Actress Betty Lou Keim Passes at 71
Renowned for playing rebellious teens, she rose to fame in her youth, then left the industry to devote herself to her family.
Betty Lou Keim, an actress who played Frank Sinatra’s unbridled niece in the 1958 film Some Came Running, died January 27, 2010, at her home in Chatsworth, California, from complications of lung cancer. She was 71.
The daughter of choreographer Buster Keim and his wife, Dorothy. she was born September 27, 1938, in Malden, Massaschusetts. She began performing in her youth, and appeared on Broadway in Strange Fruit and then Crime and Punishment with John Gielgud before scoring a role in the Johnny Mercer musical Texas Li’l Darlin’, in 1949.
In 1955 she drew attention as a rebellious daughter involved in a fractious relationship with her divorced mother, played by Patricia Neal, in the Broadway production A Roomful of Roses. The following year she co-starred in a film adaptation, Teenage Rebel, in which the mother was played by Ginger Rogers.
After relocating to California, in an unusual arrangement, she was under contract to two movie studios, MGM and Fox. During that period, she made These Wilder Years, Wayward Bus and Some Came Running.
Keim also appeared in television series, including as My Son Jeep and The Philco Television Playhouse.
In her early twenties, just as her career began to peak, Keim married actor Warren Berlinger, who also appeared in Roomful of Roses and Teenage Rebel, in 1960, and withdrew from show business to raise a family.
Her last acting job was in The Deputy, a television series starring Henry Fonda, which aired from 1959-61.
She is survived by Berlinger, four children and eight grandchildren.