The diverse show-business career of Anne Jeffreys, who has died aged 94, can be divided into three distinct domains. In the 1940s she was the spirited heroine of low-budget westerns and B- picture thrillers; from the 50s onwards she appeared on television in soap operas and sitcoms, including the supernatural comedy series Topper (1953-55), in which she was known as the “ghostess with the mostest”, and the long-running General Hospital; and she was a singing star in Broadway musicals, notably as Lilli Vanessi in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate (1950-51).
During the first period, Jeffreys starred opposite Robert Mitchum in Nevada (1944) and Frank Sinatra in Step Lively (1944). In the former, she played a saloon singer who seduces the hero and is later fatally wounded by gunfire while protecting him; in the latter, her character makes a play for a reluctant Sinatra trapped in a phone booth, singing Where Does Love Begin? Whatever the film genre, good use was often made of Jeffreys’ lyric soprano voice. This was best displayed on stage in the premiere run of Kurt Weill’s “American opera”, Street Scene (1947), in which she sang six numbers as Rose Maurrant, a bright young girl attempting to escape the tenements of Manhattan’s East Side.
She was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, daughter of Kate (nee Jeffreys) and Mack Carmichael. Her mother had wanted to be an opera singer and encouraged Anne to study singing. She became a member of the New York Municipal Opera Company on a scholarship while still in her teens, gradually gaining leading roles in La Bohème and Madame Butterfly at Carnegie Hall.
But an offer from MGM tempted her to Hollywood and an acting career. This began with a bit part in the Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy musical I Married an Angel (1942) before she gained a contract with Republic for a series of eight indistinguishable but enjoyable and snappy B-westerns starring Wild Bill Elliott (for action) and George “Gabby” Hayes (for comedy), with Jeffreys providing the hero’s love interest.
Rather more memorable was her part as Tess Trueheart, the witty and patient girlfriend of the eponymous detective, in Dick Tracy (1945) and Dick Tracy vs Cueball (1946), who often put herself in danger on his behalf. She could also be an effective “bad girl”, as in Riff Raff (1947), in which she portrayed a double-crossing nightclub singer, and in Dillinger (1945), playing an amoral gangster’s moll.
Jeffreys ended her long run in 40s movies with two excellent Randolph Scott westerns, Trail Street (1947), in which she played yet another dance hall singer, and Return of the Badmen (1948) as a gunslinger, Cheyenne, who decides to swap her cowboy outfit for more feminine attire when she falls in love with Scott.
Thereafter began a television career that lasted almost five decades, and got its first lift-off with Topper, in which she and her husband, Robert Sterling, played George and Marion Kerby, a couple of very visible, mischievous ghosts. Having appeared as a guest in almost any TV series one could name, she settled in to General Hospital (1984-2004) and its spin-off, Port Charles (2001-03), in the role of Amanda Barrington, a snobbish, devious, wealthy socialite. Jeffreys also appeared in Falcon Crest (1983) and played the mother of Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff) in Baywatch (1993-98).
Jeffreys continued to show her versatility by starring in Broadway musicals such as Camelot (1962), The King and I (1974) and Follies (1977). She returned briefly to the big screen after an absence of 14 years in a small part in the romantic comedy Boys’ Night Out (1962).
Jeffreys’ first marriage, to Joseph Serena, was annulled. Sterling, whom she married in 1951, died in 2006. She is survived by their three sons, Jeff, Dana and Tyler.
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