Jean Parker

Jean Parker was born Lois Mae Green in 1915. Her father was Lewis Green, a gunsmith and hunter, and her mother was Pearl Melvina Burch (later known professionally as Mildred Brenner), one of 18 children of a pioneer family that came to Montana from Missouri and Iowa. Jean's maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. Parker was an accomplished gymnast and dancer, and was adopted by the Spickard family of Pasadena during her formative years when both her father and mother were unemployed during the Great Depression. As Lois Green, she entered a poster-painting contest and won for portraying Father Time. Ida Koverman, assistant to MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer, heard that a pretty teenage girl had won the contest; she contacted the would-be starlet, and had Mayer offer her an MGM contract.

According to the 1930 federal census, Jean's actual name was Lois M. Green and she was born about 1917 in Montana, making her 16 when she appeared in the 1933 production. In 1930 she was living with her mother, Pearl M. Green, age 39 (born about 1891 in Nebraska, parents from Virginia and Iowa) and her sister La Vona M. Green, age 11 (born about 1919 in Colorado); other than that he was born in South Dakota, no father is mentioned. The parents married about 1913 and do not seem to appear in the 1920 census.

As the winner of an art poster competition celebrating the 1932 Olympic Games (to be held in Los Angeles), Jean was invited to be one of the models decorating the float in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade.

Parker made several important films in her career, including The Ghost Goes West (1935) with Robert Donat; Sequoia (1934) with Russell Hardie, shot in the Sequoia National Forest near Springville, California; Little Women (1933) with Joan Bennett and Katharine Hepburn; Operator 13 (1934) with Marion Davies; and many other films. After several successful cross-country trips entertaining injured servicemen during World War II, Parker wed and divorced Curt Grotter of the Braille Institute in Los Angeles; and moved on to New York to star in the play "Loco". She also starred on Broadway in "Burlesque" with Bert Lahr, and in the hit "Born Yesterday", filling in for Judy Holliday. Parker's fourth and last husband, actor Robert Lowery, played opposite her as Brock in the play for a short stint. By this marriage, Parker bore her only child, a son, Robert Lowery Hanks.

Her mother (then known as Mildred Brenner) worked at MGM in the set department, and created magnificent flowers, trees and other greenery for such notable films as National Velvet (1944), Forbidden Planet (1956), Raintree County (1957) and others.

Had one child with her late husband Robert Lowery--Robert Lowery Hanks (b. 1952).

Her fourth husband, Robert Lowery, filed for divorce on September 10, 1957, after six years after marriage, but it was never finalized before his death 14 years later on December 16, 1971, from heart failure at the age of 58.

She died of complications from a stroke she suffered at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. She lived there from 1998 until her death.