Susanna Foster's Homelife? in Horror Film Stars Forum

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Susanna Foster's Homelife?

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Imhoteps Ashes	Susanna Foster's Homelife?	Lead	[-]
Jul 21 05 11:15 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Found this unflattering tidbit on the IMDB, under her Trivia section: *Quote:* Noteworthy if only for her attendance at the "great unveiling" of Claude Rains in Universal's Technicolor 'The Phantom of the Opera' (1943). She was found living in a car in 1982. Can anyone explain this odd epilogue to this fine singer's career? I'm certain that she's still alive. "I am the sanest man who ever lived... But I will not be tortured... I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!!" - Bela Lugosi, THE RAVEN (1935)
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TomWeaver999	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#1	[-]
Jul 21 05 11:31 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	She was living in a car, yes, until some fan took her in. I'm sure demon rum has had a lot to do with her troubles. She was interviewed for UNIVERSAL HORRORS in a restaurant where, after a few drinks, she was pretty lit-up, and started chiding the waitress that her drinks weren't strong enough, or the glass not full enough each time she got a new drink, or SOMEthing -- I forget now exactly what her beef was. After a little while, it went from chiding to kind of barking at the waitress and making a drunken scene every time the waitress was within sniping distance -- I'm sure people at other tables in the restaurant had to have been looking over every time she loudly lit into the poor girl. I sat there wishing I was in Hell with my back broken instead of THERE. I was sufficiently mortified that if I could have pushed a button and just vanished from the scene, I'd have done it in a heartbeat, the heck with the interview and with her. Yeeesh.
Chesterbelloc	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#2	[-]
Jul 21 05 11:32 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Didn't she have some unkind words to say about Karloff in that interview?
Ted Newsom	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#3	[-]
Jul 21 05 12:31 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Better you than me, Weaver. I went to the Cinemateque showing of Phantom a couple years ago and she spoke afterward, or before... not falling down drunk, but not particularly lucid either. Wanted to get her on tape for 100 Years of Horror (10 years ago); the woman Foster lived with warned me, "She has good days and bad days..." Sad.
TomWeaver999	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#4	[-]
Jul 21 05 12:42 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There are a few short snippets of her doing the talking-head bit in the doc that accompanies the 1943 PHANTOM on the Universal DVD -- I bet they talked to her for a long, long while, and that those brief bits were the only sensible-sounding, possibly-accurate things she said in all that time. Well, the stories she told us for UNIVERSAL HORRORS were all scrambled-up and full of non sequiturs and hard to follow -- and that was a dozen years earlier, when she was in much-better shape. Yes, it IS sad. She was one of the highlights of the '43 PHANTOM for me for years, but now it's kinda hard to see her in action in it and not occasionally think about what the future held for her. A few issues of CLASSIC IMAGES or FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE ago, they ran the address of the New Jersey nursing home where she now lives, so that readers could drop her a card if they wished.
Wolfman Joe	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#5	[-]
Jul 21 05 12:51 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tom, you really should put a book together entitled INTERVIEWS OF HORROR!, or something, and publish all the addled, drunken, confused and downright nasty meetings you've had (or attempted to have) throughout the years.
TomWeaver999	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#6	[-]
Jul 21 05 1:13 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Believe it or not, there haven't been that many. That Foster thing stands out in my mind as vividly as it does because it WAS so unusual for me. Other weird (but less traumatic) moments include a Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel breakfast with Paul Marco, who babbled on and on about how he had arranged with the mayor of L.A. to declare a "Kelton the Cop" day and how there was going to be a parade and him riding in an open car and everything -- it was a little spooky knowing I was in the presence of Madness; Lorna BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES Thayer's booze-fueled over-the-phone tirade to me ("You're gonna make a million dollars off this book of interviews you want to do, and you don't want to pay me ANYthing??"); and maybe just a couple more. For the most part, everybody's been nice -- and we're talking five, six hundred people so far.
Joe Karlosi	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#7	[-]
Jul 21 05 3:51 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	So did she have unkind things to say about Karloff? I don't recall reading so at the moment. But I'd like to know. ------------------------------------ "It's MORE ... than a hobby!"
TomWeaver999	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#8	[-]
Jul 21 05 5:34 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Oh, just that he was "cold as ice" or something like that. Which maybe he was, in some people's estimations. I'm often being told by actors that, between takes, Karloff would go off by himself, or retire to his dressing room, or whatever. Most thought it was charming to be on the same soundstage with this reserved, sedate, private man. But I guess a few, including Foster, got a look at this and thought, "Hey, you wanna be stand-offish, old man?, fine!" Robert Allen, the hero in THE BLACK ROOM, didn't think much of Karloff either, but he was pretty old by the time I talked to him and I really couldn't get him to elaborate enough that I could understand why he felt that way. Maybe the "British reserve" again.
PShields79	Re: Susana Foster's Homelife?	#9	[-]
Jul 21 05 6:06 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I met Susana Foster at a Ray Courts autograph show probably in 1997. I showed her an 8x10 I had of her and Chaney Jr., posed on the set of "Phantom." She then went onto say how she had not seen that photo, and how Pierce had to tone down Rains' makeup to respect sensitivities about the war wounded. She also stated that she would have liked to see Chaney do the role! I promised her a duplicate of the photo, and she gave me her home address in North Hollywood. I sent her the photo but never heard back. Scott Essman contacted her about appearing at the Jack Pierce Tribute in 2000, and she initially said she'd come but did not show. I had no idea she was in Jersey now.
Joe Karlosi	Re: Susana Foster's Homelife?	#10	[-]
Jul 21 05 6:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* But I guess a few, including Foster, got a look at this and thought, "Hey, you wanna be stand-offish, old man?, fine!" Maybe she thought he was being cold because he told her, "I'm sorry, dear lady, but I only drink tea" :) ------------------------------------ "It's MORE ... than a hobby!"
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PShields79	Awww, What the Heck	#11	[-]
Jul 21 05 7:38 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts
Rakshasa	Re: Awww, What the Heck	#12	[-]
Jul 21 05 8:39 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Cool photo! I wonder if she's in the same nursing home my grandmother was in? It was called something like The Actors Home or some such name. I went to visit my grandmother (who was a vaudaville stage actress/dancer) in the late 90's (just before she passed away) and Imogene Coco was there. Poor Miss Coco was in a wheel chair and totally "out of it". I actually said hello to her. Somebody annonomously sent Miss Coco flowers once a week. My dad thought perhaps it was Sid Ceasar. Very sad to see folks in that condition...
Michael Brunas	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#13	[-]
Jul 21 05 8:59 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I was in on that Susanna Foster interview session with Tom Weaver. It must have been Mother's Day, 1988. (I recall that because our poor, harrassed waitress thought we were Foster's sons taking Ol' Mum old out for a celebration.) Tom described it pretty accurately, I'm afraid, except that the interview was actually fairly cohensive (I remember transcribing the tape in my hotel room without minimal adjusting, cut and pasting, etc.) I felt more pity for her than anything... maybe I've just had more experiences with dealing with people who've had more than one too many than Tom has. The death of her son hit her pretty hard years earlier and she went through a bad divorce from the sound of it. Details are foggy but I recall Foster couldn't receive a pension from SAG because she was six months shy of the minimum amount of time in the union to get one. I think she gave up membership at her husband's insistence after she got married. So, at the time we met her she was still working at some thankless job just to pay the rent. The poor lady had a lot of problems to put it mildly. I approached her again a couple of years later at one of Michael Fitzgerald's Universal Reunion parties where she seemed in good spirits but a bit out of it. I didn't expect her to remember me and, of course, she didn't. But she seemed very sweet and bacame downright elated when Alan Jones got up and belted out a few numbers. The look on her face still haunts me. Such a poor soul.
Rakshasa	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#14	[-]
Jul 21 05 9:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Nice post Michael. Very well-expressed. On a lighter note, I've read and enjoyed Universal Horrors. Well done sir. Doug
TomWeaver999	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#15	[-]
Jul 21 05 9:26 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	<< I wonder if she's in the same nursing home my grandmother was in? It was called something like The Actors Home or some such name. << That's the place. I've been there, too, when Imogene Coca was still a resident there, but by the time I visited she was confined to the off-limits-to-me lower floor which was kind-of for the "lost causes" -- Alzheimer's patients, etc., people who couldn't take care of themselves in any way. I was also told that she'd somehow recently lost an eye. (I didn't ask!)
Rakshasa	Re: Susanna Foster's Homelife?	#16	[-]
Jul 21 05 9:39 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tom, You are correct about her eye. Very sad. My dad actually got to chat with Imogene weeks earlier than I had seen her. Sadly, he said she would seem "there" one second and "not there" the next. Doug
Count Gamula	Re: Awww, What the Heck	#17	[-]
Jul 21 05 10:22 PM Burgomaster Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Nice to see that photo of Chaney Jr. and Foster. You may recognize the Chaney pose as the one that used to be in the group shot at the top of the Horror Stars forum. However, I have never seen the entire photo until now. The female Chaney fan I got the photo from had cut up this and several other rare photos to only show Lon. All I could see of Susanna were her fingers. I met her at the show Perry mentioned too. She seemed perfectly nice, though a little sad. Sorry to hear about her problems. *Kerry Gammill*
Joe Karlosi	Re: Awww, What the Heck	#18	[-]
Jul 22 05 5:14 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I recognized the Chaney shot immediately, Kerry. How about putting it back? :D ------------------------------------ "It's MORE ... than a hobby!"
Imhoteps Ashes	Re: Awww, What the Heck	#19	[-]
Jul 22 05 10:19 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Did her drinking problems wreak any havoc with her singing career? The degeneration in her voice - age withstanding - is terrible. It's so sad. "I am the sanest man who ever lived... But I will not be tortured... I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!!" - Bela Lugosi, THE RAVEN (1935)
Carl Eyesnheart	Re: Awww, What the Heck	#20	[-]
Jul 22 05 11:51 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Any chance of people posting the address of where she is now so some of us might send a greeting along to her?
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Susanna Foster's Homelife?

Susanna Foster's Homelife?