Quick Facts
Biography
Iris Adrian Hostetter (May 29, 1912 – September 17, 1994) was an American stage, film actress and dancer.
Life and career
Adrian was an only child, born in Los Angeles, California, to Florence (née Van Every) and Adrian Earl Hostetter, who wed in 1909 in Los Angeles. She was raised by her single mother in Los Angeles. She was a graduate of Hollywood High School.
Adrian won a beauty pageant, worked with the Ziegfeld Follies, and performed with Fred Waring before she entered films at the end of the silent era in Chasing Husbands (1928) and appeared as an extra or chorus girl in early sound films like Paramount on Parade (1930).
During the 1930s she specialised in playing hard-boiled gals, glamorous gold-diggers, and gangsters' "molls". She played supporting roles in numerous features. She played "Gee-Gee Graham" in Lady of Burlesque. In the Jerry Lewis comedy, The Errand Boy, she played a glamorous movie star "Anastasia Anastasia", whose on-set birthday party is wrecked by Lewis's shenanigans. She made voice appearances on several radio programs, including the Abbott and Costello Show.
She acted regularly, albeit without achieving star status, and by the end of the 1960s had appeared in more than one hundred films. In her later years she appeared in several Walt Disney films, including That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug, The Shaggy D.A., Freaky Friday, and No Deposit, No Return. Disney director Robert Stevenson considered Adrian his "good-luck charm". On television, she was a member of the cast of the unsuccessful situation comedy The Ted Knight Show in the spring of 1978. She also played numerous guest roles in television series such as Get Smart, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Munsters, The Love Boat, The Lucy Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Jack Benny Show.
Personal life
Adrian was married to Charles Over from 1935 to 1936; the marriage ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to George Jay, also ended in divorce. On September 24, 1949, she married Dan Schoonmaker, a camera manufacturer, in Las Vegas. They separated two months later and were divorced on September 14, 1950, in Juarez. Her fourth and final marriage was to Ray Murphy, and lasted more than 30 years until his death in 1983. None of the marriages produced children.
Death
Adrian died in Los Angeles, from injuries sustained during the 1994 Northridge earthquake eight months earlier. She was buried at the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Sources
- Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924-1984. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999; ISBN 0-7864-0351-9
- Cocchi, John. "The Films of Iris Adrian, 1972", The Real Stars. Curtis Books, 1973
- Maltin, Leonard."Interviews with Iris Adrian, 1972-73", The Real Stars 2, Curtis Books, 1973 OCLC 801245658
