Photo courtesy of MGM
By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief
Nanette Fabray, the Tony and Emmy award-winning actress, and former honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades, has died aged 97.
Variety described Fabray as exuberant and indefatigable in roles from Vincent Minnelli’s 1953 musical “The Band Wagon” to 184 episodes of the TV quiz show “Hollywood Squares.”
Photo courtesy of Arnie Wishnick
She first appeared as a lady-in-waiting to Bette Davis’ Queen Elizabeth in the 1939 biopic “Elizabeth and Essex.” But she became more prominent on stage and, in the 1950s, in the brattish newcomer, television, where she became a familiar sitcom “TV mom.”
Born in San Diego as Ruby Bernadette Nanette Theresa Fabares, she moved to her Sunset home in the Palisades with her second husband, Ranald MacDougall, who wrote “Mildred Pierce” and, less fortunately, Fox’s infamous “Cleopatra.”
The Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce persuaded her to become honorary mayor of the Palisades in 1967, partially because of her public work with the hard of hearing—she was the first woman to use sign language on U.S. TV and won the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her work with the deaf and hard of hearing.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
She left the Palisades after the death of her second husband and died on Feb. 22 in Palos Verdes.
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