Welcome to Login

Terry Moore

Lively, full-figured lead of the post-WWII era, never a top star but one whose career, in retrospect, sums up much of 1950s attitudes about women, sexuality, and permissiveness. A photographer's child model, Moore entered films in 1940 in "Maryland" and played small parts in a variety of films under first her real name, and then as Judy Ford and Jan Ford. At 19 she played a girl convinced that her horse was the reincarnation of a dead uncle in the odd comedy "The Return of October" (1948). She attracted more attention the following year, however, in another strange, but decidedly better, film about a woman and her pet, "Mighty Joe Young" (1949). For many buffs, the most indelible image of Moore's career was of her born aloft by her bush-league King Kong, playing "Beautiful Dreamer" on a piano.