Film & TV / Theatre & dance
Kim Hunter
1922–2002 · stage, film and television actress
Detroit-born actress who created Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, won an Oscar for the film, and later played Zira in Planet of the Apes.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
New York City, New York
aged 79- Birth name
- Janet Cole
- Detroit years
- 1920s
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Kim Hunter was born Janet Cole in Detroit on November 12, 1922. Her mother, Grace Lind, had trained as a concert pianist, and her father, Donald Cole, was a refrigeration engineer. The family later moved to Florida, and she finished her schooling at Miami Beach High School, so her Detroit years belong to early childhood. On stage she became Stella Kowalski in the original 1947 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, then repeated the part opposite Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in the 1951 film, winning the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. In the 1950s she was blacklisted amid anti-communist suspicion in Hollywood and returned mostly to the theater. A new generation knows her as the chimpanzee scientist Zira in Planet of the Apes and two of its sequels.
Highlights
- Created Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway (1947)
- Academy Award and Golden Globe for the 1951 film version
- Zira in Planet of the Apes (1968) and two sequels
- Daytime Emmy nomination for The Edge of Night
- Blacklisted in the 1950s during the HUAC era