“Sound Of Music” Baroness Is Dead
I’m talking of course about Eleanor Parker, who died today in that place where old movie stars go to golf away their decline: Palm Springs. And, no, it wasn’t the Carrie Underwood “Sound of Music” that killed her. She’d been out of the public spotlight for quite some time. Parker’s greatest performance — and the first of her three Oscar nominations — was in the 1950 women’s-prison picture, “Caged,” an absolute masterpiece of both late noir and women’s-ensemble acting. Parker played the new fish, Marie Allen, whom I happen to know that Taylor Schilling, in this year’s women’s-prison Netflix show, “Orange is the New Black,” partly based her performance on.
