Una Merkel (December 10, 1903 – January 2, 1986) was an American film actress.
Merkel resembled the popular actress Lillian Gish, and her resemblance allowed her to begin her career as a stand-in for Gish in 1920's Way Down East (she also did stand-in work for Gish in 1928's The Wind). She appeared in a few films during the silent era, including the two-reel Love's Old Sweet Song (1923) filmed by Lee DeForest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process. However, she spent most of her time in New York City working on Broadway. Merkel returned to Hollywood and achieved her greatest success with the advent of "talkies".
She played Ann Rutledge in the film Abraham Lincoln (1930) directed by D. W. Griffith. During the 1930s, Merkel became a popular second lead in a number of films, usually playing the wisecracking best friend of the heroine, supporting actresses such as Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, and Dorothy Lamour. With her kewpie doll looks, combined with a strong Southern accent and wry line delivery, she enlivened scores of films of the era and worked with most of the stars of the period.
Merkel was an MGM contract player from 1932 to 1938, appearing in as many as twelve films in a year, often on loan-out to other studios. She was also often cast as leading lady to a number of comedians in their starring pictures, including Jack Benny, Harold Lloyd, and Charles Butterworth.
One of her most famous roles was in the Western Destry Rides Again (1939) in which her character, Lillibelle, gets into a famous "cat-fight" with Frenchie (Marlene Dietrich) over the possession of her husband's trousers, won by Frenchie in a crooked card game. She played the elder daughter to the W. C. Fields character, Egbert Sousé in the 1940 film The Bank Dick.
Merkel's film career went into decline during the 1940s and although she continued working, it was in much smaller productions. In 1950 she was leading lady to William Bendix in a baseball comedy Kill the Umpire which was a surprise hit. She made a comeback as a middle-aged woman playing mothers and maiden aunts, and in 1956 won a Tony Award for her role on Broadway in The Ponder Heart. She had a major part in the MGM 1959 film, The Mating Game as Paul Douglas's wife and Debbie Reynolds's mother. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Summer and Smoke (1961). Merkel, whose final film role was in the Elvis Presley film Spinout (1966), has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6230 Hollywood Boulevard. She died in Los Angeles, California, aged 82, of undisclosed causes.
Filmography
Features:
Way Down East (1920)
The Fifth Horseman (1924)
Abraham Lincoln (1930)
The Eyes of the World (1930)
The Bat Whispers (1930)
Command Performance (1930)
Don't Bet on Women (1931)
Six Cylinder Love (1931)
Daddy Long Legs (1931)
The Maltese Falcon (1931)
The Bargain (1931)
Wicked (1931)
The Secret Witness (1931)
Private Lives (1931)
She Wanted a Millionaire (1932)
Impatient Maiden (1932)
Man Wanted (1932)
Huddle (1932)
Red-Headed Woman (1932)
They Call It Sin (1932)
Men Are Such Fools (1932)
Whistling in the Dark (1933)
42nd Street (1933)
The Secret of Madame Blanche (1933)
Clear All Wires! (1933)
Reunion in Vienna (1933)
Midnight Mary (1933)
Her First Mate (1933)
Broadway to Hollywood (1933)
Beauty for Sale (1933)
Bombshell (1933)
Day of Reckoning (1933)
The Women in His Life (1933)
This Side of Heaven (1934)
Murder in the Private Car (1934)
Paris Interlude (1934)
The Cat's-Paw (1934)
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934)
Have a Heart (1934)
The Merry Widow (1934)
Evelyn Prentice (1934)
Biography of a Bachelor Girl (1935)
The Night Is Young (1935)
One New York Night (1935)
Baby Face Harrington (1935)
Murder in the Fleet (1935)
Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)
It's in the Air (1935)
Riffraff (1936)
Speed (1936)
We Went to College (1936)
Born to Dance (1936)
Don't Tell the Wife (1937)
The Good Old Soak (1937)
Saratoga (1937)
Checkers (1937)
True Confession (1937)
Four Girls in White (1939)
Some Like It Hot (1939)
On Borrowed Time (1939)
Destry Rides Again (1939)
Comin' Round the Mountain (1940)
Sandy Gets Her Man (1940)
The Bank Dick (1940)
Double Date (1941)
Road to Zanzibar (1941)
Cracked Nuts (1941)
The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942)
Twin Beds (1942)
This Is the Army (1943)
Sweethearts of the U.S.A. (1944)
It's a Joke, Son! (1947)
The Bride Goes Wild (1948)
Man from Texas (1948)
Kill the Umpire (1950)
My Blue Heaven (1950)
Emergency Wedding (1950)
Rich, Young and Pretty (1951)
A Millionaire for Christy (1951)
Golden Girl (1951)
With a Song in My Heart (1952)
The Merry Widow (1952)
I Love Melvin (1953)
The Kentuckian (1955)
The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956)
Bundle of Joy (1956)
The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957)
The Girl Most Likely (1957)
The Mating Game (1959)
The Parent Trap (1961)
Summer and Smoke (1961)
Summer Magic (1963)
A Tiger Walks (1964)
Spinout (1966)
Short Subjects:
Love's Old Sweet Song (1923)
Menu (1933)
Hollywood Goes to Town (1938)
Quack Service (1943)
To Heir Is Human (1944)
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Una Merkel
Photographs of Covington Kentucky's Una Merkel
Una Merkel at the Internet Broadway Database
Una Merkel at the Internet Movie Database
Photographs of Una Merkel
Persondata
NAME
Merkel, Una
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
Actor
DATE OF BIRTH
1903-12-10
PLACE OF BIRTH
Covington, Kentucky, USA
DATE OF DEATH
1986-1-2
PLACE OF DEATH
Los Angeles, California, USA
v • d • e
Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play
Patricia Neal (1947) · Shirley Booth (1949) · Maureen Stapleton (1951) · Marian Winters (1952) · Beatrice Straight (1953) · Jo Van Fleet (1954) · Patricia Jessel (1955) · Una Merkel (1956) · Peggy Cass (1957) · Anne Bancroft (1958) · Julie Newmar (1959) · Anne Revere (1960) · Colleen Dewhurst (1961) · Elizabeth Ashley (1962) · Sandy Dennis (1963) · Barbara Loden (1964) · Alice Ghostley (1965) · Zoe Caldwell (1966) · Marian Seldes (1967) · Zena Walker (1968) · Jane Alexander (1969) · Blythe Danner (1970) · Rae Allen (1971) · Elizabeth Wilson (1972) · Leora Dana (1973) · Frances Sternhagen (1974) · Rita Moreno (1975)
Complete list: (1947-1975) · (1976-2000) · (2001-present)
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_Merkel"
Categories: 1903 births | 1986 deaths | American film actors | American stage actors | Hollywood Walk of Fame | People from Covington, Kentucky | People from the Greater Los Angeles Area | Tony Award winners
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