Connie Gilchrist

Born to a stage actress mother, Connie Gilchrist took to the theater herself at just 16, in an English production in 1917. She would continue to work stages across Europe and the United States, eventually landing on Broadway in the mid-30s. Within four years, Gilchrist managed to secure a decade-long deal with MGM. In 1940, she made her feature film debut in the musical "Hullabaloo," and soon established herself as a dependable character actress, handling disparate roles in everything from largely forgotten mysteries and westerns to director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's classic comedy drama "A Letter to Three Wives" in 1949. Following her time at MGM, Cilchrist found steady work in features during the 1950s, even appearing as the top-billed female in the '54 swashbuckler "Long John Silver," in which she played Purity Pinker, an innkeeper vying to marry the titular pirate. The film spawned a subsequent television series, "The Adventures of Long John Silver," with Gilchrist appearing as Pinker in all 26 episodes of the show. In 1958 alone, she appeared in such disparate films as the Frank Sinatra vehicle "Some Came Running," the spirited comedy "Aunt Mame" and the violent Roger Corman gangster flick "Machine-Gun Kelly," but worked almost exclusively in television during the 1960s, continuing to be prolific up until 1969, when she ended her three-decade career as a screen actress.