BETTY GARRETT DIEAD
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Betty Garrett, Broadway star who played strong friend of Frank Sinatra in MGM musicals two before his career was haltered from the Hollywood blacklist, died in Los Angeles, said on Sunday his son. She was 91.
Betty Garrett expired Sat at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, most often from an aortic aneurysm, said his son, Garrett Parks. Garrett has been in good health and has taught his regular class musical at the Theatre West, the nonprofit organization she helped found Wednesday night, but on Friday examined at the hospital with heart problems and she died with his family at her side following morning.
Betty Garrett was finest acknowledged as the coquettish girl in luv with the unconfident Sinatra in "Take Me Out to the girlfriend" and "On the Town", both in 1949 and later in life, she became well known public television with recurring roles in sitcoms of the 1970s "All in the Family" and "Laverne and Shirley."
Betty Garrett film career was brief, mainly because of hunting red led by members of Congress who forced her husband, actor Larry Parks, to testify to his previous membership in the Communist Party.
Parks had gained fame and an Oscar nomination as finest actor for his enactment of singer Al Jolson dynamic in 1946 "The Jolson Story." But in 1951 he was summoned before the committee in the House Un-American Activities, and he admitted he had joined the commie Party in 1941 and exited in 1944 or 1945.
Pressed to name his party colleagues, Parks pleaded not to be compelled "to crawl through the mud as an informant." He agreed to testify fully closed.
He made another film; "Love Is Better than Ever" with Elizabeth Taylor, her film career was over.
"It was a dark, crazy, crazy time," Garrett said in 1998. "It has destroyed many lives and ruined the career of my husband."
