Born 1932 in Canton, Ohio, American actress Peggy Ann Garner made her first film appearance in 1938, and appeared in several more films, including Jane Eyre (1943) and The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). She reached the height of her success at the age of 12 in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), winning an Academy Juvenile Award largely for this performance. In the same year, she showed she could handle comedy by giving a fine performance in Junior Miss (1945).
Like many child performers, Garner was unable to make a successful transition into adult film roles. Featured roles in such films as Black Widow (1954) did not help to establish her in mature film roles, although she progressed to theatrical work and she made acting appearances on television as an adult.
After Garner’s film career ended, she ventured into stage acting and had some success but also worked as a real estate agent and fleet car executive between acting jobs in order to support herself. After a decade away from work in feature films, she appeared as the pregnant aunt in the critically acclaimed film, A Wedding (1978), directed by Robert Altman, whom she had worked with on television in the early 1960s. Her final screen performance was a small part in a made-for-television feature This Year’s Blonde (1980).
In 1984, at age 52, Garner died from pancreatic cancer in the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Los Angeles. These lovely photos captured portraits of Peggy Ann Garner as a teenager in the 1940s.
Gorgeous young woman.
ReplyDelete