Friday, February 2, 2018

Ann Gillis

Erstwhile actress -- via Facebook. I straight up like this lady. She was a prominent child actress in the 1930s and 1940s -- and she didn't like it one bit. She opted out. "I'd called a halt to a life I'd not chosen and didn't enjoy," she said. Save for a little TV and one last role in Kubrick's "2001," she was done. She did have roles in many remarkable projects -- "Men in White" (1934), her debut; Becky Thatcher in the 1938 "Tom Sawyer", the second film incarnation of "Little Orphan Annie" (also 1938), "Beau Geste" (1939), and "Edison, the Man" (1940). She was the adult voice of Bambi's beloved Faline in the 1942 animated feature. She played Poole's mother in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1969) -- "Kubrick was a real jerk," she said.