Actress Virginia Gilmore Dies; Veteran of Stage, Hollywood

Virginia Gilmore, a proven stage actress who suffered through a series of banal Hollywood films before returning to the theater, died over the weekend at her Santa Barbara home.

She was 66 and had been suffering from emphysema.

A veteran of about 30 films, she came to Los Angeles in 1939 after a brief but successful career on stage in San Francisco.

Here she languished until she summoned up the courage to confront producer Samuel Goldwyn at his home. He promised her a screen test but the only immediate result was her being selected for the annual trophy sponsored by the “Physical Culture Foundation of Hollywood” for having the best legs in the film industry.

In the few interviews she granted over the ensuing years, she liked to remember that there wasn’t even a trophy involved. The photographer taking her picture had used a cup he had won playing golf and she had to return it to him.

Eventually she did land a series of small parts in “Winter Carnival,” “Tall, Dark and Handsome,” “The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe” and “Pride of the Yankees.”

Her two best-known performances probably were opposite Randolph Scott in “Western Union” in 1941 and with Walter Huston and Walter Brennan in Jean Renoir’s “Swamp Water” the same year.

She went to New York and in 1943 won the female lead in “Those Endearing Young Charms,” and the next year starred in Moss Hart’s play “Dear Ruth,” returning to the stage full-time after a few more minor films.

Miss Gilmore also taught drama at Yale University from 1966 to 1968.

She is survived by her son, Rocky Brynner, from her 1944 marriage to the late actor Yul Brynner. They were divorced in 1960.