Polly Bergen

Born on July 14, 1930, in Knoxville, Tennessee, actress and singer Polly Bergen launched her performing career with a radio appearance at age 14. She refined her skills through summer stock productions before heading to Hollywood in 1949. Her first screen appearance came in Across the Rio Grande, which was soon followed by parts in three Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies: At War with the Army, That's My Boy, and The Stooge. Growing frustration with the parts offered to her led Bergen to abandon a profitable studio contract in 1953. She made her Broadway bow that same year in the revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac. After throat surgery and a period of recovery, she cut her self-titled debut album for Jubilee two years later and released Little Girl Blue before the end of that year. Bergen moved to Columbia Records in 1957 for the LP Bergen Sings Morgan and remained with the label into the early 1960s. Throughout this period she sustained her theatrical work while also building commercial enterprises that included Polly Bergen Cosmetics, Polly Bergen Jewelry, and Polly Bergen Shoes. In 1960 she published Fashion and Charm, the first of three books. She resumed film work with the 1961 noir classic Cape Fear, yet became most widely recognized for her extensive television roles, among them her lead performance in the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War and its 1988 follow-up, War and Remembrance.