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Eve Arden was born Eunice Mary Quedens in Mill Valley, California (near San Francisco), and was interested in show business from an early age. At 16, she made her stage debut after quitting school to join a stock company. After appearing in minor roles in two films under her real name, Eunice Quedens, she found that the stage offered her the same minor roles. By the mid 30s, one of these minor roles would attract notice as a comedy sketch in the stage play "Ziegfeld Follies".
By that time, she had changed her name to Eve Arden, which she adopted while looking over some cosmetics and spotting the names "Evening in Paris" and "Elizabeth Arden". In 1937, she garnered some attention with a small role in Oh, Doctor (1937), which led to her being cast in a minor role in the film Stage Door (1937). By the time the film was finished, her part had expanded into the wise-cracking, fast-talking friend to the lead. She would play virtually the character for most of her career.
While her sophisticated wise-cracking would never make her the lead, she would be a busy actress in dozens of movies over the next dozen years. In At the Circus (1939), she was the acrobatic Peerless Pauline opposite Groucho Marx and the Russian sharp shooter in the comedy The Doughgirls (1944). For her role as Ida in Thời Kỳ Đại Suy Thoái (1945), she received an Academy Award nomination. Famous for her quick ripostes, this led to work in Radio during the 1940s. In 1948, CBS Radio premiered "Our Miss Brooks", which would be the perfect show for her character. As her film career began to slow, CBS would take the popular radio show to television in 1952. The television series Our Miss Brooks (1952) would run through 1956 and led to the movie Our Miss Brooks (1956).
When the show ended, Arden tried another television series, The Eve Arden Show (1957), but it was soon canceled. In the 1960s, Arden raised a family and did a few guest roles, until her come-back television series The Mothers-In-Law (1967). This show, co-starring Kaye Ballard ran for two seasons. After that, she would make more unsold pilots, a couple of television movies and a few guest shots. She returned in occasional cameo appearances including as Principal McGee in Cảm Hứng (1978), and Warden June in Pandemonium (1982).- Actor
- Soundtrack
For over five decades veteran character actor Dave Willock could be spotted as your friendly neighbor, buddy or unassuming blue-collar in hundreds of assorted films--both comedy and drama. Tall and lanky marked with a slightly long, gaunt puss, flat vocal pattern and jug-like ears, he was for the most part an amiable guy who blended in unobtrusively as a benign servile -- cabbie, clerk, usher, soda jerk, photographer, messenger boy, bellhop, etc. Decades later he was handed minor but steady work via Jerry Lewis, Robert Aldrich and Walt Disney.
Born in Chicago, Illinois on August 13, 1909 to non-professionals, Dave began his career in theater and drama while a student at the University of Wisconsin. Following college studies, he entered vaudeville as part of the comedy team of "Willock & Carson," an act he put together with future actor Jack Carson. From vaudeville he and Carson transitioned into radio, appearing first on Bing Crosby's "Kraft Music Hall" in 1938. Carson became the bigger star of the two and when he received his own show ("The Jack Carson Show") he utilized his old friend and partner's talents in a second-banana position playing Carson's smart-mouthed nephew Tugwell.
On his own, Dave made his film debut in a student bit in Good Girls Go to Paris (1939) and remained in the overlooked, often unbilled category throughout the war years. His small but amiable bits included various army buddies, benign suitors and dependable sidekicks. Some of his more visible featured roles came in war-era musicals and comedies such as Priorities on Parade (1942), Lucky Jordan (1942), Let's Face It (1943), The Gang's All Here (1943)- Pin Up Girl (1944), She's a Sweetheart (1944) and Joe Palooka, Champ (1946), but nothing he was seen in was big enough to maneuver him into the top character ranks. He was seen to better advantage with the coming of TV, where he dotted a number of comedies, dramas and sitcom series.
A perennial support player, he appeared in a number of cult sci-fi classics of the 1950s including It Came from Outer Space (1953), Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Queen of Outer Space (1958). In later years he served as a minor foil for Jerry Lewis when the comedian went solo in such film vehicles as The Delicate Delinquent (1957), The Geisha Boy (1958), The Ladies Man (1961), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Patsy (1964) and The Disorderly Orderly (1964). Dave was a utility player as well for director Robert Aldrich in such films as Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), The Grissom Gang (1971), and Emperor of the North Pole (1973), with his most famous Aldrich role being that of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's vaudeville father in the classic grand guignol shocker Điều Gì Sẽ Đến Với Baby Jane? (1962). Disney kept him fairly busy in their TV and film features from the late 1950s into the 1970s, and he was a favorite casting choice of Jack Webb for Dragnet and Adam-12 (where he'd appear as a good-natured barfly or a pharmacist). Willock was also heard but not seen in animated cartoons, notably as the narrator of the Wacky Races (1968) kiddie cartoon.
Retired by the late 1970s, Dave passed away on November 12, 1990 of complications from a stroke in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 81.
