Born 1924 as Suzanne DeLee Flanders Larson in Chicago, Illinois, American actress Susanna Foster made her film debut at fourteen years of age in The Great Victor Herbert (1939) opposite Mary Martin and Allan Jones. The following year for Paramount she appeared in There’s Magic in Music opposite Allan Jones and Glamour Boy opposite Jackie Cooper. After two years, Foster left Paramount.
Within weeks of leaving Paramount, Foster signed with Universal Studios, where she portrayed the ingénue in the 1943 film version of the Gothic melodrama Phantom of the Opera opposite Nelson Eddy and Claude Rains. The film garnered two Academy Awards and was Universal’s biggest money-maker that year. She became so popular the studio set her on a meteoric rise with back-to-back pictures during the years 1943 to 1945, including Star Spangled Rhythm, Top Man, This Is the Life, The Climax, Bowery to Broadway, Frisco Sal, and That Night With You. She also turned down a joint concert tour with Nelson Eddy, which she later regretted.
In 1992, Foster made her final appearance with a minor role in the remake of the 1945 film Detour. The film, her first in 43 years, was released straight-to-home video. She died in 2009 at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, aged 84.
Take a look at these fabulous photos to see the beauty of young Susanna Foster in the 1940s.
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