Ann Doran

Ann Doran (July 28, 1911 – September 19, 2000) was an American character actress, who worked in more than 1500 motion pictures and television episodes. Today's audiences know her as Carol Stark, the mother of James "Jim" Stark (James Dean) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and as a featured actress in short comedies with The Three Stooges and Charley Chase. She was an early member of the Screen Actors Guild and served on the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund for 30 years.

Ann Lee Doran was born in Amarillo, Texas to silent-film actress Rose Allen (born Carrie A. Barnett) and John R. Doran. She attended high school in San Bernardino, California. While attending San Bernardino High School, she was highly involved in student life and even ran a campaign for student body president before graduating in 1929. To further her education, she attended San Bernardino Valley College, where she showcased her burgeoning theatrical talents by starring as the female lead in a 1930 production of The Rivals. Driven by an interest in mathematics, Doran continued her higher education by studying the subject at both the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles before transitioning into full-time adult acting roles.

According to a 1979 interview, the actress made her debut at 11 years old. Seldom cast in leading roles, Doran appeared in more than 500 motion pictures and 1,000 episodes of television series, such as the American Civil War drama Gray Ghost.

Doran entered the field of motion pictures as a stand-in, then bit player, then incidental supporting player. In 1936 she was featured in two of the last feature films produced by independent studio Chesterfield Pictures, Missing Girls and Red Lights Ahead (the latter film a rare lead for Columbia Pictures' short-subject star Andy Clyde).

Beyond her busy Hollywood career, Doran was a devout Roman Catholic who attended church regularly and devoted much time to charity work. Politically, she was a conservative Republican. She was a member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the Hollywood Republican Committee, and the Bel-Air Republican Women's Group. Throughout the mid-to-late 20th century, Doran stepped behind the scenes to support the party's traditionalist wing, providing public endorsements and organizational backing to the presidential campaigns of Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.

Red Lights Ahead led to a contract with Columbia, where Doran became a familiar face. Columbia's company policy was to use the members of its stock company as often as possible. Thus, Doran appears in Columbia's serials (such as The Spider's Web and Flying G-Men), B features (including the Blondie, Five Little Peppers and Ellery Queen series), and major feature films. She became a favorite of Columbia director Frank Capra and appeared in many of his productions, notably You Can't Take It With You, in which she leads a group of neighbors battling a tycoon who evicted them. Most of these appearances were supporting roles, although she had the ingenue lead in the Charles Starrett western Rio Grande (1938) and was featured in the Boris Karloff thriller The Man They Could Not Hang (1939).

She was most prominent in Columbia's two-reel comedies, which had smaller casts and accordingly gave supporting players more to do. She worked with The Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon, Tom Kennedy, Walter Catlett. Roscoe Karns, Vera Vague, and especially Charley Chase. Her first appearance with Chase was as a gangster's moll in Time Out for Trouble (1938); Chase admired her comic timing and gave her ingenue leads in his subsequent shorts.

Ann Doran's tenure at Columbia ended when Frank Capra angrily left the studio to make Meet John Doe (1941), and cast Doran as the wife of soda jerk-turned-John Doe Club activist Bert Hansen. Though her character speaks some of the film's most pivotal lines of dialogue, including an impassioned suicide-preventing plea in the final scene, her appearance in the film is uncredited. It is possible that Columbia studio chief Harry Cohn resented Ann Doran's following Capra, and dropped her from his contract roster.

Now away from Columbia, Ann Doran began freelancing and worked steadily for other companies. Her first freelance job after Columbia was for the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation, where she had the ingenue lead in Criminals Within (1941). Never a glamour-girl ingenue, Doran always projected a sensible, down-to-earth quality that suited her plain-Jane looks, and she was always content to play supporting roles. "I'm happy in the leak light," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. With the spotlight on the star, "whatever leaked over the side, that's what I got." She continued to play character roles, large and small (including one as a Nazi agent in the 1942 Michael Shayne mystery Blue, White and Perfect).

When Columbia needed a comic actress to fill out a girls' baseball team in the Andy Clyde short Lovable Trouble (1941), Ann Doran got the call. This renewed her affiliation with the Columbia shorts department, where she was always welcome. She continued to work at Columbia off and on for the next several years, but never again under contract and always on a freelance basis.

Columbia filmed two boy-and-his-dog stories with juvenile star Ted Donaldson in 1945–46. When the Donaldson films became a full-fledged series (featuring the dog Rusty) in 1947, Doran was cast as Donaldson's mother in the next six films. Her maternal roles led to her being cast as James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

Doran played Charlotte McHenry, the housekeeper on Shirley, Agnes Haskell, Eddie Haskell's mother and, in a separate appearance, Mrs. Bellamy, in Leave It to Beaver and Mrs. Kingston, the housekeeper, on Longstreet.

Doran guest-starred on television programs including three appearances in the role of Bonnie Landis in Public Defender, starring with fellow Texan Reed Hadley. She appeared in the anthology series Crossroads in the 1956 episode "The White Carnation", along with Elinor Donahue, James Best and J. Carrol Naish. In 1952, she appeared in an episode of The Lone Ranger titled "Hidden Fortune".

Doran was cast in the children's Western series My Friend Flicka, the story of a boy and his horse on a ranch in Wyoming. She also appeared in episodes of Ray Milland's sitcom Meet Mr. McNutley and Kenneth Tobey's aviation adventure series Whirlybirds. Doran guest-starred on Perry Mason in "The Case of the Prodigal Parent" (1958), "The Case of the Lurid Letter" (1962) and "The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito" (1963) as well as in Rawhide in the episode "Incident of the Challenge".

Doran was cast twice in 1959–1960 in episodes of the series Colt .45, starring Wayde Preston. In 1960, she was cast as Martha Brown, the mother of horse rider Velvet Brown (Lori Martin) in the family drama National Velvet. She made one appearance on McHale's Navy as Mrs. Martha "Pumpkin" Binghamton, wife of Captain Binghamton (Joe Flynn). In 1963 Doran appeared as Minerva Lewis on The Virginian in the episode "Run Away Home." Doran was cast twice as Mrs. Elliott and Hugh Beaumont as Mr. Elliott, parents of Steve Elliott (Mike Minor), in Petticoat Junction.

Three years later, she appeared in the first episode of The Legend of Jesse James as Zerelda James Samuel, the mother of Jesse and Frank James. She also appeared in M*A*S*H as Nurse Meg Cratty, who runs an orphanage in Korea. In the episode "The Kids", Cratty and her charges bunk with the M*A*S*H unit after having to evacuate when the orphanage was shelled.

Doran died at age 89 on September 19, 2000, at a senior-citizens complex in Carmichael, California. Following her death, her remains were cremated and scattered at sea. Doran never married or had children, dedicating her personal time entirely to her extensive acting career and industry union boards.

Ann Doran was a tireless worker for the motion picture industry. In 1960 she became the recording secretary for the Screen Actors Guild, and in 1990 she received the guild's Ralph Morgan Award, named after one the organization's founders, for distinguished service. During her long career she saved most of her salaries, and she bequeathed $400,000 to the Motion Picture Country House, the industry's retirement home in Woodland Hills, California.