Elaine Devry, an actress who appeared in films such as The Atomic Child And A Guide for the Married Man and appeared on dozens of television shows after becoming the fourth of Mickey Rooney’s eight wives, has died. She was 93.
According to a statement on a local funeral home’s website, Devry died on Sept. 20 at her home in Grants Pass, Oregon.
Devry married Rooney in November 1952 in Las Vegas and made her first film appearances as an actress in the comedy with Rooney the next year A minor case of theft and in an episode of the CBS anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan General Electric Theater.
Science fiction comedy “In the Republic Pictures.” The Atomic Child (1954), directed by Leslie H. Martinson, introduced her as “Elaine Davis (Mrs. Mickey Rooney)” and her character, a nurse, marries her husband’s Barnaby “Blix” Waterberry at the end of the film.
In A Guide for the Married Man (1967), directed by Gene Kelly, she portrayed a seductive divorcee who has a rendezvous with Walter Matthau’s Paul Manning in a motel room, but it doesn’t go as she had hoped.
Over the years, Devry appeared in all series of Bourbon Street Beat, Bachelor father, Perry Mason, Death Valley days, 77 Sunset Strip And Hawaiian eye To Gold mine, I dream about Jeannie, My three sons, Family affair, Marcus Welby, MDAnd cannon before giving up acting in the late 1970s.
Elaine Devry and her then-husband Mickey Rooney in a 1954 publicity photo for “The Atomic Kid,” Courtesy Everett Collection
Thelma Elaine Mahnken was born on January 10, 1930 in Compton, California. She worked as a model while attending Compton High School and Compton Community College, then moved to Butte, Montana, where she married her high school sweetheart Dan Ducich, a standout basketball player, in 1948.
A year later, Ducich was convicted of armed robbery and given a suspended sentence, and the couple divorced in 1952. In June 1954, he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in a room at the Sahara in Vegas. He was 28.
Devry returned to California and met Rooney at a driving range in Woodland Hills. They married when she was 22 and he was 32. He was previously married to actress Ava Gardner, singer Betty Jane Phillips and actress Martha Vickers.
In 1956, Edward R. Murrow interviewed the couple from their home on CBS. From person to person.
During the separation from Devry, Rooney met actress Barbara Ann Thomason and began a romance with her. He divorced Devry in Mexico in December 1958 – the end of their marriage was not publicly announced for several months – and their separation would prove quite contentious.
Rooney married Thomason, who was murdered by her lover Milos Milos in the Rooneys’ Brentwood home in 1966. After her death, he married the writer Marge Lane, the secretary Carolyn Hockett and the actress and singer Jan Chamberlin before he died in April 2014.
Devry also appeared in films such as Porcelain doll (1958), Human trap (1961), The last time I saw Archie (1961), Diary of a madman (1963), With Six you get Eggroll (1968), The Cheyenne Social Club (1970), Bless the animals and children (1971), The werewolf boy screamed (1973) and Herbie is driving again (1974).
In 1975 she married actor Will J. White. They first met on NBC in 1961 The Dick Powell Theater; Her episode, in which Powell portrays millionaire investigator Amos Burke, served as the pilot episode for the ABC series Burke’s law. (Rooney was also in the episode.)
White died in 1992. His sister, actress Suzanne Alexander, died by suicide in 1975 at age 44.
Source : www.hollywoodreporter.com