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Post by topbilled on Oct 22, 2024 19:07:49 GMT
Julie Adams was billed as Julia Adams in several early pictures, but she didn’t feel like ‘Julia’ suited her, so studio bosses let her go by Julie instead. Julie was featured in a variety of westerns and horror-science fiction classics during the 1950s. In the western dramas she made, she worked with James Stewart, Robert Ryan and Rock Hudson. In the horror genre, she appeared opposite a creature whose home was the black lagoon. I’m surprised she ever went swimming again after that ordeal.
Check out:
BEND OF THE RIVER (1952)
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954)
THE PRIVATE WAR OF MAJOR BENSON (1955) |
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Oct 22, 2024 19:28:37 GMT
Adams was in some very good films, and she was a fine actor in them, but I still find her best work was in T.V. shows. She was given much more opportunity to act since the characters she played were more complex, and often not-so-nice gals.
Her screen persona is that of an honest woman, and that allows her to fool both the men in these T.V. shows, as well as the audience. Could someone like that really be a bold face liar? A killer? Keep watching to find out.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 23, 2024 15:43:13 GMT
Good point, James. I agree that Ms. Adams excelled a bit more on television where she could develop a variety of roles. Sometimes she was directed by her (ex) husband Ray Danton in those episodic TV assignments.
I often wondered if part of the divorce settlement was that if he could cast her on shows where he was an in-house director, he didn't have to pay alimony. Whatever the arrangement, that kept her career going strong into the 1990s. And even after Danton died, she still turned up occasionally on the small screen when she was semi-retired.
Another thing that helped her was that she retained her good looks into her 60s, so she could often play younger...or play those older cougar roles with complete conviction.
I remember watching her on the daytime drama Capitol from 1982 to 1987. That was more of a character part for her. She played a society hostess in Washington D.C. When she learned her husband, a well-respected senator (played by Ed Nelson) was cheating and planning to divorce her, the claws came out. And she went full-on bonkers! But thanks in large part to Julie Adams' acting skill, the audience still sympathized with her and despite the evil things she did, she was forgiven and continued in the role until the series went off the air.
When she had story lulls on Capitol she found time to do a recurring role on Murder She Wrote which was filmed at her old stomping grounds Universal.
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