Adele Jergens

Jergens in 1945

Born in Brooklyn, New York, as Adele Louisa Jurgens (some sources say Jurgenson), she rose to prominence in the late 1930s when she was named "Miss World's Fairest" at the 1939 New York World's Fair.[2] In the early 1940s, she briefly worked as a Rockette and was named the number-one showgirl in New York City.[3]

After a few years of working as a model and chorus girl, including being an understudy to Gypsy Rose Lee in the Broadway show Star and Garter in 1942, Jergens landed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures in 1944, with brunette Jergens becoming a blonde.[2]

At the beginning of her career, she had roles in movies in which she was usually cast as a blonde floozy or burlesque dancer, as in Down to Earth starring Rita Hayworth (1947) and The Dark Past starring William Holden (1948).[4]

She played Marilyn Monroe's mother in Ladies of the Chorus (1948) despite being only nine years older than Monroe.[5] She played an exotic dancer in Armored Car Robbery, and a criminal’s girl in Try and Get Me (both 1950) and appeared in the movie Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951).[3]

She had a part in The Cobweb (1955), directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall. She worked in the 1950s radio show Stand By for Crime as Glamourpuss Carol Curtis with her real-life husband Glenn Langan as Chuck Morgan.[6]

In 1949, while filming Treasure of Monte Cristo, a film noir set in San Francisco, she met and married co-star Glenn Langan.[5] Jergens and Langan remained married until his death from lymphoma on January 26, 1991, at age 73.

They had one child, a son named Tracy Langan, who eventually worked in Hollywood behind the scenes as a film technician. Tracy died of a brain tumor in 2001.[7]

Adele Jergens-Langan, who retired from the screen in 1956, died on November 22, 2002, from pneumonia in her Camarillo, California, home. Her death came just four days before her 85th birthday.[8]

She was buried beside her husband and son at Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California, under the headstone marked Langan.[9][10]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adele Jergens.

• Adele Jergens at IMDb
• Adele Jergens at the Internet Broadway Database
• Adele Jergens LA Times Obituaries