Ann Sothern

It’s a little surprising that Ann Sothern never appeared on Murder, She Wrote. She’s the exact sort of person you’d expect for that. She had a long-running career going back to the ‘30s—she and Lucille Ball became friends when they were both chorus girls—that had mostly run dry by then even though she was still around. (She died in 2001 at the age of 92; her last performance was in The Whales of August in 1987.) She had health problems by then and was only working sporadically, but it still makes her the ideal guest star for that show.

She’s from a long line of performers. Her maternal grandfather was a concert violinist; her mother was a singer and then, with the advent of sound, became a vocal coach for Warner Bros. Sothern initially got a minor role in The Show of Shows, a star-studded mostly Technicolor production, but it didn’t lead to a Warners contract. She had a six-month MGM contract, but she was invited to join two Ziegfeld productions when it. Afterward, she returned to Hollywood, where she signed with Columbia. From there, she stopped being Harriette Arlene Lake and became Ann Sothern.

Her biggest break in Hollywood arguably came with the death of Jean Harlow. MGM had bought the rights to a book called Dark Dame with Harlow in mind for the lead role, a burlesque performer called Maisie Ravier. When Harlow died, they were left in need of a star, and Sothern stepped into the role. She would play the character for ten movies. She was in assorted other comedies interspersed with them, including a bonkers-sounding one where Edward G. Robinson plays a gangster who hides out as a monk. Ball called her the best comedienne in the business, bar none. The pair often competed for roles.

Sothern was one of the first people to make the jump from movies to television, along with her old friend. She was also one of the first women to play a working woman on TV with Private Secretary. The show ran for five seasons. The Ann Sothern Show ran for three. Eventually, she would go on to thirty episodes of My Mother the Car, wherein she voiced the car. From there, she went back and forth between TV and movies, with occasional stops into theatre.

Unfortunately, Sothern also had health problems. She contracted hepatitis from an impure shot in 1949 and spent some time recovering. Though she continued to record the Maisie radio show from her bed. In 1974, she was performing in Jacksonville, Florida, in a production of Everybody Loves Opal. A prop tree fell on her back. It caused her lifelong problems due to a fractured lumbar vertebra and damaged nerves in her legs. Small wonder really, that she retired. Still, even after her Oscar nomination (she lost to Olympia Dukakis for Moonstruck), you’d really have expected to see her with Jessica Fletcher at least once.