Frances Mercer; Movie Actress, Early TV Star

Frances Mercer, a raven-haired model and RKO ingenue of the 1930s who matured into a durable stage player and star of one of television’s first hospital drama series, has died. She was 85.

Mercer died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of heart failure, said Gerald Block, a friend of many years. He said she suffered bladder cancer two years ago.

A former Powers Girl model in New York, Mercer made her Hollywood debut in 1938 as Ginger Rogers’ rival for the affections of James Stewart in “Vivacious Lady.”

In two years under contract, Mercer made nine movies, including “The Mad Miss Manton” as Barbara Stanwyck’s best friend. Mercer’s other films were “Blind Alibi,” “Crime Ring,” “Smashing the Rackets,” “Annabel Takes a Tour,” “Beauty for the Asking,” “The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle” and “Society Lawyer.”

After her short flurry of movie-making, many thought Mercer had dropped out of show business. She merely changed locations and media. A singer as well as an actress, she co-starred on Broadway in two musicals: “Very Warm for May,” in which she introduced the song “All the Things You Are”; and “Something for the Boys.”

She also had her own New York-based radio show, “Sunday Night at Nine.” During World War II, she worked with the federal government to do another radio series for South America.

Joking to The Times in 1956 that she had retired and reentered show business many times, Mercer intertwined her career with three failed marriages--first to a Manhattan socialite, next to a British naval officer and finally to a businessman who ran for Congress from Los Angeles, G. Robert Fleming.

When she was living in England after the war, she appeared in British productions including “Piccadilly Incident.”

As television developed in the 1950s, Mercer made that medium her own for nearly a decade. She portrayed a vituperative mother-in-law on the soap opera “For Better or Worse.”

More memorably, she portrayed surgical nurse Ann Talbot on the 1955-1957 syndicated series, “Dr. Hudson’s Secret Journal,” carried locally by KTTV Channel 11. The medical series was based on the best-selling novels by Lloyd C. Douglas, “Magnificent Obsession” in 1929, which spawned two emotional movies of that title, and “Dr. Hudson’s Secret Journal” in 1939.

As acting roles declined, Mercer worked as a bank teller, a medical assistant and an antiques dealer.

The daughter of a prominent East Coast sportswriter, Sid Mercer, the actress was born Oct. 21, 1915, in New Rochelle, N.Y. She began her modeling career as a teenager and at 16 was chosen as one of New York’s most beautiful models.

Block said Mercer, who is survived by one niece and one nephew, requested that no services be conducted.