Olive Moorefield

Olive Moorefield (born August 23, 1932) is an American actress and singer. She appeared in more than twenty films from 1954 to 1976.

Early years Moorefield is one of eight children. When she was 5 years old, she began studying music, and at 8 she was singing solos in church. At 16, she began studying opera with the help of a $4,000 scholarship from a radio station in her home town Pittsburgh. Her early employment included babysitting, singing in night clubs, and stenography. After she graduated from Homestead High School, she attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and then transferred to the Pennsylvania College for Women.

Career On stage, Moorefield sang with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera When that production closed, the US Information Service (USIS) employed her to sing American folk songs and spirituals for American military personnel stationed in Austria. She also performed in Carousel and Show Boat in a theater that the USIS opened in Vienna.

In 1964, Moorefield sang the role of Laetitia in a German-language production of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief, conducted by Wolfgang Rennert and directed by Otto Schenk, for Bayerischer Rundfunk. At the Volksoper, she portrayed Bess in a 1965 production of Porgy and Bess. Together with Peter Alexander, she published in 1966 the album Kiss Me Kate. At the Oper Frankfurt, she played Jenny in Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in 1966, directed by Harry Buckwitz. In 1972 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich she played Spelunken-Jenny in Brecht's/Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper. Moorefield reprised her Jenny from Mahagonny in 1973 at the Volksoper.

Moorefield's work in films included at least 15 German and Viennese motion pictures. She also recorded German Schlager and performed in an Italian-language production of Kiss Me Kate on Italian television.

Personal life Moorefield married Kurt Macht, a doctor whom she met when he treated her for a throat problem in Vienna. They have one son.

Partial filmography