Ann Doran

Ann Doran (July 28, 1911 – September 19, 2000) was a prolific American character actress, who worked in more than 1500 motion pictures and television episodes. Today's audiences know her as Carol Stark, the mother of James "Jim" Stark (James Dean) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and as a featured actress in short comedies with The Three Stooges and Charley Chase. She was an early member of the Screen Actors Guild and served on the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund for 30 years.

Ann Lee Doran was born in Amarillo, Texas to silent-film actress Rose Allen (born Carrie A. Barnett) and John R. Doran. She attended high school in San Bernardino, California.

According to a 1979 interview, the actress made her debut at 11 years old. Seldom cast in leading roles, Doran appeared in more than 500 motion pictures and 1,000 episodes of television series, such as the American Civil War drama Gray Ghost.

Doran entered the field of motion pictures as a stand-in, then bit player, then incidental supporting player. In 1936 she was featured in two of the last feature films produced by independent studio Chesterfield Pictures, Missing Girls and Red Lights Ahead (the latter film a rare lead for Columbia Pictures' short-subject star Andy Clyde).

Red Lights Ahead led to a contract with Columbia, where Doran became a familiar face. Columbia's company policy was to use the members of its stock company as often as possible. Thus, Doran appears in Columbia's serials (such as The Spider's Web and Flying G-Men), B features (including the Blondie, Five Little Peppers and Ellery Queen series), and major feature films. She became a favorite of Columbia director Frank Capra and appeared in many of his productions, notably You Can't Take It With You, in which she leads a group of neighbors battling a tycoon who evicted them. Most of these appearances were supporting roles, although she had the ingenue lead in the Charles Starrett western Rio Grande (1938) and was featured in the Boris Karloff thriller The Man They Could Not Hang (1939).

She was most prominent in Columbia's two-reel comedies, which had smaller casts and accordingly gave supporting players more to do. She worked with The Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon, Tom Kennedy, Walter Catlett. Roscoe Karns, Vera Vague, and especially Charley Chase. Her first appearance with Chase was as a gangster's moll in Time Out for Trouble (1938); Chase admired her comic timing and gave her ingenue leads in his subsequent shorts.

Ann Doran's tenure at Columbia ended when Frank Capra angrily left the studio to make Meet John Doe (1941), and cast Doran as the wife of soda jerk-turned-John Doe Club activist Bert Hansen. Though her character speaks some of the film's most pivotal lines of dialogue, including an impassioned suicide-preventing plea in the final scene, her appearance in the film is uncredited. It is possible that Columbia studio chief Harry Cohn resented Ann Doran's following Capra, and dropped her from his contract roster.

Now away from Columbia, Ann Doran began freelancing and worked steadily for other companies. Her first freelance job after Columbia was for the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation, where she had the ingenue lead in Criminals Within (1941). Never a glamour-girl ingenue, Doran always projected a sensible, down-to-earth quality that suited her plain-Jane looks, and she was always content to play supporting roles. "I'm happy in the leak light," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. With the spotlight on the star, "whatever leaked over the side, that's what I got." She continued to play character roles, large and small (including one as a Nazi agent in the 1942 Michael Shayne mystery Blue, White and Perfect).