August 3, 1923– Jean Shirley Verhagen was born in Chicago, but when she found work on Broadway in her early 20s, she became Jean Hagen.
On a cold winter evening in 2012, I had the thrill of viewing one of my favorite films in a new print on a big screen. It was a movie that I had seen many times on TV, but never in a theatre. It did not disappoint. The film continued to delight with the mastery & freshness of the talent involved. Singin’ In The Rain (1952) holds a rightful place as one of the truly great works of art from the 20th Century. This time, what did take me by surprise was not so much the stunning beauty of Gene Kelly’s ass, but the staggering, startling, striking, stunning, stupefyingly stupendous work of Jean Hagen as vain & talent challenged silent film star Lina Lamont. Without her finely crafted & perfectly modulated performance, the movie would have fallen short of being a perfect film. & I do think it is rather perfect. Hagen deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Singin’ In The Rain.
Her film debut was as a femme fatale in gay director George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib (1949), & her work brought her a contract with MGM. She was especially good in John Houston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) for the studio & she received excellent reviews. Hagen appeared in MGM’s film noir Side Street (1950) perfectly cast as a sincere, but dim, gangster’s gun moll.
In 1953, Hagen joined the cast of the new Desilu sitcom Make Room For Daddy (not to be confused with my one man show with the same title). As the very funny wife of star Danny Thomas, Hagen received 3 Emmy Award nominations, but after 3 seasons she grew dissatisfied with the role & left the series. Thomas didn’t appreciate Hagen’s leaving the successful series & he had her character bite the big one rather than recast. This may be the very first TV character to be killed off in a family sitcom. Lovely & nimble Marjorie Lord was cast a year later as Thomas’ second wife & she worked well with Thomas for several more seasons.
Although Hagen made frequent guest appearances in various TV series for the rest of her career, she was unable to successfully revive her once promising film career, only finding work playing smallish supporting roles: the secretary to FDR in Sunrise At Campobello (1960), & the pal of Bette Davis in the smart film noir Dead Ringer (1964).
In the late 1960s, Hagen was diagnosed with throat cancer & she spent the rest of her life in some kind of treatment, hospitalized or under an oncologist’s care. A tough situation for an actor noted for her voice.
She had a comeback of sorts playing character roles in episodes of 1970s TV series like Starsky & Hutch & The Streets Of San Francisco. Sadly, gorgeous, talented Hagen made her final film appearance in the nutty male hooker TV film Alexander: The Other Side Of Dawn (1977).
That damn cancer finally grabbed Hagen in summer 1977 while she was living at the Motion Picture Country Home, gone way too early at 54 years. Her last appearance was released posthumously, a reprise of her 1959 role opposite Fred Mac Murray in The Shaggy Dog for The Wonderful World Of Disney TV series in 1978. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 1502 Vine Street.
On her birthday, let’s take a moment to remember her very special achievement in the greatest film musical of all time. Hagen was a marvel, a special kind of genius, a beautiful clown.
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