It's Virginia Mayo's Centennial
Monday, November 30, 2020 at 9:30AM by Nathaniel R
Today marks the centennial of another Old Hollywood star that seems to be forgotten these days but perhaps there are fans among you? Born in Missouri on this day in 1920, Virginia Clara Jones hit the Vaudeville circuit as a professional entertainer when she was 17 and adopted the stage name of "Virginia Mayo" even before Hollywood came calling in the early 1940s. Her first credited film role was in the biopic Jack London (1943) starring Michael O'Shea (who she would marry four years later). Though she was a leading lady with many box office hits to her name, enduring classics (mostly) eluded her. Naturally then she's best remembered today in a supporting role as the unfaithful wife in the superb Best Picture winner The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), one of those utterly magic films where every single actor is killing it...
Her first hits were often comedies with Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, and the like
With Dana Andrews (who should have been Oscar nominated) in "The Best Years of Our Lives"
She was the top-billed star in "Silver Chalice" but look at the young'un she's hangin' on... it's Paul Newman in his big screen debut.
Some of her other hits included multiple musical comedies with Danny Kaye (she was a talented dancer but her singing voice was dubbed), The Princess and the Pirate (1944) with Bob Hope, and White Heat (1949) with Jimmy Cagney. She also headlined the notorious biblical flop The Silver Chalice (1954) which is mostly famous today for featuring a nobody named Paul Newman in his first movie role.
We admit that we aren't all that well-versed in Mayo's filmography so if you are, we'd love your suggestions as to her best work in the comments.
Reader Comments (16)
I think you can call White Heat a classic and Mayo is very good in it.
A lovely actress whose beauty was detrimental to her career. As shown by Best Years of Our Lives and especially White Heat she was far more able than the fluffy vehicles the studio handed her allowed her to be. Even she realized it saying she knew she was a better actress than given credit for but once the studio typed you, in her case as lovely window dressing, it was nearly impossible to break out into more challenging work. Too bad she would have been fantastic as a noir goddess.
Still she made a slew of pleasant, if lightweight, films with some of the biggest names at the time. Aside from the one-two punch of Years and White Heat (her best films and performances) some of her better films include:
Out of the Blue (1947)-A daffy comedy with George Brent, the fabulous equally underrated Ann Dvorak and Carole Landis.
The Proud Ones (1956)-Robert Ryan & Jeffrey Hunter
Flaxy Martin (1949)-Zachary Scott
Along the Great Divide (1951)-Kirk Douglas
The Flame and the Arrow (1950)-Burt Lancaster
South Seas Woman (1953)-Burt Lancaster again
The Princess and the Pirate (1944)-Bob Hope
She's Working Her Way Through College (1952)-A musicalized version of The Male Animal and her favorite of her films.
She was also a great favorite of Danny Kaye costarring in four pictures with him (and playing a small role in his Up in Arms when she was starting out)-The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Wonder Man, The Kid From Brooklyn and A Song is Born which is a musicalized take on Barbara Stanwyck's Ball of Fire and the best of the quartet.
Except for her last few films, which were the unfortunate horror junk that many of the leading ladies of the Golden Age ended up appearing in, all her movies are an agreeably satisfying way to wile away a spare couple of hours.
Mayo was a great musical comedy star and could do drama too in "White Heat" and "The Best Years of Our Life"
I liked her in the musicals of the 1950s.
I love this actress: "White Heat", "The Best Years Of Our Lives", "The Silver Chalice", so beautiful and charming, creamy complexion, glorious figure (check out those legs) too. Hold the Mayo!
White Heat is one of the most violent films made under the Production Code, and also one of the most hilarious. James Cagney, Margaret Wycherly, Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Mayo are all in top form. Favorite line: There's plenty you can do without wearing out a mattress!
It's interesting to look back and see who history remembered. If Mayo had gotten a nomination for Best Years of Our Lives her career would be examined more. Still she was in classics, headlined several films, changed genres from musicals to biblical epics, and was gorgeous. I group her with Ann Sheridan another actor who history seems to have forgotten. If not for LA Confidential, I'd include Veronica Lake with them.
I wonder why she went for such an odd (and risible) screen name...
When I think of Virginia Mayo, three words come to mind: "Resting Villainess Face."
I simply adore her. She was charming, beautiful and proves her worth in several Hollywood genre films. She was particularly brilliant directed by Raoul Walsh. Her perfs in Walsh's WHITE HEAT and Wyler's THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES for me would have deserved to be Oscar nominated or at least if I had been an Academy member back then my votes would have been for her! Even if nowadays her casting would have been controversial, in COLORADO TERRITORY she played one of he most memorable and sensuous Western heroines
She was the Third Dimensional Queen of 1951!
The tagline on The Kid from Brooklyn poster made me smile.
I’m a Mayo fan. ‘Best Years’ may have been her most serious film but ‘Walter Mitty’ and ‘White Heat’ are classics in their respective genres. She was an excellent comedic foil to both Bob Hope and Danny Kaye, as well as being a traditional leading lady opposite the likes of Gregory Peck and Alan Ladd. I think a true film buff doesn’t forgot the past players of cinema, many of whom we have only discovered long after they left the Silver Screen.
She's pretty good in White Heat. Also her chemistry with Cagney is exploding in The West Point Story.
I think she's legitimately wonderful in Best Years of Our Lives, the whole relationship between her and Dana Andrews is IMO the highlight of the film. She's so cruel to him and the movie smarly never sentimentalizes her or works hard to make her "sympathetic". But she's not some cartoon harridan either and is full human. Love her in White Heat as well but that really is Cagney's movie.
Don't know that I've seen anything else she's done unfortunately.
Lovely actress and from what I've read, a lovely person. She is perfect in The Best Years of Our Lives.
Definitely an underrated actress and I agree she was seldom given the roles that she deserved. She sparkled in films like Hornblower and of course Best Years of Our Lives.
She was also stunningly beautiful in every picture and, forget Grable or Charisse, in my opinion had the best legs in the business!