Eve Arden performed in leading and supporting roles for nearly six decades.
24 Facts About Eve Arden
2.
Eve Arden received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Mildred Pierce.
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Later in her career, Eve Arden moved to television, playing a sardonic but engaging high school teacher in Our Miss Brooks, for which she won the first Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
4.
Eve Arden played the school principal in the film musicals Grease and Grease 2.
5.
Eve Arden was born Eunice Mary Quedens on April 30,1908, in Mill Valley, California, to Charles Peter Quedens, the son of Charles Henry Augustus Quedens and Eunice Meta Dierks; and Lucille Frank, the daughter of Bernard Frank and Louisa Mertens.
6.
Eve Arden then attended Tamalpais High School, a public high school in Mill Valley, until age 16.
7.
Eve Arden made her film debut under her real name in the backstage musical Song of Love, as a wisecracking, homewrecking showgirl who becomes a rival to the film's star, singer Belle Baker.
8.
When she was told to adopt a stage name for the show, Arden looked at her cosmetics and "stole my first name from Evening in Paris, and the second from Elizabeth Arden".
9.
Eve Arden's Stage Door portrayal of a fast-talking, witty supporting character gained Arden considerable notice and was a template for many of Arden's future roles.
10.
Eve Arden had a supporting part in the Red Skelton comedy Whistling in the Dark and the romantic comedy Obliging Young Lady.
11.
Eve Arden became familiar to a new generation of filmgoers when she played Principal McGee in Grease and Grease 2.
12.
Eve Arden was a regular on Danny Kaye's short-lived but memorably zany comedy-variety show in 1946, which featured swing bandleader Harry James and gravel-voiced character actor-comedian Lionel Stander.
13.
Eve Arden portrayed the character on radio from 1948 to 1957, in a television version of the program from 1952 to 1956, and in a 1956 feature film.
14.
Eve Arden's character clashed with the school's principal, Osgood Conklin and nursed an unrequited crush on fellow teacher Philip Boynton.
15.
Eve Arden's well-established wisecracking, deadpan character ultimately became her public persona as a comedienne.
16.
Eve Arden was a hit with the critics: A winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors by Motion Picture Daily named her the year's best radio comedienne.
17.
Ball and Eve Arden met when they costarred in the film Stage Door in 1937.
18.
Arden tried another series for CBS in the fall of 1957, The Eve Arden Show, but it was canceled in spring of 1958 after 26 episodes.
19.
In 1983, Eve Arden was cast as the leading lady in what was to be her Broadway comeback, Moose Murders, but she withdrew and was replaced with the much younger Holland Taylor after one preview performance, citing "artistic differences".
20.
Eve Arden was married to actor Brooks West from 1952 until his death in 1984 from a brain hemorrhage at age 67.
21.
Eve Arden adopted her first child with Bergen and a second child as a single mother after her divorce from him; she adopted her third child with West and gave birth to her youngest at age 46 in 1954.
22.
On November 12,1990, Eve Arden died at home at age 82.
23.
Eve Arden was cremated, with her ashes buried in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Westwood, Los Angeles, California.
24.
Eve Arden was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.