Nancy Olson
Encyclopedia
Nancy Ann Olson is an American actress.
In Sunset Boulevard
(1950) she played Betty Schaefer, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress
. Her pairing with William Holden
was considered a success and she appeared with him in three other films (Force of Arms
, Union Station
, and Submarine Command
, all released in 1951), but none repeated their success in Sunset Boulevard. Her career subsequently declined and eventually stalled.
After guest roles on television, she retired in the middle of the 1980s from acting.
in 1948 and, after a few supporting roles, producers began to consider her for more prominent parts. She was up for the role of Delilah
in Cecil B. DeMille
's 1949 film Samson and Delilah
, for which Olson later said she was not suited. When she was passed over in favor of Hedy Lamarr
, Billy Wilder
cast her for his upcoming project. In Sunset Boulevard
(1950) she played Betty Schaefer, for which she garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress
. Her pairing with William Holden
was considered a success and she appeared with him in three other films (Force of Arms
, Union Station
, and Submarine Command
, all released in 1951), but none repeated their success in Sunset Boulevard. Other film credits include Big Jim McLain
(1952), So Big
(1953), and Battle Cry
(1955).
Olson's career stalled, though she did make several memorable appearances in films for the Walt Disney
studio. The Absent-Minded Professor
and Son of Flubber
paired her with Fred MacMurray
and were popular with movie-goers. She also appeared alongside Hayley Mills
in Pollyanna
and Dean Jones
in Snowball Express
. Olson then moved to New York City
where she appeared on Broadway
.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she did guest roles on television
, and has been retired since the mid 1980s, although she made a brief, uncredited appearance in Flubber, the 1997 remake of The Absent-Minded Professor.
, the daughter of Evelyn (née
Bergstrom) and Henry J. Olson, who was a physician.
She married the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner
, as his third wife, in 1950, had two daughters, Liza and Jennifer. They divorced in 1957.
In 1962 she married longtime Capitol Records
executive Alan W. Livingston
, best known for creating "Bozo the Clown
" and for signing Frank Sinatra
and The Beatles
, among other legends, with Capitol. He died in 2009; they had one son, Christopher.
In Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (film)
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett...
(1950) she played Betty Schaefer, for which she received an Academy Award nomination 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...
. Her pairing with William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
was considered a success and she appeared with him in three other films (Force of Arms
Force of Arms
Force of Arms is a 1951 romantic drama film set in the Italian theater of World War II. It reteamed William Holden and Nancy Olson in the third of their four movies together , all released in 1950 or 1951...
, Union Station
Union Station (film)
Union Station is a film noir, directed by Rudolph Maté. The drama features William Holden, Barry Fitzgerald, and Nancy Olson, among others.-Plot:...
, and Submarine Command
Submarine command
Submarine Command is a 1951 film starring William Holden, Don Taylor, Nancy Olson, William Bendix, and Darryl Hickman, directed by John Farrow...
, all released in 1951), but none repeated their success in Sunset Boulevard. Her career subsequently declined and eventually stalled.
After guest roles on television, she retired in the middle of the 1980s from acting.
Career
Olson was signed to a film contract by Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
in 1948 and, after a few supporting roles, producers began to consider her for more prominent parts. She was up for the role of Delilah
Delilah
Delilah appears only in the Hebrew bible Book of Judges 16, where she is the "woman in the valley of Sorek" whom Samson loved, and who was his downfall...
in Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
's 1949 film Samson and Delilah
Samson and Delilah (1949 film)
Samson and Delilah is a 1949 film made by Paramount Pictures , produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr as the title characters...
, for which Olson later said she was not suited. When she was passed over in favor of Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress celebrated for her great beauty who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age".Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless...
, Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
cast her for his upcoming project. In Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (film)
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett...
(1950) she played Betty Schaefer, for which she garnered an Academy Award nomination 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...
. Her pairing with William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
was considered a success and she appeared with him in three other films (Force of Arms
Force of Arms
Force of Arms is a 1951 romantic drama film set in the Italian theater of World War II. It reteamed William Holden and Nancy Olson in the third of their four movies together , all released in 1950 or 1951...
, Union Station
Union Station (film)
Union Station is a film noir, directed by Rudolph Maté. The drama features William Holden, Barry Fitzgerald, and Nancy Olson, among others.-Plot:...
, and Submarine Command
Submarine command
Submarine Command is a 1951 film starring William Holden, Don Taylor, Nancy Olson, William Bendix, and Darryl Hickman, directed by John Farrow...
, all released in 1951), but none repeated their success in Sunset Boulevard. Other film credits include Big Jim McLain
Big Jim McLain
Big Jim McLain is a 1952 political thriller film starring John Wayne and James Arness as HUAC investigators hunting down communists in the post-war Hawaii organized labor scene. Edward Ludwig directed....
(1952), So Big
So Big (1953 film)
So Big is a 1953 American drama film directed by Robert Wise. The screenplay by John Twist is based on the 1924 novel by Edna Ferber. It is the third adaptation of the book, following a 1924 silent film with Colleen Moore and So Big! with Barbara Stanwyck, released in 1932.-Plot:In the late 1890s,...
(1953), and Battle Cry
Battle Cry
Battle Cry is a novel by American writer Leon Uris, published in 1953. Many of the events in the book are based on Uris's own World War II experience with the 6th Marine Regiment....
(1955).
Olson's career stalled, though she did make several memorable appearances in films for the Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
studio. The Absent-Minded Professor
The Absent-Minded Professor
The Absent-Minded Professor is a 1961 black-and-white Walt Disney Productions film based on the short story A Situation of Gravity, by Samuel W. Taylor....
and Son of Flubber
Son of Flubber
Son of Flubber is the 1963 black-and-white sequel to the Walt Disney children's movie comedy The Absent-Minded Professor , also starring Fred MacMurray as a scientist who has perfected a high-bouncing substance, Flubber that can levitate an automobile and cause athletes to bounce into the sky...
paired her with Fred MacMurray
Fred MacMurray
Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....
and were popular with movie-goers. She also appeared alongside Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills is an English actress. The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and sister of actress Juliet Mills, Mills began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Tiger Bay , the Academy Juvenile Award...
in Pollyanna
Pollyanna (1960 film)
Pollyanna is a Walt Disney Productions feature film starring child actress Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden and Richard Egan in a story about a cheerful orphan changing the outlook of a small town. Based upon the novel Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter, the film was written and directed by David...
and Dean Jones
Dean Jones (actor)
Dean Carroll Jones is an American actor. Jones is best known for his light-hearted leading roles in several Walt Disney movies between 1965 and 1977, most notably The Love Bug.-Early years:...
in Snowball Express
Snowball Express
Snowball Express is a 1972 screwball comedy film made by Walt Disney Productions about a man who leaves his desk job to run a hotel left to him by his uncle.-Plot:...
. Olson then moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where she appeared on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she did guest roles on television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, and has been retired since the mid 1980s, although she made a brief, uncredited appearance in Flubber, the 1997 remake of The Absent-Minded Professor.
Personal life
Olson was born in Milwaukee, WisconsinMilwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
, the daughter of Evelyn (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
Bergstrom) and Henry J. Olson, who was a physician.
She married the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film...
, as his third wife, in 1950, had two daughters, Liza and Jennifer. They divorced in 1957.
In 1962 she married longtime Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
executive Alan W. Livingston
Alan W. Livingston
Alan Wendell Livingston , born Alan Wendell Levison, was an American businessman best known for his tenures at Capitol Records, first as a writer/producer best-known for creating Bozo the Clown for a series of record-album and illustrative read-along children's book sets, then as the executive who...
, best known for creating "Bozo the Clown
Bozo the Clown
Bozo the Clown is a clown character very popular in the United States, peaking in the 1960s as a result of widespread franchising in early television.Originally created by Alan W...
" and for signing Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
and The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, among other legends, with Capitol. He died in 2009; they had one son, Christopher.