Celebrity Biographies
Virginia mayo
On January 18, 2005, the heart of Virginia Mayo stopped, a legend of the cinema of the 40s. Almost always they gave her comic roles, with the greats of the genre of the time, but the actress amply demonstrated her versatility in some that another dramatic role in memorable movies. She came to shoot more than forty titles.
Born on November 30, 1920, in St. Louis (Missouri), Virginia Clara Jones was the daughter of a journalist and a housewife, both of the upper class. Virginia, she was already interested in show business at the age of six, the age at which she entered a dance school run by one of her aunts. As soon as she graduated, she entered a variety company in the area, where she was advised to change her name to Virginia Mayo, and was offered to be part of the show Pansy the Horse. An MGM talent scout attended one of her performances and offered her an audition. Samuel Goldwyn himself, the company’s top executive, was dazzled by her talent, and offered her a contract.
His first job was a supporting role in Jack London , a biography of the writer focused on his adventurous side. During filming she fell in love with one of her co-stars, Michael O ‘Shea, who would end up being her husband until the actor’s death in 1976.
In cinema, Virginia Mayo was increasingly popular, especially following the success of The Princess and the Pirate , where she appeared with the popular Bob Hope . For a whole generation of Spanish moviegoers, the film would be a milestone, due to its television broadcast on the night of 23-F. The projection of another of her comedies, The Brooklyn Wonder , where Danny Kaye was a milkman who accidentally knocked out a boxing champion, and was signed as a boxer, also had a great impact in the 80s. It was a remake of The Milky Way , which starred Harold Lloyd . The pair also starred in another overhaul, when Howard Hawks turned their classicFireball in a musical, on the tape A song is born . The biggest hit for Virginia Mayo and Danny Kaye, however, was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty .
He also lavished himself in the field of adventure films, starring in The Falcon and the Arrow and The Hidalgo of the Seas , both titles among the best that the genre has produced. He had time to go through a couple of westerns, such as Road to the Gallows and Together Until Death , to star in one of the pinnacles of gangster cinema, Red Hot , and to prove his worth for drama, in The Best Years of Our Life , by William Wyler .
In the late 1950s, Virginia Mayo withdrew almost completely from the movies, although she sometimes returned to play small roles in middling films, such as La furia de los jovenes . In the 80s she appeared continuously on television, in the series Santa Bárbara and Murder, She Wrote. And in the ’90s, she was still accepting bit parts. The unprecedented in Spain The Man Next Door , apparently a mediocre thriller from 1997, was her last work.