Terry Moore (actress)

Infobox Actor
name = Terry Moore


caption =
birthname = Helen Luella Koford
birthdate = birth date and age|1929|1|7
location = Los Angeles, California
yearsactive = 1940 - present

Terry Moore (born Helen Luella Koford, January 7, 1929) is an Oscar-nominated American actress.

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.

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).

In 1962] she appeared as a rancher's daughter in the NBC Western drama "Empire", cast opposite Richard Egan and Ryan O'Neal. 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.

In 2008 she joined friend and "ex-supermodel" Gita Hall on the VH1 program 'Old Skool With Terry & Gita', where the two senior citizens explored worlds far from their experience, including pornography, hip hop music and gay culture.

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 55 she posed nude in the August 1984 issue of "Playboy magazine". She lived for a short time in a small duplex (cabin) at the Tule Springs Ranch near las Vegas, Nevada while having the affair with Howard Hughes.

However, from 1951 to 1952, Moore was married to the American football player Glenn Davis. In this case, she was committing bigamy against Mr. Hughes and Mr. Davis - though she was never charged with this in a court-of-law.

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 unclad appearance in "Playboy", she describes herself as a "devout Mormon".

She was also one of the first female jet airplane pilots.

Terry is the mother of the actor Grant Cramer.

In a 2003 visit with Jeff Benziger of Autograph Collector magazine, Terry explained why she posed nude for publication in "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 nude again at age 65, saying that she had proven her point.

Filmography

*"Maryland" (1940)
*"The Howars of Virginia" (1940) (role unconfirmed)
*"My Gal Sal" (1942)
*"A-Haunting We Will Go" (1942)
*"True to Life" (1943)
*"Gaslight" (1944)
*"Since You Went Away" (1944)
*"Sweet and Low-Down" (1944)
*"The Clock" (1945)
*"Son of Lassie" (1945)
*"Shadowed" (1946)
*"The Devil On Wheels" (1947)
*"Heartaches" (1947)
*"Summer Holiday" (1948)
*"The Return of October" (1948)
*"Mighty Joe Young" (1949)
*"The Great Rupert" (1950)
*"He's a Cockeyed Wonder" (1950)
*"Gambling House" (1951)
*"Two of a Kind" (1951)
*"Sunny Side of the Street" (1951)
*"The Barefoot Mailman" (1951)
*"Come Back, Little Sheba" (1952)
*"Man on a Tightrope" (1953)
*"Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" (1953)
*"King of the Khyber Rifles" (1953)
*"Postmark for Danger" (1955)
*"Daddy Long Legs" (1955)
*"Shack Out on 101" (1955)
*"Between Heaven and Hell" (1956)
*"Bernardine" (1957)
*"Peyton Place" (1957)
*"A Private's Affair" (1959)
*"Cast a Long Shadow" (1959)
*"Platinum High School" (1960)
*"Why Must I Die?" (1960)
*"She Should Have Stayed in Bed" (1963)
*"Black Spurs" (1965)
*"Town Tamer" (1965)
*"City of Fear" (1965)
*"Waco" (1966)
*"A Man Called Dagger" (1967)
*"The Daredevil" (1972)
*"Death Dimension" (1978)
*"Double Exposure" (1983)
*"Hellhole" (1985)
*"W.A.R.: Women Against Rape" (1987)
*"Father's Day" (1988)
*"Going Overboard" (1989)
*"Beverly Hills Brats" (1989) (also producer and writer)
*"American Boyfriends" (1989)
*"American Southern" (1995)
*"Second Chances" (1998)
*"Mighty Joe Young" (1998)
*"Final Voyage" (1999)
*"Stageghost" (2000)
*"Sweet Deadly Dreams" (2002)
*"The Still Life" (2005)
*"Kill Your Darlings" (2005)
*"I'm King Kong!: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper" (2005) (documentary)

Television Appearances

*"What's My Line? (1955) (as a mystery celebrity guest)

External links

* [http://www.terrymoore.com/ Official site for Terry Moore]
*
* [http://www.geocities.com/ldscelebs/terry-moore-1.html Fan site]
* [http://www.star-tv.com/tvshows/index_Old_Skool_with_Terry_and_Gita.asp Old Skool with Terry and Gita] on Star!