1. Lola Jean Albright was an American singer and actress, best known for playing the sultry singer Edie Hart, the girlfriend of private eye Peter Gunn, on all three seasons of the TV series Peter Gunn.
17 Facts About Lola Albright
1. 2.
Lola Albright attended King Grammar School and was graduated from West High School in Akron in 1942.
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Lola Albright sang in public at a young age and studied piano for 20 years.
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Lola Albright left WAKR at the age of 18 and moved to Cleveland, taking a job as a stenographer at WTAM radio.
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Lola Albright made her motion-picture debut with a small singing role in the 1947 musical comedy The Unfinished Dance, and then appeared the following year in two Judy Garland movies: The Pirate and Easter Parade.
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Lola Albright first gained studio and public notice in the 1949 film noir production Champion with her portrayal of the wife of a manipulative boxing manager; she falls for a prizefighter played by Kirk Douglas.
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Some films in which Lola Albright appeared were Tulsa, starring Susan Hayward; The Silver Whip, in which she played Dale Robertson's love interest; and The Tender Trap, in which she was one of several women trying to trap a bachelor, played by Frank Sinatra, into marriage.
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In 1985, The New York Times lauded Lola Albright's acting in the film.
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Lola Albright gave up her feature-film career in 1968 after completing her work in The Impossible Years, a generation-gap farce in which she performed as Alice Kingsley, the despairing wife of a professor of psychiatry played by David Niven and the mother of two teenaged daughters.
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Unlike other film actors who were slow to begin acting in television, Lola Albright was actively working in the medium from 1951.
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Lola Albright appeared on the anthology series Lux Video Theatre in the episode "Inside Story".
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In 1958, Lola Albright was cast in Peter Gunn, the television detective series produced by Blake Edwards and scored by Henry Mancini.
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Lola Albright played sultry Edie Hart, a nightclub singer and the romantic interest of Peter Gunn.
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Columbia Records signed Albright as a vocalist, leading to the release of her album Lola Wants You in 1957.
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Lola Albright is one of the few nonmovie-soundtrack singers for whom Mancini arranged.
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In 1959, Lola Albright was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series for her work on Peter Gunn.
17.
On March 23,2017, Lola Albright died at her home at the age of 92.