Virginia Field on AllMovie

The daughter of the judge of England's Leicester County Court Circuit, blonde leading lady Virginia Field was educated on the Continent. Her first stage appearance was in a Viennese production of All's Well That Ends Well. After some 40 appearances in British films, Field was brought to Hollywood to appear in David O. Selznick's Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)--and, according to Field, to spend much of her offscreen time fending off the amorous advances of Mr. Selznick. At 20th Century-Fox in the late 1930s, Field was a fixture of that studio's Mr. Moto detective series, playing roles ranging from imperiled heroines to slinky villainesses. She came into her own in Hollywood with a series of wise-lipped "other woman" roles in films like Ladies in Love (1936), The Perfect Marriage (1946) and Dream Girl (1948). As delightfully outspoken in real life as she was within the confines her film characters, Field was a favorite interview subject of the 1960s and 1970s, regaling film buffs with the warts-and-all lowdown on such icons as Vivien Leigh and Loretta Young. In addition to her movie work, Field was active on Broadway in such productions as The Doughgirls and Light Up the Sky. Virginia Fields' three husbands included actors Paul Douglas and Willard Parker.