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Mitzi Gaynor is an American actress, singer, and dancer. She was born in 1931 in Chicago. Gaynor's original surname was Gerber; she sometimes claimed to be descended from royalty with the birth name Francesca Marlene von Gerber.
Gaynor trained as a trained as a ballerina as a child and began her career as a chorus dancer. She sang, acted and danced in a number of film musicals, often paired with some of the biggest male musical stars. Notable early roles included There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) which featured Irving Berlin's music and also starred Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe, Les Girls (1957, directed by George Cukor) with Gene Kelly and Kay Kendall, and Anything Goes (1956), co-starring Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor and with screen-play written by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse.
Gaynor's biggest claim to international fame is playing the female lead in the film version of South Pacific, one of the most successful musicals of all time. She made films with many other well-known stars, including Ginger Rogers, Frank Sinatra, David Niven, Dan Daily, Betty Grable and Oscar Levant. She made her last film in the early 1960s; one of her last films was the UK production Surprise Package (1960), a musical comedy thriller directed by Stanley Donen. Her co-stars were Yul Brynner and Noel Coward and the film had a theme song by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn.
After her retirement from films, Gaynor remained a popular favorite; she often performed songs at Academy Awards ceremonies, had a This Is Your Life special dedicated to her, and often appeared on television and in local theater.
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