......at 90.......passed away peacefully at home........best remembered for 'Them!' the sci-fi giant ant movie.....


Joan Weldon, Actress Pursued by Giant Ants in 'Them!,' Dies at 90

.....Joan Weldon, the actress and singer dubbed "filmdom's fairest exterminator" after her turn as a young scientist investigating giant, radiation-mutated ants in the 1954 sci-fi classic Them!, has died. She was 90.

Weldon died Feb. 11 at her home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, her family announced.

A onetime contract player at Warner Bros., Weldon during her heyday appeared in several Westerns, including The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953) and Riding Shotgun (1954) opposite Randolph Scott; The Command (1954) with Guy Madison; Gunsight Ridge (1957) alongside Joel McCrea; and Day of the Badman (1958) with Fred MacMurray.

On the stage, she starred for three years as Marian the Librarian opposite Forrest Tucker in the original national tour of The Music Man, then played a countess alongside Alfred Drake on Broadway in 1961's Kean.

Weldon also toplined a national tour of Oklahoma! with Them! co-star Fess Parker in 1963, and a year later she became the first performer on the stage at the New York State Theater/Lincoln Center, portraying Natalie in a revival of The Merry Widow.

In Them!, her Dr. Pat Medford and her father (Edmund Gwenn) are myrmecologists brought on after strange footprints are discovered in a New Mexico desert. It turns out the prints were created by ants mutated by radiation released from an atomic bomb test.

"I didn't think much of Them! when I read the script; I just knew that [her character] was a scientist, and I was hoping that somewhere along the line there would be some romance or love interest," Weldon told Tom Weaver in an undated interview. "But [director] Gordon Douglas didn't want to refer to any kind of romance whatsoever. It was totally devoid of any interplay with anybody. The ants were supposed to be the star. Basically, it was an anti-war, anti-nuclear message [film].

"Jack Warner was unenthusiastic about Them!; so was an executive named Steve Trilling," she added. "Even Gordon Douglas didn't take it seriously when he was first assigned to it. He said at one point that they should get Martin & Lewis to star in the thing!"

Them!, however, received an Oscar nomination for special effects, was one of Warners' highest-grossing films of the year and spawned a series of "big bug" horror movies in Hollywood.

Joan Louise Welton was born in San Francisco on Aug. 5, 1930. Her mother died when she was 6, and she was raised by her grandmother. While a student at Galileo High School, she made her first public singing appearance as a member of the San Francisco Opera company chorus, at 16 its youngest singer under contract.

After a performance with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, she was signed by Warners, where execs changed her last name to Weldon and gave her $250 a week. She then made her film debut in the crime drama The System (1953).

Weldon said she worked six days a week as she made eight pictures in rapid fire, culminating with Them! and the MGM musical Deep in My Heart (1954), directed by Stanley Donen.

In her conversation with Weaver — he dubbed her "filmdom's fairest exterminator" — the actress said Them! was a "very tough picture to make, because of the heavy wool suit that I wore. We were in the Mojave Desert, and it was 110 in the shade. Poor Teddy [Gwenn], he had a suit and a tie and a hat, and I had the hat and the high heels and the hose. And, in those days, you wore girdles, and they were heavy!"

Weldon later hosted the 1955 TV show This Is Your Music and appeared on such series as The Millionaire, Cheyenne, Perry Mason, Have Gun — Will Travel and Maverick and in the 1958 film Home Before Dark, her final onscreen credit.

Survivors include her husband of 56 years, David; daughter Melissa; grandchildren Sienna, Alexander and Ella; and stepdaughter Claudia.


RIP.............?!

---

_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2021 08:53PM by NewtonMP2100.

Them is one of my favorite 50s' sci-fi flicks. She played the perfect screaming weaker sex role.

---

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.”
-- François de La Rochefoucauld

Growing older is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

You think you’re making a point, Newt, but you’re not.

Here’s a Tolkien-based riddle for you:

Q: What would one expect to find in Middle Earth?
A: Middle Ground!

Hint, hint...

---

It is what it is.

.......90.....is a good run.....

---

_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2021 09:34PM by NewtonMP2100.

---

LOL.

Quote
August West

---

Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

Last time I was getting a haircut, my cutter (or whatever the term is now) had a Marylin Monroe Tat on one arm, a James Dean on the other. She said, you're getting a James Dean!

I replied that's what I usually get, longer on the top to puff up, short on the sides..

"50's styles are the best!" she said.

I said: For women, the makeup was great, but the hair was like a helmet. 40s Women had great hair. It moved and flowed.

"Like who?"

Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamar, I said.

"I will have to look that up!"

---

San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Eli Weisel

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." - Billy Graham 1981

"Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise" - Barry Goldwater

Pass the popcorn.

---

Two for two, I'm good now.

We are a government of laws, not men.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

Everybody matters or nobody matters.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

Quote
Rolando
Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamar, I said.

That's Hedley!

I loved that movie.

Quote
August West

e

I 'splain just to be defiant.

Quote
Lux Interior

Quote
Rolando
Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamar, I said.

That's Hedley!

---

San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Eli Weisel

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." - Billy Graham 1981

"Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise" - Barry Goldwater

Quote
Rolando

Quote
Lux Interior

Quote
Rolando
Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamar, I said.

That's Hedley!

That made me spit out some expensive food bustin' out laughing.

Quote
vision63

Quote
Rolando

Quote
Lux Interior

Quote
Rolando
Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamar, I said.

That's Hedley!

That made me spit out some expensive food bustin' out laughing.

I really need to watch that again; been too long.

---

(BTW, it's spelled < y'all >.)