Lurene Tuttle
Encyclopedia
Lurene Tuttle was a character actress, who made transitions from vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 to radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, to film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

s and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

. Her most enduring impact was as one of network radio's most versatile actresses. Often appearing in 15 shows a week, comedies, dramas, thrillers, soap operas, and crime dramas, and back she became known as the First Lady of Radio.

She became interested in acting after her family moved to Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

, appearing in Pasadena Playhouse
Pasadena Playhouse
The Pasadena Playhouse is a historic performing arts venue located 39 S El Molino Avenue in Pasadena, California. The 686-seat auditorium produces a variety of cultural and artistic events, professional shows, and community engagements each year.-History:...

 productions before joining the vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 troupe, Murphy's Comedians. By the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, Tuttle had put her remarkable vocal versatility to work in radio, and within a decade she became one of the most in-demand actresses in the medium.

Radio roles

On radio's The Adventures of Sam Spade
The Adventures of Sam Spade
The Adventures of Sam Spade was a radio series based loosely on the private detective character Sam Spade, created by writer Dashiell Hammett for The Maltese Falcon. The show ran for 13 episodes on ABC in 1946, for 157 episodes on CBS in 1946-1949, and finally for 51 episodes on NBC in 1949-1951...

she played just about every female role, as well as Spade's man-hungry secretary Effie Perrine. She appeared in such shows as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is an American sitcom, airing on ABC from October 3, 1952 to September 3, 1966, starring the real life Nelson family. After a long run on radio, the show was brought to television where it continued its success, running on both radio and TV for a couple of years...

, a role that testified to her vocal versatility: she played Harriet Nelson
Harriet Nelson
Harriet Nelson was an American singer and actress. Nelson is best known for her role on the long-running sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.-Early life and career:...

's on-air mother at a time when she played, concurrently, a young adult onThe Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve , initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. Built around Throckmorton Philharmonic Gildersleeve, a character who had been a staple on the classic radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, first Introduced to...

as the niece Marjorie Forrester, a character 20 years her junior. Tuttle also had regular roles in such shows as Brenthouse (a soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

, as Nancy), Dr. Christian
Dr. Christian
Dr. Christian was a long-running radio series with Jean Hersholt in the title role. It aired on CBS from 1937 to 1954.After Hersholt portrayed the character Dr. John Luke, based on Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, the obstetrician who delivered and cared for the Dionne Quintuplets, in the 20th Century Fox...

(as nurse Judy Price), Duffy's Tavern
Duffy's Tavern
Duffy's Tavern was a popular American radio situation comedy which ran for a decade on several networks , concluding with the December 28, 1951 broadcast....

(as Dolly Snaffle), One Man's Family
One Man's Family
One Man's Family, is a long-running American radio soap opera. It was heard for almost three decades, from 1932 to 1959. Created by Carlton E. Morse, it was the longest-running uninterrupted serial in the history of American radio...

(another soap; various roles), The Red Skelton Show
The Red Skelton Show
The Red Skelton Show is an American variety show that was a television staple for two decades, from 1951 to 1971. It was second to Gunsmoke and third to The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings during that time. Skelton, who had previously been a radio star, had appeared in several motion pictures as...

(as Junior's mommy and as Daisy June, roles she shared with Harriet Nelson), Hollywood Hotel and the soap opera Those We Love.

She made numerous guest appearances on such shows as John Payne
John Payne (actor)
John Payne was an American film actor who is mainly remembered as a singer in 20th Century Fox musical films, and for his leading roles in Miracle on 34th Street and the NBC western television series The Restless Gun.-Background:Payne was born in Roanoke, Virginia...

's The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun is a western television series that appeared on NBC between 1957 and 1959, with John Payne in the role of Vint Bonner, a wandering cowboy in the era after the American Civil War. A skilled gunfighter, Bonner is an idealistic person who prefers peaceful resolutions of conflict...

, Dragnet
Dragnet (series)
Dragnet is a radio and television crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners...

, Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...

, The Screen Guild Theater
The Screen Guild Theater
The Screen Guild Theater was a popular radio anthology series during the Golden Age of Radio, broadcast from 1939 until 1952, with leading Hollywood actors performing in adaptations of popular motion pictures such as Going My Way and The Postman Always Rings Twice.The show had a long run, lasting...

and Suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...

(in "The Sisters", with Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...

). In The Whistler
The Whistler
The Whistler was an American radio mystery drama which ran from May 16, 1942 until September 22, 1955. It was sponsored by the Signal Oil Company: "That whistle is your signal for the Signal Oil program, The Whistler." The program was adapted into a film noir series by Columbia Pictures in...

she played good and evil twins and used separate microphones to stay in character for each twin.

Dr. Christian
Dr. Christian
Dr. Christian was a long-running radio series with Jean Hersholt in the title role. It aired on CBS from 1937 to 1954.After Hersholt portrayed the character Dr. John Luke, based on Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, the obstetrician who delivered and cared for the Dionne Quintuplets, in the 20th Century Fox...

was unusual in that the show, according to critic Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 (in The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age), solicited scripts from listeners (one of whom was a young Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...

) and put them on the air — with a little help. Tuttle recalled:
The real writers on the show had to fix them quite often a lot, because they were really quite amateurish. But they had nice thoughts, they had nice plots. They just needed fixing; the dialogue didn't work too well.


It was during her time on Hollywood Hotel
Hollywood Hotel
The Hollywood Hotel was a famous hostelry and landmark located on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Orchid Avenues in Hollywood, California.-History:The first section of the hotel was built in 1902 by H.J...

that Tuttle became an inadvertent co-catalyst in the founding of the American Federation of Radio Artists
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is a performers' union that represents a wide variety of talent, including actors in radio and television, as well as radio and television announcers and newspersons, singers and recording artists , promo and voice-over announcers and other...

. According to Maltin, Tuttle's male counterpart on the show, veteran actor Frank Nelson (a frequent guest performer on Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...

's program), tried to get both a raise to $35-per-show — at a time when the show paid $5,000 an appearance to headlining guest stars. Nelson eventually got the raises, but the negotiations prompted him to become an AFRA co-founder and one of its active members.

Tuttle also remembered the day the Hollywood Hotel sound effects man was upstaged by a Hollywood legend:
The soundman was supposed to do a little yipping, yappy dog, like a terrier. He sounded like a Newfoundland dog or something, and the director kept saying, "That won't do." So Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

 was sitting next to me, and she says, "I can do a very good dog." And I said, "Well, I don't think they'll let you do a dog. This is an audience show; you're a star, you can't do a dog." And she says, "I'm going to do it." So she went over to the director, went into the booth and said, "I'd like to try doing this dog for you." So they put her behind the screen, and she went on the show and she did that yipping dog."

Films and television

Tuttle became a familiar face to millions of television viewers with over 100 TV appearances from 1950 to 1986. On TV and in films, Tuttle streamlined herself into a pattern of roles between wise, loving wives/mothers or bristling matrons. She was familiar to the early television audience as wife/mother Lavinia (Vinnie) Day in Life with Father (1953–1955), while concurrently graduating to film roles in Alfred Hitchcock's
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

 Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...

and such other films as Heaven Only Knows
Heaven Only Knows
Heaven Only Knows was the eighth album by R&B crooner Teddy Pendergrass. It was his final studio album for Philadelphia International, released just after he left the label to record his album for Asylum Records...

, Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

's Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a 1948 American comedy film directed by H.C. Potter and starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The film was written and produced by the team of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama...

, The Fortune Cookie
The Fortune Cookie
The Fortune Cookie is a 1966 film starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in their first on-screen collaboration, and directed by Billy Wilder.- Plot :...

and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. In Don't Bother to Knock
Don't Bother to Knock
Don't Bother to Knock is a 1952 American thriller film starring Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark, directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Daniel Taradash. Monroe is featured as a disturbed babysitter watching a child at the same New York hotel where a pilot, played by Widmark, is staying...

(1952) she portrayed a mother who lets a disturbed Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

 babysit her daughter, and had a rare starring role as Ma Barker
Ma Barker
Kate "Ma" Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press...

 in Ma Barker's Killer Brood
Ma Barker's Killer Brood
Ma Barker's Killer Brood is a crime film, released in 1960. The low budget film was directed by Bill Karn and starred Lurene Tuttle as the title character, Ma Barker, and Tristam Coffin as Arthur Dunlop....

(1960).

She guest starred twice on Edmond O'Brien
Edmond O'Brien
Edmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...

's 1960 syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 crime drama Johnny Midnight
Johnny Midnight (TV series)
Johnny Midnight is an American crime drama that aired for one season in syndicated from January to December 1960. The series stars Edmond O'Brien as the title character.-Synopsis:...

. She then played a supporting role in the short-lived Father of the Bride
Father of the Bride (TV series)
Father of the Bride is an American sitcom that aired on CBS during the 1961-62 season. Produced by MGM Television, the series was based on the 1950 film of the same title...

(1961) television situation comedy.

Lurene Tuttle's best known role to the general public was her stint as Lloyd Nolan
Lloyd Nolan
Lloyd Benedict Nolan was an American film and television actor.-Biography:Nolan was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Margaret and James Nolan, who was a shoe manufacturer...

's senior nurse in the Diahann Carroll series Julia
Julia (TV series)
Julia is an American sitcom notable for being one of the first weekly series to depict an African American woman in a non-stereotypical role. Previous television series featured African American lead characters, but the characters were usually servants. The show starred actress and singer Diahann...

(1968–1971) as the humorless but still warm-hearted Hannah Yarby. In 1980, Tuttle appeared in the Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

 television movie, White Mama
White Mama
White Mama is a 1980 television film drama directed by Jackie Cooper and adapted from the novel of the same name by Robert C. S. Downs.It stars Bette Davis in the title role, with Ernest Harden Jr., Eileen Heckart, Virginia Capers, Anne Ramsey, Lurene Tuttle and Vincent Schiavelli.Davis portrays...

.

Tuttle married Melville Ruick
Melville Ruick
Actor Melville Ruick was born in Boise, Idaho on July 8, 1898. He studied law at the University of California, but World War I changed him from a student lawyer to a student pilot. Ruick won his wings in the Air Service, Signal Corps, two weeks before the end of the war.During the lean years of...

, an actor she had met during her radio years; the couple had a daughter, Barbara Ruick
Barbara Ruick
-Youth:Ruick was the daughter of actors Lurene Tuttle and Melville Ruick. She grew up acting out scenes with dolls, employing her mother as an audience. She attended Theodore Roosevelt High School , Burbank High School , and North Hollywood High School. She did little acting in high school but...

, a musical comedy actress who married famed film composer John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...

 before dying unexpectedly in 1974. Tuttle and Ruick eventually divorced; Tuttle remarried, but her second marriage didn't last very long. She became a respected acting coach and teacher — something she'd always done, even at the height of her acting career (she often re-trained radio actors who'd been away from the craft during service in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

) — until her death from cancer in 1986, aged 78. She was survived by three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Her Sam Spade co-star, Howard Duff
Howard Duff
Howard Green Duff was an American actor of film, television, stage, and radio.Duff was born in Charleston, Washington, now a part of Bremerton. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle in 1932 where he began acting in school plays only after he was cut from the basketball team...

, who delivered her eulogy
Eulogy
A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired. Eulogies may be given as part of funeral services. However, some denominations either discourage or do not permit eulogies at services to maintain respect for traditions...

, remembered Tuttle:
She could just take hold of a part and do something with it... I think she never met a part she didn't like. She just loved to work, she loved to act. She's a woman who was born to do what she was doing and loved every minute of it.

Quotations

  • "I could play opposite Jimmy Stewart
    James Stewart (actor)
    James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...

     or Fredric March
    Fredric March
    Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...

     or Cary Grant
    Cary Grant
    Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...

     or Gary Cooper
    Gary Cooper
    Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

     and Leslie Howard
    Leslie Howard (actor)
    Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...

    , and on the air I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female you've ever seen in your life. Whatever I wished to be, I could be with my voice, which was the thrilling part to me."---On radio acting with major film stars doing radio guest turns.

  • "There are very clever people in the business now who are just voice characters, who... turn on Voice 36 or Voice 9 or Voice 12 or something. But we always worked from the full person, at least I did, and I know that all of us tried to work that way because that's the only honest way to do it. You have to have a person who lives and breathes and walks and is alive, rather than just turning on a voice. You could conjure up, through imagination, anything you wanted to be." — On whether she was merely a voice artist.

  • "He got steamed up and the half-hour show didn't really satisfy him, so he kept the audience there afterwards... He did at least an hour, sometimes an hour and a half." — On Red Skelton
    Red Skelton
    Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...

    's being unable to stop performing after each installment of his half-hour show was done for the night.

  • "Dear Lurene, Thank you for pulling me through so many broadcasts---fondly, Ronnie." --A note Tuttle received from actor Ronald Colman
    Ronald Colman
    Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

    , who was fond of radio and accepted numerous radio jobs himself when film roles became harder for him to come by in his later years.

Listen to


External links

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