Faith Domergue- Biography
Page Contents
Faith Domergue was an American film and television actress most known for her roles in various science fiction, monster, and horror films, which cemented her reputation as one of the first scream queens. When she was still a teenager, she signed movie contracts with Warner Brothers and RKO Pictures, both of which were run by business magnets, pilot, and engineer Howard Hughes. Her debut as a leading actress, however, in the thriller ‘Vendetta,’ turned out to be one of Hollywood’s biggest flops.
Nonetheless, she became a cult favorite for her parts in American films such as ‘Cult of the Cobra,’ ‘This Island Earth,’ and ‘It Came from Beneath the Sea,’ as well as European films such as ‘The Atomic Man,’ ‘Soho Incident,’ ‘Man in the Shadow,’ and ‘The Sky Burns.’ She later appeared in Italian Giallo films such as ‘One on Top of the Other’ and ‘The Man with Icy Eyes,’ as well as the American horror film ‘The House of Seven Corpses.’ Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she also appeared on television, but she wished she had worked in theater.
Faith Domergue- Birth, Age, Ethnicity, Siblings, Education
Faith Marie Domergue was born on June 16, 1924, to parents of Irish-English origin and Creole background. Adabelle Wemet, who married Leo Domergue when she was 18 months old, adopted her when she was six weeks old. She attended Beverly Hills Catholic School and St. Monica’s Convent School after her family relocated to California in 1928, and while there, she performed on stage at the Bliss Hayden Theatre. When she was a student at University High School, she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout and signed a contract with the studio in April 1941.
Faith Domergue- Relationship, Married Life
Faith Domergue began an on-again, off-again romance with Howard Hughes in 1942, but ended it in 1943 when she discovered he was also dating Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner. She was still a teenager when she married Teddy Stauffer, the owner of an Acapulco nightclub and a bandleader, on January 28, 1946, but the marriage was annulled on October 8, 1947.
She married Argentine film director and playwright Hugo Fregonese just hours after her divorce. They had two children, Diana Maria, born in January 1949, and John Anthony, born in August 1951, who was the co-principal of Portland, Oregon-based urban planning firm Fregonese-Calthorpe Associates. In 1958, Faith and Hugo divorced. On July 11, 1966, in Monterey, California, she married Italian assistant director and theatrical producer Paolo Cossa and moved to Europe in 1968. They were married till he died in 1992.
Faith Domergie died on April 4, 1999, in Santa Barbara, California, of an unidentified malignancy.
In her 1972 book ‘My Life with Howard Hughes,’ Faith Domergue provided facts about her relationship with Howard Hughes. Kelli Garner portrayed Hughes’ character in the 2004 film ‘The Aviator.’
Faith Domergue- Professional Career
In 1941, she made her film debut as an uncredited extra in the noir-style musical ‘Blues in the Night.’ That same year, she appeared on the cover of ‘Photoplay’ magazine as ‘Faith Dorn,’ which she explained was “because Jack Warner was too stupid to pronounce Domergue.”
Soon after graduating in 1942, she was involved in a terrible accident that left her with a disfiguring condition, necessitating an 18-month intense therapy regimen that included plastic surgery. While still recuperating, she attended a boat party hosted by Howard Hughes, who was so taken with her beauty that he bought out her contract with Warner Brothers and signed her to a three-picture deal with his RKO Pictures.
Faith Domergue’s career Faith Domergue spent around three years receiving voice, diction, and theater lessons before being deemed fit for the camera. In 1946, she was given a modest one-scene job in ‘Young Widow,’ starring Jane Russell, to get experience in front of the camera, and she received third billing in the film.
Hughes cast her in the lead role in the thriller ‘Vendetta’ in 1946, but due to his near-fatal plane crash that year, as well as lengthy reshoots and several changes of direction, the picture was not released until 1950. While ‘The New York Times’ lambasted the film as “a garrulous, sluggish, and apparent period piece,” Domergue garnered minor appreciation for his ability to “sometimes offer genuine emotional acting.”
During the film’s shooting, she relocated to Buenos Aires with her Argentine husband Hugo Fregonese, but escaped to the United States owing to political upheaval and resumed her profession. Hughes enraged that the beautiful girl he spent money advertising was expecting her second child and would be unable to attend the film’s premiere, attempted to keep her hidden until writer Louella Parsons uncovered the news.
Due to her contract with RKO, she played a homicidal madman alongside Robert Mitchum and Claude Rains in the film noir thriller ‘Where Danger Lives.’ However, ‘The New York Times’ described her performance as a femme fatale as “little more than a fairly seductive appearance and the ability to repeat easy lines.” Domergue, who was dissatisfied with how her career had been handled, split up with Hughes after the films were released and were out of work for a few years before being rented out to Universal Pictures. She starred in the 1952 picture ‘The Duel at Silver Creek,’ alongside Audie Murphy, before moving on to her final film with RKO Pictures, ‘This Is My Love,’ in 1954.
She traveled to England with her husband for the making of his picture ‘Decameron Nights,’ but returned to the United States after signing a two-year deal with Universal Pictures in 1953. Faith then began acting on a regular basis, both on the big screen and on television, in a series of science fiction, monster, and horror films. She appeared in the Western film ‘Santa Fe Passage,’ the horror picture ‘Cult of the Cobra,’ and the science fiction flicks ‘This Island Earth,’ ‘It Came from Beneath the Sea,’ and ‘Timeslip’ in 1955. She was especially fond of ‘This Island Earth,’ Universal’s first color science fiction film, which included imaginative special effects and was favorably reviewed by critics.
Faith appeared in numerous European films during the late 1950s, including ‘The Atomic Man,’ ‘Soho Incident,’ ‘Man in the Shadow,’ and ‘The Sky Burns,’ as well as the American Western picture ‘Escort West.’ She first appeared on television in shows such as ‘Lux Video Theatre,’ ‘Fireside Theatre,’ ‘Schlitz Playhouse of Stars,’ ‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’ ‘Sugarfoot,’ ‘State Trooper,’ and ‘Hawaiian Eye.’
Throughout the 1960s, she appeared on American television shows such as ‘Perry Mason,’ ‘Bonanza,’ ‘Have Gun – Will Travel,’ and ‘Combat!’. She had only a few American film credits, including ‘California,’ ‘Track of Thunder,’ ‘The Gamblers,’ and ‘Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet,’ a dubbed version of the Soviet sci-fi picture ‘Planeta Bur.’
Her later performances were largely in B-grade European horror films, such as Lucio Fulci’s ‘One on Top of the Other’ and Alberto De Martino’s ‘The Man with Icy Eyes.’ Her final part was in the American independent horror film ‘The House of Seven Corpses,’ co-starring John Ireland and John Carradine.
Also Read, Mahbod Moghadam, Kwhxte, and Renata Jara.
