TV Trivia
by Michael Karol
& Craig Hamrick

Sitcom Queens: Ann Sothern
By MICHAEL KAROL; Originally posted 09.01.06

Ann Sothern
Birthdate: January 22, 1909
Birth Place: Valley City, N.D.
Birth Name: Harriet Lake
Died : March 15, 2001, Ketchum Valley, Idaho
Cause of death: Heart failure

The Ann Sothern Show, as Katy O'Connor, 93 episodes, 1958-1961, costarring Don Porter, Ann Tyrell, Ken Berry

The petite comedienne with the sexy voice is best remembered as a brassy blonde wisecracker, but she had the chops to enact almost any role, be it comedic, musical, dramatic, or any combination of all three. Here are some tidbits about the gal best known onscreen as Maisie; for much more, click on the book cover to Sitcom Queens, below.

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Ann Sothern was supposed to star in MGM's lavish musical DuBarry Was a Lady, but bowed out when she became pregnant with daughter Tisha. The part was played by Lucille Ball in one of her first big Technicolor smashes. Lucy said more than once that her movie career was made up of Ann's leftovers. • • •

Ann's planned costarring gig with screen hunk Robert Taylor (a big-budget MGM romance called Tropical Hurricane) was postponed due to World War II restrictions on various locations and ultimately never happened. The actress lost a movie part opposite cinema king Clark Gable for similar reasons. • • •

A bout with hepatitis forced Ann to step out of the costar spot with Cary Grant in the 1952 comedy Monkey Business. She chose to go to TV instead, and had a successful eight-year run, but the illness caused Ann to gain weight (it looked worse on her because she was so tiny to begin with) that she subsequently hid behind black dresses and her sitcom furniture. • • •
Ann's biggest missed opportunity occurred in 1963 when Simone Signoret suddenly pulled out of her costarring role in Zorba the Greek with Anthony Quinn, Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies reported during a July 2001 Ann Sothern "Star of the Month" celebration: "A call went to Ann's agents asking if she could immediately come and take over. No, they replied, not until she had a chance to read the script and approve the clothes. Zorba forged ahead with Lila Kedrova in the role, which brought Kedrova an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Sometime after, Quinn ran into Sothern at a party and told her how much he wished she'd taken the chance and joined him in Zorba. Sothern was astounded. 'It's the first I've heard of the offer,' she told him. 'I would have jumped at doing it!' It was, she later said, 'the heartbreak of my career.'"• • •
Ann followed her TV smashes with one of the most critically reviled duds ever (My Mother the Car, 1965, as the voice of the title character), and continued to appear in films and TV movies sporadically through the mid-1980s (including a bit in the 1985 TV remake of A Letter to Three Wives).

Ann's final triumph was her delightful turn as the full-of-life neighbor and friend to Bette Davis and Lillian Gish in the acclaimed 1988 film, The Whales of August (her daughter Tisha Sterling, from Ann's 1943-49 marriage to actor Robert Sterling, played the younger version of her character in the film’s prologue). It earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and proved the Hollywood community and the public at large remembered her, and loved her still.

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Michael Karol has written four books about Lucille Ball: Lucy A to Z, The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, the revised, expanded 4th Edition, published in 2008, with exclusive pictures for the first time; Lucy in Print, looking at press coverage of Lucy and her costars over the past 60 years; The Lucille Ball Quiz Book; and The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball: Interpreting the Icon. He has also written the best-selling TV Tidbits book The ABC Movie of the Week Companion. A date gone wrong sparked his vampire/mystery novel Kiss Me, Kill Me. Its prequel, Sleeps Well With Others, was published in the fall of 2006. All are currently available on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and many other online and in-store sources. Visit here for more information.