This Day in WWII 20 October 1943 - 1944

[Donster]

1943: An allied agreement to set up UN commission on war crimes is announced in London.

1943: A delayed-detonation bomb explodes at the central post office in Naples, Italy, injuring seventy-two people. When they retreated three weeks earlier, the Germans left behind scores of booby traps.

1943: The Russian attacks from Bukrin bridgehead are bloodily repulsed.

Evelyn Keyes*

1944: The Red Army captures Belgrade, while Yugoslav partisans capture Dubrovnik.

1944: The U.S. Sixth Army landings in the Philippines begin on the East Coast of Leyte, but the 60,000 men sent ashore encounter stiff Japanese resistance.

1944: Gen. Douglas MacArthur stepped ashore at Leyte in the Philippines, 2 1/2 years after he'd said, ''I shall return.''

Sir Frederick Bowhill (READ COVER STORY)

*Evelyn Louise Keyes was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on November 20, 1916 (for decades she would deceive the public as to her real age). Her father died when she was 2, and she and her only brother and three sisters grew up living with her mother and her grandmother in Atlanta, Georgia. Taking voice, dance and piano lessons, she was hopeful in becoming a ballerina. Instead she entered a beauty pageant or two and worked as a chorus girl before relocating to California at age 20. Shortly after her arrival in Los Angeles, a chance meeting with the legendary 'Cecil B. Demille' led to a Paramount contract. Stories differ as to how she met DeMille. Hollywood folklore has it that she was "discovered" by a talent scout in true Lana Turner fashion while eating at a restaurant; another more believable story has it that she connected with one of DeMille's former writers, which led to an introduction.

After a handful of B movies at Paramount Pictures, she landed her most notable role, that of Scarlett O'Hara's sister Suellen in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Columbia Pictures signed her to a contract. In 1941 she played an ingenue role in Here Comes Mr. Jordan, but the studio evidently thought her too young to play romantic roles in major films, so she spent most of the 1940s playing leads in many of Columbia's B dramas and mysteries. She developed her dramatic skill sufficiently to be given the feminine lead opposite Larry Parks in Columbia's blockbuster hit The Jolson Story (1946). Her later performances were fewer, but noteworthy, like her 1949 role as Kathy Flannigan in Mrs. Mike. Keyes' last important film role was a small part as Tom Ewell's vacationing wife in The Seven Year Itch (1955), which starred Marilyn Monroe. Keyes officially retired in 1956, but continued to act.

She was married to Barton Bainbridge from 1938 until his death from suicide in 1940. Later she married and divorced director Charles Vidor (1943–1945), actor/director John Huston (23 July 1946–February 1950), and bandleader Artie Shaw (1957–1985). Keyes said of her many relationships, "I was always interested in the man of the moment, and there were many such moments." While married to Huston, the couple adopted a Mexican child, Pablo, whom Huston had discovered while on the set of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Her autobiography, Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister: My Lively Life in and Out of Hollywood, was published in 1977. Keyes expressed her opinion that Mrs. Mike was her best film. She also wrote of the personal cost she paid by having an abortion just before Gone with the Wind was to begin filming. The experience left her unable to have children. Among the many Hollywood affairs she recounted were those to producer Michael Todd (who left Evelyn for Elizabeth Taylor), Anthony Quinn, David Niven and Kirk Douglas.

She died of uterine cancer on July 4, 2008 at her home in Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara. She had also suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

[The Dude]

Sorry to hear ol' Ev passed on. She had a good run, though.

Now here are my favourite Evelyn pics:

[Red]

Got damn she was one hell of a stunner

[Madman]

Yup, definitely an eyeful!