Virginia Mayo, the stunning blonde actress who brought beauty and romance to films of the 1940s and 1950s with such co-stars as James Cagney, Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Danny Kaye and Ronald Reagan, died at a nursing home in suburban Thousand Oaks. She was 84.
Mayo had been in declining health since battling pneumonia about a year ago and died Monday, her daughter, Mary Johnston, told reporters.
Her honey blonde hair and creamy, flawless face made Mayo ideal for the Technicolor musicals, westerns and adventures that were the rage in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.
"I really wanted to be a dancer, but I ended up as an actress, and I got to perform next to some of the greatest actors of our time," she recalled in 2001.
Starting as a chorus girl, she quickly advanced to co-star status, appearing opposite Hope in The Princess and the Pirate in 1944. She went on to make five films with Kaye before signing a contract with Warner Bros, where she became one of the studio's biggest stars.
Mayo became a valuable property for Warner Bros, appearing in five movies in 1949 alone. She also starred opposite Reagan in the romantic comedy The Girl from Jones Beach that year and again in the 1952 musical She's Working Her Way Through College.
Mayo's first assignment in Hollywood was a small role in Jack London (1943), a biography of the author starring Michael O'Shea. In 1956 she recalled how they met on the set: "He just sat there watching me, and then he walked right up and kissed me."
They married in 1947.
Mayo never remarried after O'Shea's death in 1973. She is survived by her daughter and three grandchildren.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS