Stunning Dramatic Elyse Knox Hollywood Regency Glamour Photograph Original 1943

Description

ITEM: This is a vintage and original Universal Pictures photograph of actress Elyse Knox. The epitome of classic Hollywood glamour, Knox is fashionable and gorgeous in this dramatically composed, sensual portrait. This was used as publicity for the 1943 Abbott and Costello film "Hit the Ice", which is being advertised here under its alternate title "Oh Doctor". The press snipe on verso reads:
Cover girl Elyse Knox's striking beauty has won her one of the envied screen roles of the season. The New England beauty has been selected by Messrs. Abbott and Costello as a diverting offset to their comedy hi-jinks in their newest Universal picture, "Oh! Doctor." Elyse, whose smartly chiseled features have adorned 32 magazine covers during 1942, is donning skates and skis as a typical outdoor beauty in the new film. Once an artist-illustrator herself, she first attracted attention as a fashion model.
Knox started out her career as a fashion designer, eventually wearing many of her designs as a model for Vogue magazine. It was in this capacity that Knox came to the attention of Hollywood. She worked for 20th Century-Fox, Columbia and Hal Roach before settling at Universal, where she appeared with everyone from Abbott and Costello to the Mummy (Lon Chaney Jr.). While her career was unremarkable, Knox's private life was touched with celebrity from all sides: she was the daughter of one-time Secretary of the Navy William Franklin Knox, the wife of football star/sportscaster Tom Harmon, the mother of actor Mark Harmon, the mother-in-law of singer Ricky Nelson, and the grandmother of actress Tracy Nelson.
Photograph measures 8" x 10" on a glossy single weight paper stock with studio paper caption and date stamp on verso.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
More about Elyse Knox:
Elyse Knox, the actress best known for starring in The Mummy's Tomb (1942) and for being Heisman Award-winner Tom Harmon s wife and actor Mark Harmon's mother, was born Elsie Lillian Kornbrath on December 14, 1917 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Austrian parents Hermine Sophie (Muck) and Frederick Kornbrath, from Vienna. Knox's first love wasn't acting but art: she began painting in oils during high school, and painting remained a passion throughout her life. She had an exhibition of her work in 1981.
After graduating from New York City's Traphagen School of Fashion, she got a job in a New York design studio as an artist's assistant intent on becoming a fashion designer. When a model didn't show up as scheduled, she filled in and soon became a top fashion model herself, appearing in all the major magazines. She modeled some of her own creations in "Vogue Magazine" in 1937. That and an appearance as a fashion model in a newsreel landed her a Hollywood contract from 20th Century-Fox.
She made her debut in an uncredited bit part in Wake Up and Live (1937), starring gossip columnist Walter Winchell, in 1937. Knox would not appear again on-screen for another three years, until Free, Blonde and 21 (1940) in 1940. In all, she made 39 movies in the 1940s.
Knox bounced around between studios, including Paramount and Universal. While at Paramount, she met Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon, to whom she became engaged. The engagement was broken off when he went off to WWII and she married another man, but that marriage proved short-lived. When Harmon returned from the war, she married him in 1944.
She was a contract player at Universal in the 1940s, where she made the "Mummy" movie with Lon Chaney Jr. who - having had to carry her in a kidnapping scene - thanked her for being petite. The real-life love of a genuine sports hero, she also played Anne Howe, girl friend of fictional boxer "Joe Palooka," in a series of B-movies at Monogram.
After having two children with Harmon, she retired in 1949. "I'm just a mother at heart," she said, "so I decided it was time to retire from the screen."
Her son Mark, born in 1951, played for UCLA as a quarterback and became a top TV star. One of her daughters, Kristin Harmon, was an actress who married Ricky Nelson. The singer-songwriters Gunnar Nelson and Matthew Nelson are her grandchildren.
Elyse Knox died on February 16, 2012 in Los Angeles. She was 94 years old.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood