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Gorgeous Eleanor Parker was one of Warners’ rare commodities— a delicate, blue-eyed beauty with a chameleon-like ability to transform herself into any character the studio assogned her to play. Equally adept at romantic comedy (Voice of the Turtle) and tense melodrama (Caged), Eleanor was labeled by publicists as “the Woman of a thousand Faces”.

Yet for all her skills, Eleanor never attained the superstardom that critics and even colleagues anticipated. Part of the fault lies with Warners, which often assigned her poor vehicles. It also didn’t help Eleanor’s cause that she didn’t play the Hollywood game: She preferred spending an evening at home with her family to being photographed in nightclub. Neither was she one for doing cheesecake shots of giving out endless interviews to fan magazines. With such a publicity-shy nature, she wasn’t likely to get the same sort of build-up by Warners that someone like Ann Sheridan received. — The women of Warner Brothers: the lives and careers of 15 leading ladies

(via aunicornifevertherewasone)