Statuesque, blonde and blessed with an easy way with a quip, Louise Allbritton never got the break she deserved from Universal, who saw her as just another starlet useful for decorating the company's endless regiment of B-Movies. But critics noticed a genuine gift for screwball comedy that recalled the late Carole Lombard, notably in SAN DIEGO, I LOVE YOU (1944) and MEN IN HER DIARY (1945), and some scribes even took Universal to task for wasting her. The studio paid no attention, of course, and by the late 1940s, she was playing second fiddle to the likes of Ma and Pa Kettle. She did mainly television after marrying CBS News correspondent Charles Collingwood, becoming on of the medium's very first talk show personalities, and retired for good in the late 1950s.
The final film of Louise Allbritton:
THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA (Columbia, 1949) D: Gordon Douglas. CAST: Randolph Scott, George Macready, Louise Allbritton (Rose of Cimarron), John Ireland, Virginia Huston. Bill Doolin (Scott), the last of the Dalton gang, forms his own group of bank robbers but is reformed by the love of a good woman (Huston). Although earning third billing as a tough saloon belle, Allbritton has really very little to do in this otherwise fine Western co-produced by Randolph Scott himself. According to some sources, she later starred in the title role in something called "FELICIA," but, if true, the film was never released.
Felicia with louise Allbritton was filmed in Puerto Rico in 1964. Never released. I know I was part of the crew.
ReplyDeleteYes, I also know Felicia...my mother had a small part in it when we lived in Puerto Rico. Directed by the late David Durston. Would love to see footage from it.
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