Virginia Mayo is the widow of actor Michael O'Shea. LOS ANGELES Virginia Mayo, the stunning blond actress who brought beauty and romance to films of the 1940s and 1950s with such co-stars as James Cagney, Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Danny Kaye and. And it is Mayo who, in Warners' King Richard and the Crusaders (1955), utters the immortal high-camp line "Fight, fight, fight! That's all you ever do, Dick Plantagenet!" When her film career faltered in the 1960s, Mayo turned to stage work on the touring-company and dinner-theatre circuit more recently, she has been a frequent interview subject on TV documentaries dealing with the old Hollywood studio system. Samuel Goldwyn, one of the founders of MGM Studios, gave her a screen test and then put her under contract. Many of her characters were so outre that one wonders whether Mayo was having some sport with us: her turn as Jack Palance's paramour in The Silver Chalice (1955) and as Cleopatra in the guilty pleasure The Story of Mankind (1957) immediately come to mind. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mayo was one of the most popular female stars at Warner Bros., appearing in musicals, melodramas and westerns. A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. She also co-starred in the 1946 Oscar -winning movie The Best Years of Our Lives. With James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond OBrien, Margaret Wycherly. Best known for a series of comedy films with Danny Kaye, Mayo was Warner Brothers ' biggest box-office money-maker in the late 1940s. Though never regarded as a great actress, she was disturbingly convincing as Dana Andrews' faithless wife in Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and as James Cagney's sluttish gun moll in White Heat (1949). Virginia Mayo (born Virginia Clara Jones Novem January 17, 2005) was an American actress and dancer. She rose to face as Danny Kaye's leading lady in a series of splashy Technicolor musicals produced by Samuel Goldwyn. issued an effusive press release that concluded: “At 115 pounds she is potentially as valuable as an acre of land in downtown Los Angeles - and at least several times more desirable.Radiantly beautiful blonde actress Virginia Mayo was a chorus dancer when she began her film career as a bit player in 1942. When she signed the contract, Warner Bros. 17, 2005 at a nursing home in suburban Thousand Oaks, Calif. ** FILE ** Ronald Reagan appears with Virginia Mayo in a scene from the 1952 film \"She's Working Her Way Through College.\" Mayo, the stunning blonde actress who brought beauty and romance to films of 1940s and 1950s with such co-stars as James Cagney, Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Danny Kaye and Reagan, died Monday Jan. She went on to make five films with Kaye before signing a contract with Warner Bros., where she became one of the studio’s biggest stars. She started her film career as a chorus girl and comic foil before becoming an accomplished actress. Starting as a chorus girl, she quickly advanced to co-star status, appearing opposite Hope in “The Princess and the Pirate” in 1944. “I really wanted to be a dancer, but I ended up as an actress, and I got to perform next to some of the greatest actors of our time,” she recalled in 2001. Her honey blonde hair and creamy, flawless face made Mayo ideal for the Technicolor musicals, westerns and adventures that were the rage in Hollywood in the 1940s and ’50s. “She passed away this afternoon,” longtime friend Mary Walsh told The Associated Press.
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