Karen Morley

Born Mildred Linton in Ottumwa, Iowa on December 12, 1909, Karen Morley was adopted by a well-to-do family who moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1920s. She enrolled at Hollywood High School and studied for a career in medicine at UCLA, but a class in theater changed her career ambitions.

Hollywood folklore has it that she broke into films when she read lines with actors being tested for Greta Garbo's movie Inspiration (1931) in 1931. She was so convincing that director Clarence Brown cast her in a prime role.

After studying at Pasadena Playhouse, she was signed by Fox Studios and her big chance came when producer Howard Hughes selected her to play the blond moll in the 1932 crime epic, Scarface (1932), Morley was put on a contract by MGM and starred in such early 1930s movies as Mata Hari (1931) (with Greta Garbo), Arsène Lupin (1932) (with John Barrymore), Dinner at Eight (1933) (with Jean Harlow), as well as films with Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Boris Karloff.

She had one child, a son, Michael Karoly Vidor born on August 26, 1933. He was 66 years old when he died March 30, 2000 in the town of Eastsound on Orcas Island, Washington.

In 1934, Morley left MGM after arguments about her roles and her private life, including her intention to start a family and her marriage to director Charles Vidor.

She continued working as a freelance performer, appearing in King Vidor's Our Daily Bread (1934), Michael Curtiz' Black Fury (1935) and Pride and Prejudice (1940).

In 1947, her screen career came to a halt when she testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refused to answer questions about her possible enrollment in the Communist Party. Afterward, she continued promoting left-wing causes and married actor Lloyd Gough.

She only made one film, an independent western called Born to the Saddle (1953) after testifying before the Senate Committee hearing alongside her second husband Lloyd Gough, who shared her 'leftist' views. Both then dropped completely out of sight. He eventually came back in the 60s, she didn't.

In 1954, she ran unsuccessfully as a New York lieutenant governor candidate for the American Labor Party.

Originally a pretty starlet/ingenue in Hollywood, Morley's career was ruined 50 years ago by the Hollywood Blacklist/McCarthyism. She has long been a staunch left-wing activist around the San Francisco area. Now in her 90s, she appeared in a Vanity Fair photoshoot featuring other surviving victims of the Blacklist in December, 1999.

Had been considered for the role of Mrs. Connelly in the 2003 Drew Barrymore film, Duplex (2003). Had she received the role, it would have been her fifth with a member of the Barrymore family.