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Mitzi Gaynor, the actor, singer and dancer best known for her starring role in the 1958 film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, has died. She was 93.
Gaynor also had key roles in the 1954 Irving Berlin musical There’s No Business Like Show Business and the 1956 screwball comedy The Birds and the Bees.
Her death was announced in a statement posted to her official X/Twitter account today, October 17, by her management team of Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda.
It reads: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved friend and client Mitzi Gaynor. She passed away peacefully today of natural causes at the age of 93.
“For eight decades she entertained audiences in films, on television and on the stage. She truly enjoyed every moment of her professional career and the great privilege of being an entertainer.
“Off stage, she was a vibrant and extraordinary woman, a caring and loyal friend, and a warm, gracious, very funny and altogether glorious human being. And she could cook, too!”
Gaynor was born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on September 4, 1931. Her father, Henry de Czanyi von Gerber, was a violinist and cellist wife while her mother Pauline was a dancer.
As a child, Gaynor trained as a ballerina and by the age of 13 she was dancing with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company.
In 1948, at the age of 17, she signed a seven-year contract with Twentieth Century Fox. It was a Fox studio executive who suggested changing her name to Gaynor, feeling that Mitzi Gerber sounded too much like the name of a delicatessen.
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Gaynor made her film debut in the musical My Blue Heaven in 1950, and by the following year was playing the starring role in the biopic Golden Girl, loosely based on the life of Gold Rush-era entertainer Lotta Crabtree. Her biggest success during her years under contract at Fox came with the musical Irving Berlin’s There’s No Business Like Show Business.
After being released from her contract, Gaynor appeared in the Paramount musical Anything Goes opposite Bing Crosby, and in the screwball comedy The Birds and the Bees with David Niven.
In 1959, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance as Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, in what became her signature role. That same year she traveled to London to star in the comedy ‘Surprise Package’ with Yul Brynner and Noël Coward.
Her final film role came in 1963’s For Love or Money. In later years, she performed a nightclub act and hosted a television special, Mitzi, in 1968.
Gaynor married talent agent Jack Bean in 1954. They were married for 52 years until his death from pneumonia in 2006, at the age of 84. They had no children.
