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Actress, singer and dancer, Mitzi Gaynor appeared in many of the most famous films and musicals of the 1950s. Born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on September 4, 1931, she was the daughter of a Hungarian-born musician and a dancer. A ballerina at the age of eleven, she took classes at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and signed her first contract with 20th Century Fox, which hired her for several films, including Golden Girl (1951), We're Not Married! (1952) and Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952) and, above all, There's No Business Like Show Business in 1954. Married to impresario Jack Bean, she continued at Paramount in Anything Goes with Bing Crosby and Zizi Jeanmaire in 1956, followed by The Birds and the Bees, The Joker Is Wild with Frank Sinatra, Les Girls with Gene Kelly and, in 1958, South Pacific, her greatest role, for which she received a Golden Globe. After recording two albums for Verve, Mitzi (1958) and Mitzi Gaynor Sings the Lyrics of Ira Gershwin (1959), her career continued for the next two decades on television and stage, and as an editorial writer for The Hollywood Reporter. Always active, she created the show Mitzi Gaynor: My Life Behind the Sequins, in which she shares her memories from 2009 to 2014. One of the stars of the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard passed away on October 17, 2024 at the age of 93.
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