Olive Deering

Olive Deering was a very busy actress in theater, radio, and television from the early '30s until the 1970s. The sister of actor/director Alfred Ryder, she was born in New York and educated at the Professional Children's School, and made her stage debut in 1933, at the age of 15, with a mute walk-on role in a production of Girls in Uniform. She played a key role in Moss Hart's wartime stage piece Winged Victory (though not in the film version in which, ironically, her brother had a part). Her notable stage performances included working opposite Paul Muni in a revival of Elmer Rice's play Counselor-at-Law, with Maurice Evans in Richard II, and in Marc Blitzstein's No for an Answer. She also received excellent notices for her work in a Los Angeles production of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer. Deering's movie work was sporadic, starting with an uncredited role in Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement; she appeared in John Cromwell's Caged, but her most visible work was in a pair of Cecil B. DeMille epics, Samson and Delilah and The Ten Commandments, and was in movies as late as 1972. Much of Deering's career off the stage, however, was focused on radio -- she played hundreds of roles in that medium -- and on television, on which she was playing dramatic roles as early as 1948, on anthology series such as Philco Television Playhouse, Goodyear Television Playhouse, and Alcoa Presents. She also did episodes of Perry Mason, Sam Benedict, and Ben Casey, though her most memorable and visible work (thanks to home video) was as the hysterical runaway wife in The Outer Limits episode "The Zanti Misfits." Deering died of cancer in 1986.

~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide