Gloria Jean (born Gloria Jean Schoonover on April 14, 1926 in Buffalo, New York) is an American singer and actress.
Her family moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she sang on radio with Paul Whiteman's band. She was being trained as the world's youngest coloratura soprano, when her operatic coach took her to audition for movie producer Joe Pasternak in 1938. Gloria won the leading role in Universal Pictures' 1939 feature The Under-Pup, and became one of the studio's reliable stars. She co-starred with Bing Crosby, W. C. Fields, Donald O'Connor, Olsen and Johnson, and Mel Tormé, in addition to playing leads in Universal's popular teenage musicals.
Her most famous film appearance is in 1941's Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, opposite Fields. Her dramatic tour de force, as a blind girl being menaced by an escaped killer, was filmed for Julien Duvivier's Flesh and Fantasy, but deleted, and expanded into the 1944 melodrama, Destiny. In her last two Universal features, released in 1945, she was teamed with singer-actor Kirby Grant.
When Gloria's Universal contract lapsed, she wanted to renew it but her agent arranged a busy schedule of personal appearances, across America and then in England. In 1946 she returned to Hollywood and resumed her movie career in United Artists, Columbia Pictures, and Allied Artists productions. Stage and television work followed in the 1950s; she starred or co-starred in occasional motion pictures (through 1959) and filmed television dramas (through 1962). She retired from show business in 1962 and began a 30-year career with Redken Laboratories, a national cosmetics firm. She is now retired and living in California.
Gloria Jean's film work is beginning to receive more exposure: If I Had My Way has been restored to its original length and issued on DVD, followed by the DVD release of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. Universal Pictures has also struck new 35mm prints of Mister Big and Get Hep to Love for theatrical use. Her 1947 film Copacabana is widely available on home video.
Gloria Jean's authorized book biography was published in 2005 (Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven, and ). A tribute website appears at http://home.earthlink.net/~under-pup/.
