Biography

Was a first-class passenger on the Andrea Doria along with Ruth Roman, and her son Dickie when it sank on July 25, 1956. Was saved from the ship after going onto the port side of the ship and finding that side's boats useless because of the severe list. She was later rescued from the sinking liner but lost more than $200,000 worth of jewelry as well as a book manuscript on which she had been working.

After her acting career, Betsy Drake earned a Master of Education degree from Harvard University; became a children's therapist; was the director of psychodrama at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute; worked at Cedars-Sinai Hospital; maintained a private therapy practice; taught at UCLA, Pepperdine University; and had a book published in 1971 entitled 'Children, You Are Very Little' written under the name Betsy Drake Grant.

She was with her husband Cary Grant in Cannes in 1954 while he made To Catch a Thief (1955) and also with him in Spain in 1956, when he filmed The Pride and the Passion (1957). In Spain, she learned Grant was reportedly in love with co-star Sophia Loren. Drake left before the press found out and sailed back to New York on the ill-fated Italian liner Andrea Doria, which collided with another ship, the MS Stockholm off the coast of Nantucket, and capsized. Drake was one of the 1,660 passengers and crew rescued. Then, Loren came to America to star again with Grant, this time in the romantic comedy Houseboat (1958). Drake had written an early script for the film, hoping it would be a vehicle for her and Grant, but he insisted the script be reworked with Loren playing the role Drake thought would be hers.

Drake's marriage to Cary Grant on Christmas Day 1949 took place in an Arizona farmhouse and was arranged by Grant's best man, millionaire Howard Hughes. Amid the turmoil of her marriage to Grant, Drake took the advice of a friend and began the then-new therapy involving LSD. She persuaded Grant to try it and he became involved in nearly 100 sessions over several years, becoming the drug's earliest notable advocate, several years before Dr. Timothy Leary, who stated that it was reading about Grant's use of the drug that persuaded him to give LSD a try. She later credited LSD with giving her the courage to eventually leave the actor. In their 1962 divorce, she was awarded more than $1 million in cash plus a percentage of the earnings from the 13 films Grant had made during their marriage.

The granddaughter of Tracy Corey Drake, who, with his brother, built the Drake Hotel in Chicago.