Karen Morley, a talented leading lady who starred in string of quality pictures in the '30s including Mata Hari(1931) with Greta Garbo and Scarface(1932) opposite Paul Muni; and who was eventually blacklisted during the McCarthy era, died on March 8 of pneumonia at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. She was 93.

Born Mildred Litton on December 12, 1909, in Ottumwa, Iowa, she was adopted by upper class parents who moved her to Los Angeles when she was 14. She enrolled at Hollywood High School and studied for a career in medicine at UCLA, but soon discovered a love for theater while attending the college and promptly changed her career ambitions. She gained some stage experience with the Pasadena Community Players, before debuting onscreen in a small part in the Great Garbo vehicle Inspiration (1931). She followed this up with some a stronger role in another film with Garbo Mata Hari (1931), playing a German spy (complete with a very good accent) and opposite John Barrymore in Arsene Lupin (1932) displaying some fireworks as a capable love foil to the great profile.

Morley wouldn't make a big impression until later that year, when Howard Hawks cast her as Poppy, the blond, sensual moll to Paul Muni's Scarface (1932). In a performance of thrilling eroticism that is still startling today, Morley was perhaps the definitive gangster moll - sharp talking, sly-witted and fiercely independent. The film earned Morley deserved notice and she received a brief contract with MGM. At the studio she appeared in some interesting movies: John Ford's lusty melodrama Flesh (1932) where she played German con girl on the run with wrestler Wallace Beery; Gregory La Cava's effervescent political fantasy Gabriel Over the White House (1933) opposite Franchot Tone; and in George Cukor's star-studded comedy Dinner at Eight (1933) (with John Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow).

Despite being placed in a good series of films, Morley ran afoul with the studio after bosses fumed over her marriage to director Charles Vidor, and her decision to start a family. In an era when Hollywood was every inch the studio contract system, Morley courageously left MGM in 1934 to work as a freelance actress. Her reputation as solid, dependable actress helped her find work, appearing in the social drama Our Daily Bread (1934), by King Vidor (no relation to her husband Charles), Michael Curtiz' underrated Black Fury (1935) which reteamed her with Muni; and Robert Leonard's fine adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice (1940).

In the '40s, Morley reduced her screen work to concentrate on the stage and an increasing taste for activism. When she joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1945, she became one of its few radicals, demanding action on wage and fairness issues. Her outspokenness in favor of honoring picket lines during the final strike in 1946 by nine craft unions known as the Conference of Studio Unions prompted several witnesses, including actor Robert Taylor, to brand her a communist before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, and her career came to a sudden halt. From this point on, as expected, she had trouble finding work, and would appear in only two more films: Joseph Losey's moderately successful remake of Fritz Lang's classic crime thriller M(1951) and a routine western Born to the Saddle(1953). She moved with her husband, actor Lloyd Gough (she had divorced her first husband Vidor in 1943) to New York in the early '50s and eventually found work on the Broadway stage. In 1954, she ran unsuccessfully as a New York lieutenant governor candidate for the American Labor Party.

Morley would return to acting in the '70s when she secured some guest roles on a few hit television series: Kojak, Banyon and . She was a much sought after interviewee in recent years for documentaries about stars with whom she worked, including Greta Garbo, John Barrymore and Franchot Tone. She was most recently honored at the 1999 San Francisco International Film Festival series when highlights from her movie career were featured in a salute to blacklisted performers.

From 1932-43 she was married to director Charles Vidor, and from 1944-1984 to actor Lloyd Gough until his death. She is the grandmother of actor John Vidor and is survived by numerous family members.

by Michael T. Toole