1. Una Merkel was an American stage, film, radio, and television actress.
26 Facts About Una Merkel
1. 2.
Una Merkel went to Hollywood in 1930 and became a popular film actress.
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Una Merkel won a Tony Award in 1956 and was nominated for an Oscar in 1961.
4.
Una Merkel was born in Covington, Kentucky, to Bessie and Arno Una Merkel.
5.
Una Merkel went on to appear in a few silent movies, several of them for the Lee Bradford Corporation.
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Una Merkel appeared in the two-reel Love's Old Sweet Song, which was made by Lee de Forest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process and starred Louis Wolheim and Helen Weir.
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Not making much of a mark in films, Una Merkel turned her attention to the theater and found work in several important plays on Broadway.
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Griffith to play Ann Rutledge in his film Abraham Lincoln, Una Merkel became a big success in sound films.
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Una Merkel was known for her Kewpie-doll looks, strong Southern accent, and wry line delivery.
10.
Una Merkel played Sam Spade's secretary in the original 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon.
11.
Una Merkel was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player from 1932 to 1938, appearing in as many as 12 films in a year, often on loan-out to other studios.
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Una Merkel was often cast as leading lady opposite Jack Benny, Harold Lloyd, Franchot Tone, and Charles Butterworth, among others.
13.
In 42nd Street, Una Merkel played a streetwise show girl.
14.
Una Merkel received second billing in The Good Old Soak with Wallace Beery and Ted Healy in the same year that Healy died mysteriously.
15.
Una Merkel played the elder daughter to the W C Fields character, Egbert Souse, in the 1940 film The Bank Dick.
16.
Una Merkel made a comeback as a middle-aged woman playing mothers and maiden aunts, and in 1956 won a Tony Award for her role on Broadway in The Ponder Heart, adapted from the novella of the same name.
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Una Merkel had a major part in the MGM 1959 film The Mating Game as Paul Douglas's character's wife and Debbie Reynolds' character's mother, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Summer and Smoke.
18.
Una Merkel was featured as Brian Keith's character's housekeeper, Verbena, in the Walt Disney comedy The Parent Trap in 1961.
19.
On March 5,1945, Una Merkel was nearly killed when her mother Bessie, with whom she shared an apartment in New York City, died by suicide by gassing herself.
20.
Una Merkel was overcome by the five gas jets her mother had turned on in their kitchen and was found unconscious in her bedroom.
21.
On March 4,1952, seven years almost to the day after her mother died, Una Merkel overdosed on sleeping pills.
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Una Merkel was found unconscious by a nurse who was caring for her at the time and remained in a coma for a day before recovering.
23.
Una Merkel married North American Aviation executive Ronald L Burla in 1932.
24.
Una Merkel filed for divorce on December 19,1946, in Miami, and it was granted in March 1947.
25.
On January 2,1986, Una Merkel died in Los Angeles at the age of 82.
26.
Una Merkel is buried near her parents, Arno and Bessie Merkel, in Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.