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Jean Rogers

Jean Rogers (born Eleanor Dorothy Lovegren; March 25, 1916 – February 24, 1991) was an American actress who starred in serial films in the 1930s and low–budget feature films in the 1940s as a leading lady. She is best remembered for playing Dale Arden in the science-fiction serials Flash Gordon (1936) and Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938).

Early life

Rogers was born Eleanor Dorothy Lovegren in Belmont, Massachusetts. Her father was an immigrant from Malmö, Sweden. She graduated from Belmont High School.

She had hoped to study art, but in 1933 she won a beauty contest sponsored by Paramount Pictures that led to her career in Hollywood. Rogers starred in several serials for Universal between 1935 and 1938, including Ace Drummond and Flash Gordon.

Early career

Rogers was one of seven women chosen out of 2,700 passengers on excursion boats and ferries who were interviewed for roles in the 1934 film Eight Girls in a Boat. The group began work in Hollywood on September 3, 1933. By 1937, Rogers was the only one of the seven featured as an actress.

Flash Gordon

The actress was signed by Universal Pictures in 1935, and started receiving screen credit. She was assigned the ingenue role of Dale Arden in the first two Flash Gordon serials. Buster Crabbe and Rogers were cast as the hero and heroine in the first serial, Flash Gordon. The evil ruler Ming the Merciless (Charles B. Middleton) lusted after her, and Gordon was forced to rescue her from one situation after another. While filming the series in 1937, her costume caught fire and she suffered burns on her hands. Co-star Crabbe smothered the fire by wrapping a blanket on her.

In the first serial, Arden competed with Princess Aura (Priscilla Lawson) for Gordon's attention. Rogers' character was fragile, small-chested, diminutive, and totally dependent on Gordon for her survival; Lawson's Princess Aura was domineering, independent, voluptuous, conniving, sly, ambitious, and determined to make Gordon her own. The competition for Gordon's attention is one of the highlights of the film. In Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, the second serial, Rogers sported a totally different look. She had dark hair and wore the same modest costume in each episode. Rogers matured after the first serial, and no sexual overtones are seen in Trip to Mars. Her speaking voice had also matured into a pleasant contralto. Rogers told writer Richard Lamparski that she was not eager to do the second serial and asked her studio to excuse her from the third.

Feature films

Despite starring in serials, Rogers felt she was not going to improve her career unless she could participate in feature films. This ambition was somewhat restricted by studio policy: she was then under contract to Universal, which then specialized in low-budget action and western fare and seldom made big-budget productions. Universal did give her ingenue leads in modest features, including Conflict (1936, as John Wayne's leading lady) and Night Key (1937, with Boris Karloff and Warren Hull. The actress, accustomed to the fast-paced production of serials, discovered that working in feature films was tedious, with repeated takes of dialogue scenes.

Rogers left Universal for 20th Century-Fox in 1938, where she appeared steadily in the studio's lower-budget product, including its popular series films featuring Michael Shayne (The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, 1940), The Cisco Kid (Viva Cisco Kid, 1940), and Charlie Chan (Charlie Chan in Panama, 1940). The only major motion picture Jean Rogers appeared in at Fox was the Tyrone Power feature Brigham Young; it was a supporting role and she was billed eighth. It didn't lead to further "A-picture" assignments, and Rogers left Fox in 1940.

Her fortunes seemed to improve when she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most important studio in the industry, in 1941. After a promising start with Design for Scandal (1941) with Rosalind Russell and Walter Pidgeon, she found herself getting "B" assignments exclusively, like Whistling in Brooklyn (1943) with Red Skelton and A Stranger in Town (1943) with Frank Morgan. She never did appear in another major MGM film, and was dropped by the studio in 1943.

She began freelancing at other studios, and her name still had marquee value for smaller studios like Monogram and Republic. Her last appearance was in a supporting role in the suspense film The Second Woman, released in 1950 by United Artists.