Ann Doran

Ann Lee Doran (July 28, 1911 – September 19, 2000) was an American character actress, possibly best known as the mother of Jim Stark (James Dean) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She was an early member of the Screen Actors Guild and served on the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund for 30 years. Early years The daughter of Carrie A. Barnett and John R. Doran, her mother was a silent-film actress whose professional name was Rose Allen. Ann Doran was born in Amarillo, Texas, and attended high school in San Bernardino, California. Film career Doran began acting at the age of four. (A 1979 newspaper article said that Doran's debut came when she was 11 years old.) Rarely in a featured role, Doran appeared in more than 500 motion pictures and 1,000 episodes of television series, such as the American Civil War drama Gray Ghost. Doran worked as a stand-in, then bit player, then incidental supporting player. By 1938, she was under contract to Columbia Pictures, where the company policy was to use the members of its stock company as often as possible. Thus, Doran appears in Columbia's serials (such as The Spider's Web and Flying G-Men), short subjects (including those of The Three Stooges, Charley Chase, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon and Vera Vague), B features (including the Blondie, Five Little Peppers and Ellery Queen series), and major feature films. She became a favorite of Columbia director Frank Capra and appears in many of his productions. Most of these appearances were supporting roles. In Meet John Doe(1941), she plays the wife of sodajerk-turned-John Doe Club activist Bert Hansen. Though her character speaks some of the film's most pivotal lines of dialog, including an impassioned suicide-preventing plea in the final scene, her appearance in the film is uncredited. She did play leads in Columbia's Charley Chase comedies from 1938 to 1940 and in one Charles Starrett western feature, the Sam Nelson-directed Rio Grande (1938).