival in Paramount's adventure comedy Moon Over Burma (1940); and then abruptly ended her film career co-starring with Wendy Barrie in the minor musical Follies Girl (1943). Doris met and married Canadian actor Alexander Knox in 1944. He wrote a play for them, "The Closing Door," which they starred together on Broadway in 1949. In the early 1950's, the couple moved permanently to England after he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Slowing down considerably, Doris would be occasionally glimpsed in a few British films (The Servant (1963), Juggernaut (1974), The Romantic Englishwoman (1975)), but would appear more prominently as a guest on TV ("The Adventures of Robin Hood," "The Saint," "The Third Man," "Emergency Ward-10," "Boy Meets Girl"). Her last on-camera credit was a 1981 episode of the mini-series "Brideshead Revisited." Doris later worked for an art gallery. She suffered a major family tragedy when their only child, 39-year-old actor Andrew Knox, died in 1987, a probable suicide. Doris' husband Knox died in 1995 and she would follow him in death a couple weeks after her 82nd birthday on July 29, 1998, in Northumberland, England.