Born 1936 in Aurora, Minnesota, American actress and model Francine York was runner-up in the Miss Minnesota contest at age 17. She soon got a job as a showgirl at Bimbo’s nightclub in San Francisco, and then worked as a showgirl at Frank Sennes’ Moulin Rouge, a popular Hollywood nightclub on Sunset Blvd., where she performed in three shows a night, seven nights a week, for six months.
York’s first screen role was in Robert Clarke’s Hollywood exploitation film Secret File Hollywood shot in 1960 but not distributed until 1962. Her big break came when Jerry Lewis cast her in It’s Only Money, in which she played a tantalizing sexpot, a role which brought her much publicity. This led to Lewis hiring her for five more of his films, including The Nutty Professor, The Patsy, The Disorderly Orderly, The Family Jewels, and Cracking Up, in which she portrayed a 15th-century marquise.
Other film appearances include Bedtime Story, Tickle Me, Cannon for Cordoba, and science fiction cult films such as Curse of the Swamp Creature, Mutiny in Outer Space, and Space Probe Taurus. In The Doll Squad (1973), she played CIA agent Sabrina Kincaid. She portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Marilyn: Alive and Behind Bars.
York also worked as a fitness/nutrition expert and a gourmet cook. She never married, and once joked that “Like Cinderella, I always wanted to marry the handsome prince...but they don’t make glass slippers in size ten!” However, she was the decade-long companion to director Vincent Sherman until his death in 2006. She died in 2017, in Van Nuys, California from cancer, aged 80. She had been working on her autobiography.
Take a look at the stunning photos to see the beauty of young Francine York in the 1960s.
0 comments:
Post a Comment