Jean Hagen

Jean Hagen (born Jean Shirley Verhagen;

Hagen was born August 3, 1923, in Chicago, to Christian Verhagen, a Dutch immigrant, and Marie, his Chicago-born wife. The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, when she was 12, and she graduated from Elkhart High School. She studied drama at Northwestern University, where she was a roommate of actress Patricia Neal. She graduated from Northwestern in 1945.^[3] She also worked as an usher.^[4]

Career

Radio

Hagen began her show-business career in radio in the 1940s performing in Light of the World, Hollywood Story, and other programs.^[5] Using her birth name (Jean Verhagen), she played Betty Webster on Those Websters.^[6]

Stage

Hagen first appeared on Broadway in Swan Song. She acted in Another Part of the Forest, Ghosts, Born Yesterday,^[5][7] and The Traitor.^[8]

Film and television

Her film debut was as a comical

By 1953, she had joined the cast of the television sitcom Make Room for Daddy. After she left the show, Marjorie Lord was cast as Danny's second wife and played opposite Thomas for the remainder of the series.

In 1957, Hagen co-starred in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled "Enough Rope for Two", portraying a woman who accompanies two thieves trying to retrieve stolen money from a desert mine shaft. She then appeared as Elizabeth in the 1960 episode "Once Upon a Knight" on The DuPont Show with June Allyson; Also in 1960, Hagen was Marie Brandt on Wagon Train in the episode "The Marie Brandt Story"; and in 1963 Hagen portrayed Sarah Proctor on Wagon Train in the episode “The Sarah Proctor Story”. The following year, she guest-starred on The Andy Griffith Show in the episode "Andy and the Woman Speeder".

Although she made frequent guest appearances in television series, Hagen was unable to resume her film career in starring roles. Her health began to decline due to an alcohol problem and she spent many years hospitalized or under medical care in the 1960s.

Much later, in 1976, she made a comeback of sorts playing character roles in episodes of the television series

Jean Hagen married actor Tom Seidel (who originated the role of Dr. Sanderson in the play Harvey) on June 12, 1947, in Brentwood, California. The couple had two children, Christine Patricia and Aric Phillip. According to Lorraine LoBianco's authoritative biography, Seidel, in his attempt to stop his wife from drinking, divorced her and gained custody of the children. It did not work; Hagen's alcoholism only worsened, finally becoming so severe by 1968 that she was hospitalized and lapsed into a coma at UCLA Medical Center. She managed to survive the ordeal, and her daughter, Christine, said that after she emerged from the coma, Hagen never drank again.^[11]

Unfortunately, another health problem arose: throat cancer. Patricia Neal wrote in her autobiography that Hagen went to Germany "'for laetrile, a supposed cure unavailable in the United States. But she was bubbly and bright and so much the way I remembered her from the old days.'"^[12][13]

Death

Hagen died, twenty-six days after her 54th birthday, of

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jean Hagen.

• Jean Hagen at
  IMDb
• Jean Hagen at the Internet Broadway Database