Anne Francis
Actress Anne Francis, who acted with some of the best in film and television and became an inadvertent symbol of women’s liberation during the 1960s, has died from complications of pancreatic cancer. She was 80.
Francis, who was a sex siren in the 1950s also memorably starred in the science-fiction classic “Forbidden Planet,” but her star-turn as a private eye in television show “Honey West” made her an icon. During her heyday in Hollywood she starred opposite the era’s top leading men, including Spencer Tracy, Paul Newman, Robert Taylor and Glenn Ford in some of the most popular films of the 1950s.
Her more than 30 movies included “Bad Day at Black Rock” with Tracy, “Blackboard Jungle” with Ford, “Rogue Cop” with Taylor and “Funny Girl” with Barbara Streisand. She also played in “The Rack” with Newman, “A Lion Is in the Streets” with James Cagney, and did comedy as well, starring in “Hook, Line and Sinker” opposite Jerry Lewis. But the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet” and “Honey West” elevated her to cult status.