Mary Sinclair

Mary Sinclair (born Ella Delores Cook; November 15, 1922 – November 5, 2000) was an American television, film and stage actress and “a familiar face to television viewers in the 1950s” As a young woman she began modelling in Los Angeles, and in 1944, she left Hollywood for Manhattan, where she modelled for the Conover agency and acted in summer stock. "I was the arty type," she recalled in a 1951 interview with The New York Times. "I wanted to go to New York and be a real actress.” But it was CBS board chairman William S. Paley who singled Sinclair out, in 1951, by giving her a seven-year contract with CBS, one of the first acting contracts granted by the network. The New York Times reported that she was the first dramatic actress "to enter video's incubator for hatching its own stars."

Television After acting on 36 TV programs in two years as a freelancer, in 1951, Sinclair signed a long-term contract with CBS, becoming the first person to join what an article in The New York Times termed "video's incubator for hatching its own stars."

" Ms. Sinclair usually played sweet, goody-goody characters on television. But not long after signing with CBS, she played quite different parts on three successive evenings: a vicious singer, a spiteful flapper and a libidinous shrew."

She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1951. In total, Sinclair played in more than one hundred and twenty television shows and films during her career.

Film The one major motion picture that Mary Sinclair acted in was Arrowhead made in 1953, starring Charlton Heston, Brian Keith and Katy Jurado, with Jack Palance as an Apache chief, in which she played Lela Wilson. Paramount wanted her to appear in other films but she explained that she preferred working in television and returned to New York. and appearing on the stage, Sinclair, in the main, retired from acting, and devoted most of her creative energies to painting. She studied with artist Fleur Cowles and specialized in oil canvases of flowers and animals, and portraits of friends.

Sojourn in Europe and a return After leaving the U.S. and living in Italy for a few years, in the 1970s she returned to Los Angeles, where she directed local theater productions. Later she moved to Phoenix, Arizona and lived there until her death in 2000 at the age of seventy-seven.

Filmography Year Title Role Notes1953 Arrowhead Lela Wilson 1974 Alice Goodbody