Jean Brooks Trailers
Women in the Night TrailerThe Bamboo Blonde TrailerThe Falcon's Alibi Trailer
Fluent in Spanish, Jean Brooks began professionally by singing with Enric Madriguera and Orchestra in New York. She had a small role in the New York City-filmed The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) and the second lead in a Broadway play, "Name Your Poison" (1938), with Lenore Ulric, all under her real name of Jeanne Kelly. She was signed by an independent film production company that had gone under by the time she got to Hollywood. She spent several years at Universal as a leading lady in "B" pictures, including several Johnny Mack Brown westerns, but her option was dropped in late 1941. By this time she had married writer (later director) Richard Brooks and, with a certain Broadway hoofer having just signed at MGM, dropped the Kelly and became Jean Brooks. She signed with RKO, where film buffs know her for her three appearances for cult producer Val Lewton, particularly her stunning performance as a haunted devil worshiper in The Seventh Victim (1943).
Her clipped delivery and intense, forceful acting style made her a promising bet for stardom, but RKO lost interest in her by mid-'44 and her roles got gradually smaller until she was dropped in 1946. She and Brooks divorced (his later studio biographies omitted her name as one of his ex-wives). For many years she was listed as a "Lost Player" championed in several magazine articles by writer Doug McClelland. She was eventually located in San Francisco, where she had moved after her film career petered out, and was employed as a classified ad solicitor on the "San Francisco Examiner" newspaper. She had married a printer called Leddy. Her death at the Kaiser Hospital in Richmond, California, in 1963 was due to nutritional problems caused by alcoholism, a sad ending for a stylish and talented performer who didn't get the breaks she deserved, both personally and professionally.
Date of Death 25 November 1963, Richmond, California (extreme malnutrition & alcoholism)
Most Popular Jean Brooks Trailers
Total trailers found: 33
02 June 1944
A lawyer tries to clear his wife's lover of murder charges.
01 July 1941
The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones.
01 November 1940
A gang of urban street kids and a club of suburban would-be federal agents, at first rivals, join forces to rescue the father of one of the kids, the inventor of a super-explosive and its remote detonator, from the clutches of a band of foreign subversives call the "Flaming Torch Gang".
30 April 1936
The story of a woman, Frankie, and the man who has done her wrong, Johnnie.
01 February 1935
A sailor, known as the Adventurer, searching for a lost American explorer discovers him being held hostage on a remote island in the South Sea.
20 March 1942
In this Alaskan adventure, a surgeon becomes a pilot after he messes up an operation. Unfortunately, he crashes during a storm and finds himself cared for by a lovely woman.
10 November 1943
The Falcon is called to a young woman's school to investigate a murder. When he arrives, another victim is discovered.
17 July 1943
Two industrialists disappear from an airplane while the plane is in the air. Also missing is $100,000.
13 April 1945
A cab driver nearly hits a man with amnesia, then helps him unravel his past, only to discover he's a murder suspect as she falls for him.
14 November 1939
Reporter Sue Walker has too much inside information on the local gambling rackets to suit her sweetheart, Detective Lieutenant Jerry Brown, chief of the police Homicide Squad.
19 December 1939
On Christmas Eve in the Spanish quarter of L.A. police try to arrest a couple running a shady floor show.
23 September 1935
A crazed scientist invents a serum that induces a catatonic state in anyone who gets the injection. He uses the serum to paralyze his enemies, in order to bury them alive.
21 August 1941
Detectives Dick Williams and Andy McAllister find themselves trying to solve several crimes at an isolated mentally-ill hospital, where the patients range from slightly daffy to criminally insane, and they don't know which is which.
24 April 1942
Bolton's men blow up the wagon carrying the mine payroll and Marshal Crash Corrigan is supposedly killed in the explosion.
09 December 1941
Johnny Mack Brown essays the title role in Universal's Fighting Bill Forgo. Returning to his home town, Bill Fargo takes over the operation of his late father's newspaper.
24 December 1940
Second serial featuring The Green Hornet and Kato.
31 October 1940
A secretary sends a coded plea for help in her monthly report; two detectives investigate and find out that men are jailed on phony charges, forced to work in oil fields and then murdered if they try to escape.
01 September 1944
The teens of a defense-plant town hop on the road to juvenile delinquency while their parents are busy with the war.
02 January 1948
During WW2 six allied nations women at Shanghai University are arrested by the Germans accused of killing a German officer and forced to entertain the Japanese.
31 January 1941
Petty con artists Slicker Smith and Herbie Brown mistakenly join the Army evading the cops. The cop chasing them winds up as their drill instructor.
05 September 1941
A sheriff tries to prevent a range war between cattlemen and homesteaders.
08 May 1943
When a leopard escapes during a publicity stunt, it triggers a series of murders.
21 August 1943
After young Mary Gibson discovers that her older sister Jacqueline has disappeared, she leaves her boarding school and heads to New York City to track down her sibling.
12 January 1940
The owner of a coal mining operation, falsely imprisoned for fratricide, takes a drug to make him invisible, despite its side effect: gradual madness.
03 March 1940
A mysterious plague, the Purple Death, ravages the earth. Dr. Zarkov, investigating in his spaceship, finds a ship from planet Mongo seeding the atmosphere with dust.
08 December 1944
Suave amateur detective Tom Lawrence--aka Michael Arlen's literary hero The Falcon--arrives in Hollywood for some rest and relaxation, only to find himself involved in the murder of a movie actor.
25 July 1940
In this exciting western, Roaring Dan is the meanest old cuss around. He and his "son" are constantly bickering.
15 September 1941
In the Dakotas during the days of the Great Gold Boom, brothers Jim and Bob Holliday are bumping heads over the affections of pretty Anne Grayson.
14 February 1941
A comedy about a man who tries to avoid giving up the $10,000,000 trust he's been administering so well that there's hardly any money left.
12 April 1946
A society sleuth sets out on the trail of a society matron's lost jewels.
07 December 1942
Quality was seldom a consideration in the low-budget films of PRC Studios; still, the company was a welcome harbor for character actors who aspired to occasional leading roles.
15 July 1946
A pilot of a B 29 meets Louise Anderson, a singer in a New York nightclub. He falls in love with her, but he had to leave next day for action in the Pacific.
16 July 1935
Ricardo Fuentes (Carlos Gardel) leaves Buenos Aires after loosing in horse races to go to Barcelona, where he plans to open a tango bar, a new concept of tango dance show and dance saloon.
