RITA GAM

(2 April 1927 - 22 March 2016)

American actress and documentarian Rita Gam made her film debut in The Thief (1952) with Ray Milland, a film noted for its lack of dialogue. She began her career on Broadway and then played in several TV series before M-G-M came along with a film contract. Much of her career, however, was spent on television but she did appear in such cinematic exotica as Saadia (1953) with Cornel Wilde and Mel Ferrer, Night People (1954) with Gregory Peck and Broderick Crawford, Douglas Sirk’s Sign of the Pagan (1954) with Jeff Chandler and Jack Palance (the latter as Attila the Hun), Magic Fire (1955) as Cosima, second wife of Franz Liszt, and Hannibal (1959) with Victor Mature, and she was Herodias in Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961). In 1971 she was in Alan J. Pakula’s Klute with Jane Fonda, was Doria in Otto Preminger’s Such Good Friends with Ken Howard (q.v.) and won a Silver Bear in Berlin for No Exit. The rest of Gam’s career was mainly in TV. Her last film was Rowing Through (1996), about champion sculler Tiff Wood. She made two series of TV documentaries on the World of Film and the World of Beauty. Gam’s first husband was film director Sidney Lumet and she was a bridesmaid at Grace Kelly’s wedding.

MICHAEL DARVELL