Susanna Foster

About Susanna Foster

Suzanne DeLee Flanders Larson (known professionally as Susanna Foster) (6 December 1924 – 17 January 2009) was an American film actress best known for her role as Christine in the 1943 film, The Phantom of the Opera.

Foster was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was taken to Hollywood at the age of twelve by MGM, who sent her to school and groomed her for an acting and singing career. Two of her classmates at this school were Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. She claimed the high point of being at MGM was meeting her idol Jeanette MacDonald and Clark Gable who treated her like "the Queen of England." Foster was originally slated to star in the MGM production of B Above High C, a film that was never made. The movie's title referred to the top of her vocal register. MGM offered her the lead in National Velvet which she declined because there "wasn't any singing in it".[citation needed] This in part, led to MGM dropping her. It later would become Elizabeth Taylor's breakthrough role.

After hiring agent Milo Marchetti, Foster was signed by Paramount where she began to study voice for the first time with Marchetti's wife Gilda. She soon would go on to make her first film at fourteen years of age where she was introduced as 'Susanna Foster' in The Great Victor Herbert (1939) opposite Mary Martin and Allan Jones. After seeing Foster in The Great Victor Herbert, William Randolph Hearst flew her to his 67,000-acre (270 km2) estate "Wyntoon" for a private recital for him and Marion Davies. The following year for Paramount she appeared in There's Magic in Music opposite Allan Jones and Glamour Boy opposite Jackie Cooper. She then moved to Universal, where she portrayed the ingénue in the 1943 film version of the Gothic melodrama Phantom of the Opera opposite Nelson Eddy and Claude Rains. The film garnered two Academy Awards and was Universal's biggest money-maker that year. In the following twenty two months, she starred in six motion pictures. Despite a meteoric rise that delivered wondrous prosperity to her poverty-stricken family and a dozen movies for Universal and Paramount on her resume, she abruptly quit the film business in 1945. She also turned down a joint concert tour with Nelson Eddy, which she later regretted. She soon would attempt to rescue her two younger teenage sisters from am abusive alcoholic mother by selling her mink coat and renting Jean Arthur's house on the Monterrey peninsula. Desperate to hold onto their star, Universal sought to make her dream of grand opera come true, financing a six-month tour of a post war Europe in 1946 with Dusolina Giannini. On her return from Europe she was pressed by Universal to appear as guest soloist for the White House Press Photographer’s Ball with President Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt in attendance. After the performance, Truman and Roosevelt praised Foster with their turn at the microphone. She shared the table with Roosevelt, Truman and his daughter Margaret. With Margaret being only ten months Foster’s senior and an aspiring singer herself, she was thrilled to meet the musical guest.