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Jane Withers, the talented child star who tormented Shirley Temple in Sparkling eyes and years later became a trusted confidante of James Dean in his final days on the set of Giant, is dead. She was 95 years old.
Withers died in Burbank on Saturday, her daughter Kendall Errair announced. “My mother was such a special woman,” she said in a statement. “She lit up a room with her laughter, but most of all she beamed with joy and gratitude when she spoke about the career she loved so much and how lucky she was.”
Baby boomers may know Withers best for playing the bubbly Josephine the Plumber in dozens of TV commercials for the Comet cleaner from 1963 to 1974.
The black-haired, rambling Withers was one of the best child actors of the 1930s. She appeared in 23 movies. Sparkling eyes (1934) through Pack up your problems (1939), when she starred alongside the Ritz Brothers, and was among the top 10 highest grossing Hollywood actors in 1937 and 38.
Her parents licensed her image and name for a series of dolls, and Withers was the heroine of three “Whitman Authorized Editions for Girls” novels, which featured famous actresses in mysterious adventures, similar to Nancy’s popular books. Drew: Jane Withers and the Hidden Room (1942), Jane Withers and the Phantom Violin (1943) and Jane Withers and the Soup Magician (1944).
In Sparkling eyes, Withers played spoiled and obnoxious Joy Smythe, the daughter of a wealthy family. Temple was the Smythe maid’s nice boy. At a particularly nasty moment, she said to the character of Temple: “There is no Santa Claus because my psychoanalyst told me!”
Temple was reportedly terrified of Withers during filming, but the two would quickly become friends. The good kid Withers said Hollywood journalist the day after Temple died in February 2014, she called her friend, then known as Shirley Temple Black, every year on her birthday.
“I would always call and say, ‘Is Mrs. Black home? And they would ask, “Who is calling? And I was like, ‘Tell him it’s Joy Smythe.’ “
After leaving comedy to raise a family in the late 1940s, Withers was drawn out of retirement by director George Stevens – she had enrolled in USC to study directing – to appear in the epic. Giant (1956) as Vashti Snythe, the ranch heiress and best friend of Elizabeth Taylor’s character, Leslie.
During the filming of the movie, she and Dean were close. She washed her favorite pink cowboy shirt every night (he said the studio would always lose their laundry), and he would pick it up the next day. Withers was wearing the jersey on September 30, 1955, when Dean was killed in a car crash. “He asked me to keep it to himself, and I have kept it all these years,” she said.
Withers was born in Atlanta on April 12, 1926, the only child of Ruth and Walter Withers. Her mother, determined to make her daughter a star, paid her singing and dancing lessons. At the age of 4, Withers starred as “Dixie’s Dainty Dewdrop” on her own WGST radio show, delighting audiences with impersonations of celebrities such as Maurice Chevalier and Greta Garbo.
Her mom took her to Hollywood (leaving Walter behind), and the mischievous Withers got to do a hopscotch pantomime streak with WC Fields in the classic. It’s a gift (1934). “You have a very talented little girl here,” the comedian told his mother. “I think she will go very far.
During a casting for Sparkling eyes, director David Butler asked Withers to imitate a machine gun. Impressed, he hired her to play foil against Temple in the first film specially designed for the girl with the corkscrew curls.
the bratty Sparkling eyes the performance secured a contract with Withers at Fox and lead roles, often as boring but somehow attractive kids, in films such as Ginger (1935) – whose production began on its eighth birthday – the musical Paddy o’day (1935), The farmer takes a wife (1935), Little Miss Person (1936) and Holy terror (1937).
She starred with Gene Autry in High shot (1940), cold calling Republic Pictures and its head of studio, Herbert Yates, to restart talks that would lead to the loan of three Fox stars to Republic in exchange for Autry’s services in the Western. She was 14 at the time. “I wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she said, “not when I knew it would be good for everyone involved.”
Soon, however, Withers and her audience became dissatisfied with her roles. She created a screenplay for her character in Deb small town (1941) which she wrote under the pseudonym Jerrie Walters.
“I was the only child star I know to have had the opportunity to sit down with the writers at story conferences – and I was able to make up some of the dialogue,” she said. one day.
Withers was then featured in the Lewis Milestone war propaganda film The North star (1943), with Dana Andrews and Anne Baxter. During World War II, she took part in more than 100 tours of bonds and camps for the war effort and sent her extensive collection of 3,500 dolls, most received as gifts from her fans, on tour to collect funds.
“To see them, the children bought a 10 cent war bill. These dolls have raised more than $ 2 million for our country’s war effort, ”she said in an interview in 2010.
She eventually jumped on Republic, where she shot films such as my best girl (1944), Faces in the fog (1944) and Geraldine’s business (1946) before starring in Lew Landers’ film noir Danger street (1947).
Withers married Texas oilman William P. Moss in 1947 and retired from acting, but the couple divorced after six years. In 1955, she married Kenneth Errair, member of the vocal group The Four Freshmen; he was killed in a plane crash in California in 1968. She had five children.
His cinematic CV also included The heart is a rebel (1958); The right approach (1961), in which she was grouped with Butler, her Sparkling eyes director; Captain Newman, MD (1963), in which she played a psychiatric matriarch opposite Gregory Peck; and the animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and its sequel, for which she voiced a gargoyle.
On television she appeared in episodes of Single father, The Munsters, The boat of love, Hart to Hart, The murder she wrote and amazing Grace.
For the Comet spots, Withers said she was the 103rd actress to audition for the role of Josephine. She wore her own white overalls from home to the test, and her Josephine ended up wearing the same work clothes on TV and in print ads.
“When I read the lines, I didn’t like the attitude they had written for her in the script. Way too serious. It’s not me,” she said. “I said that I would do one as they liked and one with the attitude I thought Josephine should have, much more optimistic. “
“I felt bad to leave Josephine,” she added in 1975. It’s as if I had killed someone. The company wanted me to stay. We were in fifth place in the market when we started the ads. Now we are # 1.
In May 1987, Withers delivered the eulogy at the Beverly Hills funeral of actress Rita Hayworth, whom she had met when she was 8 years old while filming Patty o’day.
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