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Jody Gilbert
American actress (1916–1979) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jody Gilbert (March 18, 1916 – February 3, 1979) was an American actress.
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Biography
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Gilbert was born in Fort Worth, Texas. She studied voice and acting at Columbia University, and was a graduate of Pasadena Playhouse.[1]
After numerous uncredited film roles, Gilbert delivered a brief but memorable performance in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). She played a sarcastic diner waitress who engages in a verbal duel with her customer W.C. Fields. Over the next decade, she appeared dozens of times (although still mostly uncredited) in movies, radio and television, often in humorous supporting roles as "sizeable" but confident women.[2]
Gilbert's acting career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist. In November 1952, a little-known writer named Harvey Narcisenfield testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Gilbert was a Communist.[3] When she was summoned before the Committee in May 1953, she used the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination.[4] Throughout her testimony, she made light of the proceedings and of HUAC counsel Frank Tavenner's questions, for example, joking about her weight, and saying she was invoking the Fifth Commandment as well as the Fifth Amendment. Her latter comment included a more serious challenge to HUAC's legitimacy, as one biographer noted:
"Honor thy father and mother that thy days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord thy God has given thee," Jody quoted, before explaining: "I choose to interpret that to mean forefathers." She didn't want to dishonor her forefathers by doing anything other than protecting the rights that they had given her, which meant that she could do no other than decline to answer Tavenner's impertinent question.[4]
She was barred from TV work until 1965. Her next film role was not until 1969 in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
On February 3, 1979, Jody Gilbert died from complications arising from an automobile accident that she had been involved in the previous autumn. She was 62.[1]
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