Oscar Profile #253: Hope Lange

Born November 28, 1933 in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, Hope Lange was the daughter of Florenz Ziegfeld’s music arranger and an actress mother. She began acting on stage at the age of 9, but her father’s death in 1942 put a financial burden on her mother who then ran a restaurant in Greenwich Village. She nevertheless made her Broadway debut at the age of 11 in 1943’s The Patriots. She then studied dance as well as acting with Martha Graham, while also working in her mother’s restaurant and developed a friendship with her late 1940s neighbor, Eleanor Roosevelt. A natural beauty, she did modeling work in the 1950s which led to TV work and a call to Hollywood in 1956.

Lange’s film career got off to an impressive start playing the ingénue in 1956’s Bus Stop and marrying the film’s co-star Don Murray with whom she would have two children before leaving him for Glenn Ford in 1961.

Lange’s third film, Peyton Place, brought her an Oscar nomination playing an abused girl on trial for murdering her rapist stepfather. She had top billing in the 1959 box-office hit, The Best of Everything in which she clashes with the still formidable Joan Crawford. Her career took a left turn in 1961 with her miscasting as a blowsy showgirl in Frank Capra’s Pocketful of Miracles, a troubled remake of Capra’s Lady for a Day. Shirley Jones had been cast in the role, but Lange’s paramour, producer and star Glenn Ford insisted that Lange be given the part over Capra’s objections. She then starred opposite Ford in the equally disastrous 1963 film, Love Is a Ball.

Ford and Lange split up in 1963, the year she married producer-director Alana J. Pakula, fresh from his Oscar nomination for To Kill a Mockingbird. The marriage would last until 1971, during which time Lange appeared mostly on television, most notably as the star of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir from 1968-1970 for which she won back-to-back Emmys.

Lange was again nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Hal Halbrook’s ex-wife in the landmark 1972 TV movie, That Certain Summer in which Halbrook leaves her for Martin Sheen. She received good notices for playing Charles Bronson’s dying wife in 1974’s Death Wish, but she continued to be seen mostly on TV for the remainder of the decade and into the 1980s.

In 1983, Lange reunited with first husband Don Murray for the theatrical release, I Am the Cheese in which they played the parents of the film’s star, E.T.’s Robert MacNaughton. She also appeared on the big screen in mother roles in 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and 1986’s Blue Velvet. That same year she married third husband Charles Hollerith, Jr.

Lange’s best known late career role was as a U.S. senator in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. She retired from acting in 1998 and died in 2003 at the age of 70.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BUS STOP (1956), directed by Joshua Logan

Marilyn Monroe received the best notices of her career for a rare dramatic turn as a saloon singer who captures the fancy of cowboy Don Murray. Seventh billed Lange, in her film debut, is the young girl Murray’s friend Arthur O’Connell thinks he ought to marry.

The always insecure Monroe was so intimidated by the five years younger Lange’s youthful looks and acting prowess that she tried to get the producers to dye Lange’s natural blonde hair brown so that there wouldn’t be two blondes in the film. They, of course, refused. Murray, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance did, however, choose Lange to be his wife in real life.

PEYTON PLACE (1957), directed by Mark Robson

Lange had the most sympathetic role in the box-office smash hit, easily securing one of the film’s five Oscar nominations for acting out of nine the film received overall. The other nods went to veterans Lana Turner and Arthur Kennedy and youngsters Diane Varsi and Russ Tamblyn. Lange played the daughter of Turner’s maid, Betty Field, who hangs herself in the closet after discovering that her husband (Kennedy) has raped her daughter who then murders him in self-defense. Her sensational trial is one of the highlights of the film that they thought could never be made.

POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (1961), directed by Frank Capra

Capra’s remake of his 1933 classic, Lady for a Day was such a troubled film that Capra, who would live another thirty years, ended his storied career with the film.

The main problem with the production was producer-star Glenn Ford’s insistence that then paramour Lange be given the second female lead, that of a dancehall girl and singer, in place of the already signed Shirley Jones. Ford also fought for Lange’s part to be built up, largely at the expense of the film’s female lead, the always interesting Bette Davis who provides the film’s most enduring performance as Apple Annie even if she pales in comparison to May Robson in Capra’s original.

DEATH WISH (1974), directed by Michael Winner

After winning back-to-back Emmys for recreating Gene Tierney’s New England widow in the TV series made from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and receiving a third nomination the wife of Hal Holbrook who leaves her for Martin Sheen in the ground-breaking That Certain Summer, you would think Lange’s return to the big screen would be in a major starring role. It was, in a film called I Love You…Goodbye in which she plays a wife and mother who leaves her family to herself. Nobody remembers that one, but everybody remembers her heartbreaking turn as Charles Bronson’s murdered wife in her next film, the lurid Death Wish.

BLUE VELVET (1986), directed by David Lynch

Lange’s career never really recovered from her short but vivid portrayal of the mugging victim in Death Wish, but she valiantly kept going, mostly in mother roles in three mid-1980s film. She teamed with former husband Don Murray to play Robert MacNaughton’s parents in 1983’s I Am the Cheese, then played Mark Patton’s mother in 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Revenge and most notably, Laura Dern’s mother in David Lynch’s well-received 1986 film, Blue Velvet. She followed that with a guest-starring turn in TV’s Murder, She Wrote in 1987.