| Full Name Ilona Hajmassy Years active 1935-1959 | Name Ilona Massey Role Film actress | |
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| Born June 16, 1910 (1910-06-16) Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Budapest, Hungary) Died August 20, 1974, Bethesda, Maryland, United States Spouse Donald Dawson (m. 1955–1974) TV shows The Ilona Massey Show, Rendezvous Movies Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Love Happy, Balalaika, Invisible Agent, Holiday in Mexico Similar People Alan Curtis, Roy William Neill, Donald Dawson, Reinhold Schunzel, Edwin L Marin | ||
Movie Legends - Ilona Massey
Nelson Eddy - Ladies Man
Ilona Massey, born Hajmássy, (June 16, 1910 – August 20, 1974) was a Hungarian film, stage and radio performer.
Contents
- Movie Legends Ilona Massey
- Nelson Eddy Ladies Man
- Early life and career
- Recognition
- Politics
- Death
- References
Early life and career
She was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Hungary). Billed as "the new Dietrich", she acted in three films with Nelson Eddy, including Rosalie (1937), and with Lon Chaney Jr. in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) as Baroness Frankenstein. In 1943, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies.
In 1947, she starred with Eddy in Northwest Outpost, a musical film composed by Rudolf Friml. In 1949, she starred in Love Happy with the Marx Brothers. She played Madame Egelichi, a femme fatale spy, and her performance inspired Milton Caniff in the creation of his femme fatale spy, Madame Lynx, in the comic strip "Steve Canyon". Caniff hired Massey to pose for him.
In 1950, Massey was one of the stars of the NBC spy show Top Secret on radio. In 1952 she began starring in Rendezvous on ABC television. The program was described in a magazine article as "a mystery-drama with plenty of glamour thrown in."
Beginning on November 1, 1954, she hosted DuMont's The Ilona Massey Show, a weekly musical variety show in which she sang songs with guests in a nightclub set, with music provided by the Irving Fields Trio. The series ended January 3, 1955, after 10 episodes.
Recognition
Massey has a star at 1623 Vine Street on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was dedicated February 8, 1960.
Politics
Becoming an American citizen in 1946, she remained strongly anti-communist for what she saw as the destruction of her native country, at one point picketing the United Nations during the 1956 visit of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Death
Ilona Massey died of cancer in Bethesda, Maryland, and is buried in Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery near her last husband, Donald Dawson, who had served in the United States Air Force Reserve as a major general.