In Remembrance: Sheree North

     Sheree North, the platinum blond who was originally hired to be a replacement for Marilyn Monroe but went on to forge her own screen persona, has passed away on November 4, 2005 in Los Angeles. She was 72.

     Born Dawn Bethel on January 17, 1933 in Los Angeles, North started her career as a dancer, appearing in USO shows during World War II before her teen years. As she grew older, she changed her aspiration to become a ballerina to being a night club entertainer, landing a job in the chorus line at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles at age 13.

     North’s first film appearance was a bit part in the 1951 musical comedy Excuse My Dust for MGM. With no further film offers coming from the studio, North continued dancing in nightclubs. While performing in a Santa Monica nightclub, she was spotted by a talent agent who got her a role in the Broadway show Hazel Flagg. The show became a hit in part due to North’s energetic dance number and she had the chance to recreate the number when the show was retooled into the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Living It Up (1954) at Paramount Studios.

     Impressed by her performance, North was soon offered a contract by 20^th Century Fox. With her platinum hair and nearly matching measurements, it was thought that the studio hired her as a potential replacement for the troublemaking Marilyn Monroe, a notion reinforced when her first role at the studio was replacing a temporarily suspended Monroe in the lead of the comedy How To Be Very, Very Popular (1955). The role landed North on the cover of Life magazine and the dance number she performed to the song "Shake, Rattle and Roll" was billed as "the screen's first Rock N Roll dance scene." The studio continued to place North in a series of Monroe-like bombshell roles in such films as the comedy The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956), with Monroe’s Seven-Year Itch co-star Tom Ewell, the musical The Best Things In Life Are Free (1956) and the drama No Down Payment (1957). North was resistant to be put into roles that relied more on her looks than on her acting abilities. She left Fox after completing 1958’s Mardi Gras and the studio turned their attention towards developing Jayne Mansfield as their next blond bombshell.

     North stayed away from Hollywood for almost a decade, choosing to hone her craft in regional theater and guest appearances on a variety of television series. When North returned to the silver screen in the late 1960s, it was to act in meaty supporting roles in such films as Madigan (1968), The Trouble With Girls (1969), The Organization (1971), Charley Varrick (1973), Breakout (1975), The Shootist (1976) and Telefon (1977).

     For the remainder of her career, North concentrated more on television projects, though she did appear in a handful of films including Rabbit Test (1978), Maniac Cop (1988) and Defenseless (1991).

     Although she earned Emmy nominations for appearances on Marcus Welby, M.D. and Archie Bunker’s Place, North’s most memorable television appearance was as the girlfriend to Ed Asner’s normally grumpy newspaper editor Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In 1980 she starred as Marilyn Monroe’s mother in the made-for-television movie Marilyn: The Untold Story. More recently, she appeared as Kramer’s mother Babs on the sitcom Seinfeld.