OVERLOOKED TELEVISION: CINDERELLA

Celeste Holm was a lady with class and talent.  (I'm ignoring her last few, tragic years, when she was diagnosed with Alzeimer's two years before she married a man 46 years younger than her, then had finacial problems and was estranged from her sons.) 

     Celeste Holm made her Broadway debut at age 19.  Early in her stage career she worked with such stars as Leslie howard and Gene Kelly.  In 1943, she originated the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma.  In films she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Gentleman's Agreement.  She would receive two more Oscar nominations.  After she appeared in All About Eve with Bette Davis, she realized she preferred the stage to movies, and later she would only appear in selected films and would become a presence on television.

     She has been a spokesman for UNICEF, a member of the National Arts Council, and the Chairman of the Board of Arts Horizons.  She was made a Knight 1st Class in the Order of St. Olav by King Olav V of Norway.  She was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame and received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.   She also received the Sarah Siddons Award for distinguished achievement in Chicago Theatre and a Life Achievement Award from the SunDeis Film Festival at Brandeis University.

     Here's a 1965 recording of Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, with Celeste Holm playing the Fairy Godmother to Leslie Ann Warren's Cinderella:

http://archive.org/details/RogersampHammersteinsCinderella

     So farewell to A Girl Who Can't Say No:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkG1fx3iZPA

     She will be missed.