Terry Moore (actress)
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| Terry Moore | |
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 Moore on the cover of Playboy, August 1984 |
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| Born | Helen Luella Koford January 7, 1929 Los Angeles, California |
| Years active | 1940 - present |
Terry Moore (born Helen Luella Koford, January 7, 1929) is an Oscar-nominated American actress.
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[edit] Early life
Born January 7, 1929 in Glendale, California, as Helen Luella Koford, Moore grew up in a Mormon family in Los Angeles, California. She worked as a child model before making her film debut in Maryland (1940). The studios later changed her name to Judy Ford, Jan Ford and then January Ford.
In the 1940s she was a hot sexpot of Hollywood. In the 1950s she was considered in equal running to Marilyn Monroe.
[edit] Career
Throughout the 1940s, Moore worked under a variety of names before settling on Terry Moore in 1948. She worked on and off in radio, most memorably as Bumps Smith on The Smiths of Hollywood alongside Arthur Treacher, Harry Von Zell and Brenda Marshall. (During the run of The Smiths of Hollywood, Moore used the name Jan Ford). Although cast in mostly B-pictures, she managed to make her mark in several box office hits, including Mighty Joe Young (1949), Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) - for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and Peyton Place (1957).
Although Moore has worked steadily for the past few decades, her appearances have been in usually minor roles in smaller films.
In the 2006 DVD commentary for Mighty Joe Young, Moore says that she is best remembered today for this film, made when she was 18. She says her most requested photo for autographs is of Joe holding her at the piano above his head. Moore and animator Ray Harryhausen made a cameo appearance in the 1998 remake of the film.
[edit] Private life
Long romantically involved with billionaire Howard Hughes, Moore claimed after his death that they had secretly married in 1949 and never divorced. Although she could offer no definitive proof of her allegation, Hughes's estate paid her a settlement in 1984. At the age of 55 she appeared nude in the August 1984 issue of Playboy magazine.
She went on to write two books about Hughes:
- Terry Moore - The Beauty and the Billionaire, New York (1984).
- Terry Moore and Jerry Rivers - The Passions of Howard Hughes. General Publishing Group (1996), an audio abridgement is narrated by Terry. She claims that Howard received no medical treatment because he was an abused victim of a conspiracy to take over his empire.
Despite her appearance in Playboy, she describes herself as a "devout Mormon".
She was also one of the first female jet pilots.
Terry is the mother of actor Grant Cramer.
In a 2003 visit with Jeff Benziger of Autograph Collector magazine, Terry explained why she posed nude for Playboy magazine. She noted that the pose was a "revenge thing" against those who think women are washed up past the age of 30 or 40. "In Hollywood, they think you're only good from 18 to 25 -- that's a woman's years. A man goes on forever. I'd see the girls with the false breasts and the nose jobs and the things put in the cheeks and everything. And I thought, I'm all natural. I thought, I'll show them. And my photos were unretouched."
She refused to pose again at age 65, saying she proved her point.
[edit] Filmography
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