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Jane Greer

One day in 1940 a pretty 15-year-old girl who had worked as a child model was asked by her party date why she was pulling such a funny face. Checking in the mirror, she was appalled to find that the muscles on the left side of her face had gone totally slack and were paralyzed that way. Diagnosed with Bell's palsy, a rare neurological disorder from which people at the time generally did not recover, the aspiring actress had for a time to close her left eye with her hand when she went to sleep and had to push the left corner of her mouth up into a frozen smile before she went off to school each day. The painstaking therapy she performed on her face not only peaked her ambition to act but also dispelled the disfigurement almost entirely, though one wonders if it may have contributed to the patented look important in making Jane Greer one of the most intriguing performers of her day--a calm, quizzical gaze and an enigmatic expression that led RKO to promote her as "the woman with the Mona Lisa smile."