Judy Landon(1928-2021)
- Actress
Judy Landon didn't think about being a ballerina professionally until 1941 when she did an act at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel which impressed audiences and got her steady work throughout the 1940s in stage productions like The Fortune Teller at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Association and Magdalena at the Ziegfeld Theatre. She loved the theater but wanted to work onscreen, so she rented a house in Beverly Hills, California so she could audition at nearby studios. I couldn't and still don't believe her story about how she actually got cast in her first film. She told a reporter that she was horseback riding when she saw an injured chipmunk near the path and took it to a veterinarian. The veterinarian referred her to a filmmaker who needed an actress who could handle wild animals. That's how she says she got started even though most of her movies with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer didn't involve animals, such as Singin' in the Rain (1952) where she walks the red carpet, Road to Bali (1953) as the last of the handmaidens to disappear in a cloud before women draped in gold appear, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as one of the women surrounding Marilyn Monroe who sings 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend'
