Jean Wallace; Film Star, Wife of Late Cornel Wilde

Jean Wallace, the sultry star of several films of the postwar years and beyond, many of them directed and produced by her late husband, Cornel Wilde, has died in her Beverly Hills home, her family announced Friday.

The blonde leading lady, who made her last picture in 1970, was 66 when she died Wednesday, only four months after the death of Wilde, the handsome star of adventure films of the 1940s and ‘50s.

A son, Pascal (Pat) Tone, from her earlier marriage to Franchot Tone, said his mother had been hospitalized more than a year ago for bleeding stomach ulcers but had appeared in good health lately.

An autopsy Friday revealed she had died of an upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage, coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said.

Born Jean Walasek in Chicago, Miss Wallace came to Hollywood in 1940 as an Earl Carroll girl at that showman’s legendary Hollywood nightclub. She was placed under contract to Paramount where she had a small role in the 1941 musical “Louisiana Purchase.” She both sang and acted and was seen in the wartime musical “You Can’t Ration Love.” Her other films of the 1940s included “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog,” “Blaze of Noon,” “When My Baby Smiles at Me” and “Jigsaw.”

She had married film actor Tone in 1941 and from that marriage were born two sons, Pascal and Thomas (Jeff) Jefferson.

They divorced in 1948 and she next wed James Lloyd Randall in 1950.

After that marriage was annulled in a few months, she and Wilde--whom she had met earlier on a film set--wed in 1951.

From that marriage came a son, Cornell Wallace Wilde.

Miss Wallace’s personal life was at times tumultuous.

She was hospitalized in 1946 for an overdose of sleeping pills and for a self-inflicted knife wound in 1949, and fought with Tone over the custody of their sons in 1951.

Her later films were made primarily for Theodora Productions, a company she and Wilde had formed.

Their work together included “Storm Fear,” “The Devil’s Hairpin,” “Maracaibo,” “Lancelot and Guinevere,” “Beach Red” and her last film, “No Blade of Grass,” a picture acclaimed for its anti-pollution theme.

Her other survivors include a brother, Jack Wallace, and a sister, Karol Crawford, and three grandchildren. Funeral services will be private.