Faye Emerson

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Actress | TV Host Born Faye Margaret Emerson on July 8, 1917 in Elizabeth, La.

Actress Faye Emerson was a popular personality in early television programming and performer in a score of Hollywood movies.

In 1944, she married President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's son Elliott Roosevelt, her second marriage. They divorced in January 1950.

She starred in what then was one of the largest and most expensively budgeted television shows, "Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town," a program that each week spotlighted a different American city.

She surprised her audience on "The Faye Emerson Show" in late 1950 with an announcement that she and Skitch Henderson, orchestra leader on the program, were engaged. They were wed in December and divorced seven years later.

Her films include "Destination Tokyo," "Nobody Lives Forever," "Blues in the Night," "Manpower," "The Mask of Dimitrios" and "The Hard Way." She once resolved to forsake acting to devote herself to her marriage with Roosevelt.

But in 1948 she returned to performing, with her first appearance on Broadway in the revival of Molnar's "The Play's the Thing."

Her last film was "Guilty Bystander" in 1950, but she appeared in a cameo role in 1953 in "Main Street to Broadway."

Emerson was a panelist on "I've Got a Secret" from 1952 to 1958 and on the program "Masquerade Party" from 1958 to 1960.

— John Kendall in the Los Angeles Times Mar. 11, 1983