Andrea Leeds
Encyclopedia
Andrea Leeds was an American film actress. A popular supporting player of the late 1930s, Leeds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 for her performance in Stage Door
Stage Door
Stage Door is a RKO film, adapted from the play by the same name, that tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a boarding house at 158 West 58th Street in New York City. The film stars Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier,...

(1937). She was progressing to leading roles, when she retired from acting following her marriage in 1939, and was later a successful horse breeder
Horse breeding
Horse breeding is reproduction in horses, and particularly the human-directed process of selective breeding of animals, particularly purebred horses of a given breed. Planned matings can be used to produce specifically desired characteristics in domesticated horses...

.

Life and career

Born Antoinette Lees in Butte, Montana
Butte, Montana
Butte is a city in Montana and the county seat of Silver Bow County, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. As of the 2010 census, Butte's population was 34,200...

, she began her film career in 1934 playing bit part
Bit part
A bit part is a supporting acting role with at least one line of dialogue . In British television, bit parts are referred to as under sixes...

s and using her given name. As Andrea Leeds she played her first substantial role in the film Come and Get It
Come and Get It (film)
Come and Get It is a 1936 American drama film directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler. The screenplay by Jane Murfin and Jules Furthman is based on the 1935 novel of the same title by Edna Ferber.-Plot:...

(1936) and achieved another success with her next film It Could Happen to You (1937).

As part of an ensemble cast that included Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

, Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....

 and Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...

, Leeds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 for her performance as an aspiring actress in Stage Door
Stage Door
Stage Door is a RKO film, adapted from the play by the same name, that tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a boarding house at 158 West 58th Street in New York City. The film stars Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier,...

(1937). She read for the role of Melanie in Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...

, however the role was given to 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...

.

Her wholesome quality led to her being cast in The Goldwyn Follies
The Goldwyn Follies
The Goldwyn Follies is a 1938 Technicolor film written by Ben Hecht, Sid Kuller, Sam Perrin and Arthur Phillips, with music by George Gershwin, Vernon Duke, and Ray Golden, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Some sources credit Kurt Weill as one of the composers, but this is apparently incorrect...

(1938) playing "Miss Humanity" - a woman considered by a jaded Hollywood executive to represent the ideal American woman. The film was not a success and received poor reviews.

She next appeared in two films opposite Joel McCrea
Joel McCrea
Joel Albert McCrea was an American actor whose career spanned 50 years and appearances in over 90 films.-Early life:...

, Youth Takes a Fling (1938) and They Shall Have Music
They Shall Have Music
They Shall Have Music is a 1939 musical film starring famed violinist Jascha Heifetz , Joel McCrea, Andrea Leeds, and Gene Reynolds...

(1939), for the first time playing the lead female role. She continued to play the romantic female lead in an adventure film set in the 1906 Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, The Real Glory, opposite 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 David Niven
David Niven
James David Graham Niven , known as David Niven, was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther...

, and opposite Don Ameche
Don Ameche
Don Ameche was an Academy Award winning American actor with a career spanning almost sixty years.-Personal life:...

 in the first Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

 of Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster
Stephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...

, Swanee River
Swanee River (film)
Swanee River is a biopic about Stephen Foster, a songwriter from Pittsburgh who falls in love with the South, marries a Southern girl, then is accused of sympathizing when the Civil War breaks out...

(1939).

Her final film, Earthbound (1940), was a fantasy murder mystery in which Leeds' character solves the murder of her husband, aided by his ghost.

These films were relatively successful and Leeds remained a popular actress. In 1939 she married Robert Stewart Howard, son of California businessman and racehorse owner Charles S. Howard, and decided to leave films to devote herself to raising a family. Her father-in-law owned and raced Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit was a champion Thoroughbred racehorse in the United States. From an inauspicious start, Seabiscuit became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many Americans during the Great Depression...

, and with her husband she became a successful horse owner/breeder. After his death in 1962, Leeds ran a jewellery business. It was her only marriage, and produced two children, Robert Jr. and Leann, who died in 1971.

Andrea Leeds died from cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 in Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...

, aged 69. A resident of the city for many years, she is remembered as one of its prominent citizens with a star on their "Walk of Fame".

She was interred in Desert Memorial Park
Desert Memorial Park
Desert Memorial Park is a cemetery in Cathedral City, California, United States, near Palm Springs. It is maintained by the Palm Springs Cemetery District...

 in Cathedral City, California
Cathedral City, California
Cathedral City is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The population was 51,200 at the 2010 census. Sandwiched between Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, it is one of the cities in the Coachella Valley of southern California...

.

External links

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