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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ClassyCo" data-source="post: 294700" data-attributes="member: 7">I could've sworn Cleo Moore had been mentioned here before, but I suppose I was wrong. She's one of many little remembered actresses from the 1950s whose main claim to fame today comes from her name appearing on a seemingly never-ending list of women molded in Marilyn Monroe's likeness. Aside from the blonde hair and prettiness, Cleo's professional career or on-screen persona didn't parallel with Marilyn's. Where Monroe projected a sensitive sexiness, Moore presented a tougher, hard-boiled persona in her films. She was born in Louisiana in 1929, the daughter of grocery store owners. When she was 15, she married a man named Palmer Long, but that marriage was brief. She moved with her family to California in 1945, determined to make a name for herself in movies. With her good looks, Moore started entering beauty contests, and she was crowned "Miss Van Nuys" in 1947.  Moore started acting in 1948. It was that year that she first gained attention for appearing in CONGO BILL, a movie serial starring Don McGuire in the title role. She played a white leader of an African tribe. Moore worked for Warner Brothers for a brief period in 1950, before shifting over to RKO, where she stayed until 1952. During this time, she appeared in several movies, often with big-name stars like Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall, Victor Mature, and Ida Lupino. In 1952, she signed with Columbia Pictures, where she'd do the bulk of her film work for the rest of her career. Her first film there was STRANGE FASCINATION (1952), a B-movie film noir that was made under the supervision of filmmaker Hugo Haas. Moore and Haas developed a strong working relationship, and the two worked together several more times over the course of her career. One of Moore's most-well-known films was ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION, a 1953 low-budget drama that solidified her unofficial status as the queen of B-movie bad girls. The majority of her roles were in B-movie crime dramas and melodramas, such as THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE (1953) and THE OTHER WOMAN (1954). One of her bigger-budget movies was WOMEN'S PRISON (1955), in which she played a sassy prisoner opposite Ida Lupino and Jan Sterling. Her final film was HIT AND RUN (1957), which was made for United Artists. Moore's career tapered off in the late-'50s. She never achieved the super star status of her contemporaries, but achieved fame in the 1980s when she and Mamie Van Doren were rediscovered as the quintessential bad girls of '50s B-movies. Cleo Moore had been out of the limelight for several years when she died in 1973, aged 43. She was buried in her Inglewood, California. [ATTACH=full]30769[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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