Suzanne Kaaren, 92; Prolific Film Actress Took on Donald Trump

Suzanne Kaaren, who died August 27 at the Lillian Booth Home of the Actors’ Fund of America in Englewood, N.J., was a Hollywood studio player who had small parts in dozens of movies and leads in several cult favorites, including “The Devil Bat” and three Three Stooges shorts. She also was an original Rockette, a champion high-jumper, a patent holder for a poptop can, and in the 1990s she waged a successful legal battle against Donald Trump when the developer tried to evict her from her sprawling, rent-controlled Central Park South apartment.Kaaren was born in Brooklyn, although the Fox Films publicity machine, ever eager to exoticize its starlets, put it out that she had actually been born in Sydney, Australia; evidently her unusual name was glamorous enough to leave alone.She studied dance and attended Erasmus Hall High School, where she once high-jumped 4 feet 4 inches, which was close to the women’s world record at the time. Family lore had it that she had competed against Babe Didrikson and had a spot on the 1932 Olympic squad until her parents forbade her to compete in the games. They had previously barred her from joining the Ziegfeld Follies at age 15.While still a student at Hunter College, Kaaren began modeling, and on December 27, 1932, she was one of 50 precision dancers in a line that stretched across the stage at the opening extravaganza for Radio City Music Hall. They were called Roxyettes after the impresario Roxy, who was Radio City’s entertainment director. Only later would they become the Rockettes.Kaaren said on that night she was mortified to discover she had come on stage wearing one black shoe and one red shoe, but the gaffe was scarcely noticed amid the 500 performers onstage for the opening. By the next September, she was discovered by a Hollywood casting agent.Because Kaaren was only 20 years old, the California Superior Court had to grant her special permission to sign the contract with Fox. Her family, for once, relented. She moved to Los Angeles and started out at $150 a week.Kaaren began the frenetic life of an in-demand studio player, appearing in perhaps a half-dozen movies each year through the end of the 1930s. She frequently failed to be billed at all, but she worked with many top stars, including Spencer Tracy, William Powell, and Adolphe Menjou.In 1936, she appeared as a dancer in “Disorder in the Court,” a favorite among fans of the Three Stooges. Later, she had starring roles in the shorts “Yes,We Have No Bonanza” (1939) and “What’s the Matador?”(1942),in which Curly memorably head-butts a bull into submission. The Stooges seemed to value her opinion, and regularly tried out new material on her.In 1939, Kaaren played “Nurse #3” in “Idiot’s Delight,” and had the singular distinction of being kissed by an ecstatic Clark Gable. She claimed that the director, Clarence Brown, repeated the scene 26 times merely because he delighted in making her blush.Kaaren’s biggest role came opposite Bela Lugosi in the low-budget horror movie “The Devil Bat” (1940), in which Lugosi electrically enlarges bats to take revenge on his employers, who have become rich by stealing a perfume he invented.Kaaren also had a small nonspeaking role as the Countess Tamara in the 1939 classic “The Women.” According to Kaaren, the role had originally been much larger, but director George Cukor cut her scenes because he was angry with Kaaren’s boyfriend, the actor Sidney Blackmer, for abandoning his wife, actress Lenore Ulrich.Blackmer and Kaaren married in 1943 (for some reason secretly, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune), and Kaaren retired from the movies. She returned to the stage occasionally, especially in productions starring her husband. In 1944, she served as a replacement lead in the Broadway production of “Chicken Every Sunday,” in which Blackmer was starring. The couple took the show on the road, and in 1946 their 8-month-old son Brewster was added to the cast, too.Sidney Blackmer already had a substantial career, beginning on Broadway in 1917 in “The Morris Dance” and in the 1914 film “The Perils of Pauline.” Blackmer was known for playing Theodore Roosevelt, and the actor played him in at least 14 plays and films. In 1950, Blackmer won a Tony for “Come Back, Little Sheba.”That same year, the couple rented an apartment at 100 Central Park South. They lived in Manhattan and in a large Victorian house in Salisbury, N.C.A creative person who regularly came up with entrepreneurial plans to enhance her family’s income, Kaaren took out a patent on an early version of the pop-top in the early 1950s. She showed it to the Continental Can Company, and events thereafter seemed like a strange echo of “The Devil Bat.” The company developed its own can, which resembled hers, according to Kaaren’s son Jonathan. He said that he has a royalty check for $1.20 that was all that Continental Can gave her in settlement of her claims after she threatened to sue.Later, Kaaren developed a specialized hair net for nurses.Sidney Blackmer died in 1973 – his last big role was as Ruth Gorden’s husband, the lead Satanist in “Rosemary’s Baby” – leaving Kaaren little beyond the house. Their home, which was uninsured, burned down in 1984, taking with it a lifetime of theater bric-a-brac from two careers.Kaaren lived on Social Security, primarily in New York, where her apartment was rent-controlled. Donald Trump purchased the building in the late 1980s and began eviction proceedings. “He wants to buy up all of New York,” Kaaren told the Washington Post in 1987. “The man is a greedy slob.”The legal battle dragged on for years, and it was finally settled in favor of the tenants in 1998. They were allowed to stay in the building at rent controlled rates as long as they wanted. By then, Kaaren had changed her opinion of Trump: “He’s handsome. He’s very energetic,” she said. “He’s wonderful. I wish him the best of luck.” Monthly rent on the apartment was $203.59; units with comparable views rented on the free market for $5,000.Kaaren was buried Saturday in a North Carolina cemetery, next to her husband. The inscription on the tombstone is a traditional stage manager’s command, “Quiet please, the curtain’s up!”Suzanne KaarenBorn March 21, 1912, in Brooklyn; died August 27 in Englewood, N.J.; survived by her sons, Jonathan and Brewster, and a grandchild.

Suzanne Kaaren, 92; Prolific Film Actress Took on Donald Trump

Suzanne Kaaren, 92; Prolific Film Actress Took on Donald Trump

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