AllMovie

A writer whose 1947 novel Belvedere was adapted into no less than three feature films as well as a television sitcom, Gwen Leys Davenport also found success with such works as The Bachelor's Baby and Candy for Breakfast. Born in Panama in 1909, Davenport's novel concerning a snootily likable English butler who works for a dysfunctional American family in hopes of finding inspiration as a writer was adapted for the screen as Sitting Pretty (1948), Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951), before the character was skillfully channeled by late actor Christopher Hewett in a popular sitcom that ran from 1985 to 1990. A resident of her late husband's hometown of Louisville, KY, since 1937, Davenport died of congestive heart failure in a Louisville nursing home in late March 2002. She was 92.