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Film noir blonde Jan Sterling died on Friday, March 26 2004. She was 82. Sterling's best remembered role came in 1951 with Billy Wilder's cynical film Ace in the Hole. In 1954 Sterling played one of the terrified passengers on a troubled flight from Hawaii to the mainlandin The High and the Mighty. Her performance won her a Golden Globe statue and an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Jane Sterling Adriance was born into a socially prominent New York City family on April 3, 1921. Her blonde beauty and dramatic intensity made her a movie star in such films as Johnny Belinda, Caged, Flesh and Fury, Split Second, The Human Jungle, Women's Prison, Female on the Beach and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Sterling was the widow of actor Paul Douglas and longtime companion of actor Sam Wanamaker, who died in 1993. The cool, often conniving, blonde in Hollywood film noir movies of the 1940s and '50s, broke her hip recently and had suffered a couple of strokes from which she never recovered, close friend Kay Tomborg said. She died at the Motion Picture and Television Fund's home and hospital facility in suburban Woodland Hills. Wilder's cynical film "Ace in the Hole" was rereleased as "The Big Carnival" when audiences were repelled by its harshness. Kirk Douglas starred as a ruthless reporter seeking a scoop by prolonging the rescue of a man trapped in a cave. Sterling played a sardonic observer. "I remember Jan Sterling as being a very funny woman," actor Robert Arthur recalled Friday. "For me she was the comic relief in an otherwise grim story. She uttered the famous line: 'I never go to church because it bags my nylons,"' said Arthur, who was also in the movie. Talented, watchable, sullen, 50s film actress Jan Sterling didn't quite make the top level of stardom but ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy pout and powerful, flashy roles in soaps, crime drama and ribald comedy. A headstrong, independent young lady with a heartfelt passion for acting, she returned to Manhattan to conquer Broadway and by the age of 17 had found her first ingenue role in "Bachelor Born", playing, naturally, a young British lady. Over the next 11 years, she dominated Broadway as proper Britishers. Born into a prosperous New York family, Jan Sterling was educated in private schools. Her mother remarried when Jan was a youngster and the family relocated to England where Jan was schooled by private tutors in London, and also Paris. By age 15 she was studying acting with Fay Compton. Billed as Jane Sterling, she made her first Broadway appearance, and then went on to appear in such major stage offerings as Panama Hattie, Over 21 and Present Laughter. She worked with Ruth Gordon in 1942 in Gordon's first play, "Over 21." She was known on stage as "Jane Adriance" until the 1940s. Her stage name was suggested by (Ruth Gordon), whose first suggestion was "Amethyst Adriance" because "you should name yourself after a gem." Instead, Sterling chose to drop the Adriance and shorten her first name to "Jan"; her character's name in the play in which she was appearing. Jan's stage peak occurred when she bowled over audiences as Billie Dawn in the Chicago company of "Born Yesterday." Sterling was married to British actor John Merivale in 1941, and they divorced in 1948. She married the actor Paul Douglas in 1950, and she was widowed in 1959; they had one child together -- Adams Douglas (1955 - 2003). Sterling was a descendant of two American presidents: John Adams and John Quincy Adams. In their honor, her son by actor Paul Douglas was named Adams Douglas. The ash-blonde broke quickly into films. In 1947, she made her movie bow--billed as Jane Darian for the first and last time in her career--in RKO's Tycoon. Seldom cast in passive roles, Sterling was at her best in parts calling for hard-bitten, sometimes hard-boiled determination. Supporting Oscar-winning Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948) in a key, emotional role. With her docile, ladylike image finally behind her (and to her delight), Jan continued on in movies typecast as cheap floozies, luckless, hardbitten dames, and lethel schemers. Critics raved about her portrayal of Billie Dawn in the Chicago touring company of "Born Yesterday" and Columbia brought Jan out to the West Coast to test for the 1950 film version. At one point she was actually announced to play the part but the role ultimately went to the character's original player on Broadway, Judy Holliday, who went on to win the Oscar. In Billy Wilder's searing Ace in the Hole (1951), she played Lorraine, the slatternly, opportunistic wife of cave-in victim Richard Benedict, summing up her philosophy of life with the classic line "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons."
Also in 1954, Sterling travelled to England to play Julia in the first film version of George Orwell's 1984; though her character was a member of "The Anti-Sex League," Sterling was several months pregnant at the time. Having no qualms about shuttling between films and television, she showed up in nearly all the major live anthologies of the 1950s. Jan's career slowed down considerably after the death of her second husband, actor Paul Douglas, in 1959. She refocused on stage and TV but at a slower step. She also turned her attention on humanitarian causes. Made her singing debut in a tour of the musical "Silk Stockings" in 1962. Sterling retired from films in favor of the stage in 1969; she returned before the cameras in 1976 to portray Mrs. Herbert Hoover in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House. In the 70s she entered into a strong personal relationship with actor Sam Wanamaker. They never married but stayed together until his death in 1993. Inactive for nearly two decades, Jan made an appearance at the Cinecon Film Festival in Los Angeles in the fall of 2001, still charming audiences at the age of 80. Sterling has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Motion Picture) at 6838 Hollywood Blvd. In January 2002, Sterling was reported as living at the Motion Picture Home, in Woodland Hills, California. Personal quotes: "I adored Hollywood because I'd always wanted to be a movie star. Maybe in some funny Freudian way, it was my way of getting more attention than my baby sister, who was pretty with curly hair. We all have drives we don't completely understand." Filmography (Films/Series TV/TV Movies): Notable TV Guest Appearances:
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Jan Sterling 1921 - 2004
She also stood out in such 'bad girl' film roles as Caged (1950), Flesh and Fury (1952), The Human Jungle (1954), and Female on the Beach (1955), while making a nicer, or at least a more sympathetic impression in Sky Full of Moon (1952), The High and the Mighty (1954) for which Jan was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Sally McKee, a mail-order bride with a questionable past. In a prime example of giving one's all to one's art, Sterling submitted to having her eyebrows shaved off for a crucial scene; her brows never grew back, and she was required to pencil them in for the rest of her career.