Celebrity Biographies
Lori nelson
Familiar with the scene since she was a child, she was nicknamed “The Shirley Temple of Santa Fe”, although the truth is that Lori Nelson would not make her film debut until she was 28 years old. The blonde actress would be in many B-series titles, prompted by her contract with Universal.
Her full name was Dixie Kay Nelson and she was born in Santa Fe in 1933. And from a very young age she was overflowing with charm, since she moved with her family to Encino at the age of four, shortly after, at just five years old, she won the Little Miss America award. She did not prevent it from contracting rheumatic fever at the age of seven that left her bedridden for almost four years. Fortunately, she recovered from it, and thanks to her beauty, they counted on her to tour hospitals for World War II soldiers, while working as a model and participating in modest theatrical productions.
A Universal talent scout noticed her at a performance and in 1950 offered her a seven-year contract. Her film debut came in 1952 in the western Far Horizons , directed by Anthony Mann . But his would be more her B-movie, like her next Western, Shadows on the Ranch . For the same study she would display her gifts for melodrama with stuntman Douglas Sirk in His Great Desire for Her, although her role was secondary to hers opposite fellow Hers Barbara Stanwyck and Maureen O’Sullivan .
It must be recognized that Universal tried it in all kinds of genres, since it also ended up in 1955 in one of its monster movies, Revenge of the Creature , which was a sequel to The Woman and the Monster . It was a time of films “passed by water”, because he also made The Siren of the Green Waters , an exotic film where the diving scenes stood out. There would be no lack of a film with the prolific cheap film producer Roger Corman , with whom he made the science fiction film The Day of the End of the World .
Nelson truly lacked the chance to shine on the screen, although he was given two popular movies featuring the same character, Rosie Kettle, Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki , in an attempt to put him on the spot. low lights In any case, he had a pretty decent career, which includes the remake of The Last Refuge , I’ve Died a Thousand Times and also TV series like How to Catch a Millionaire , which took up the central idea of the film How to Marry a Millionaire .
The actress was married twice: to the composer Johnny Mann, with whom she had two daughters, and to Joseph R. Reiner, a police officer. She suffered from Alzheimer’s in her last years, until her death in August 2020, shortly after her 87th birthday.