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Kathleen Freeman

Kathleen Freeman
Kathleen Freeman
Born: Feb 17, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois
Died: Aug 23, 2001 in New York, New York
Occupation: Actor
Active: '50s-'90s
Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
Career Highlights: The Nutty Professor, The Fly, Two Guys Talkin' About Girls
First Major Screen Credit: The Fly (1958)
28 Videos for Kathleen Freeman
Ready to Rumble (2000) Glitz (1988) Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) Dragnet (1987) Point Blank (1967)
Married... With Children: Season 10 (1995) In the Mood (1987) The Nutty Professor (1963)
Two Guys Talkin' About Girls (1995) Innerspace (1987) North to Alaska (1960)
FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) Teen Wolf Too (1987) Monkey Business (1952)
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992) The Best of Times (1986) Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Dutch (1991) The Malibu Bikini Shop (1986) The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The Willies (1991) The Blues Brothers (1980) A Place in the Sun (1951)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) Myra Breckinridge (1970) Let's Make It Legal (1951)
Chances Are (1989)
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Biography:

The inimitable American actress Kathleen Freeman has been convulsing film audiences with portrayals of dowdy, sharp-tongued matrons since she was in her 20s. After stage work, Freeman began taking bit roles in major-studio features in 1948, seldom getting screen credit but always making a positive impression.

The best of her earliest roles was in Singin' in the Rain (1952); Freeman played long-suffering vocal coach Phoebe Dinsmore, whose Herculean efforts to get dumb movie star Jean Hagen to grasp the proper enunciation of the phrase I can't staaaand him proved uproariously futile. Often cast as domestics, Freeman had a year's run in 1953 as the spooked maid on the ghostly TV sitcom Topper.

Freeman was a particular favorite of comedian Jerry Lewis, who cast the actress in showy (and billed!) roles in such farces as The Errand Boy (1961), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Who's Got the Action?. As Nurse Higgins in Lewis' Disorderly Orderly (1964), Freeman weeps quietly as Jerry meekly scrapes oatmeal off her face and babbles Oh, Nurse Higgins...you're all full of...stuff.

Lewis so trusted Freeman's acting instincts that he sent her to the set of director William Wyler's The Collector (1965) in order to help build up the confidence of Wyler's nervous young leading lady Samantha Eggar. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Freeman took occasional sabbaticals from her movie and TV assignments to do stage work, enjoying a lengthy run in a Chicago production of Ira Levin's {~Deathtrap}.

Like many character actors of the '50s, Kathleen Freeman is frequently called upon to buoy the projects of baby-boomer directors: she was recently seen as an hysterical Julia Child clone in Joe Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.