Biography
Noreen Nash, a brunette with blue eyes, was born Norabelle Jean Roth in Wenatchee, Washington. Her father, Albert Roth, owned a Coca-Cola bottling plant, while her mother, Gail, was a teacher. At eighteen, Noreen was crowned 'Apple Blossom Queen' in her hometown and traveled to Washington to promote apples on the radio. Although this brought her to the attention of a Warner Brothers talent scout, she declined her initial opportunity for a screen test to complete her education. Later, she was discovered again at the Brown Derby restaurant by Louis Schurr, Bob Hope's agent. Under a stock contract with M-G-M, she first appeared on screen credited as Noreen Roth.
In October 1942, Noreen met Dr. Lee Edward Siegel, a physician sixteen years older who was known as the 'doctor to the stars' on the 20th Century Fox lot and a close friend of studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. After a brief romance, they married in Las Vegas six weeks later. Their marriage was a happy one, lasting until his death 47 years later.
Noreen's time at M-G-M was uneventful, limited to ornamental, non-speaking bit parts. Seeking better opportunities in 1944, she gained her first significant role when French director Jean Renoir cast her as Becky in The Southerner (1945), a drama about a struggling Texas cotton farming family in the 1940s, which earned Renoir his only Oscar nomination. By then, she had adopted the stage name 'Nash' at her agent's suggestion.
Over the next fifteen years, Noreen worked in what she later called 'forgettable' films at Poverty Row studios such as PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) and Eagle-Lion. She starred in juvenile melodramas like The Devil on Wheels (1947), various crime films including The Big Fix (1947), Assigned to Danger (1948), and The Checkered Coat (1948), and numerous westerns directed by veteran Lesley Selander, such as The Red Stallion (1947), Storm Over Wyoming (1950), and Road Agent (1952). None of these roles significantly advanced her career, nor did Phantom from Space (1953), a low-budget, somewhat absurd science fiction film partially shot at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. While it may have sparked her interest in astronomy, even a film like "Chubby Rain" (referenced in Bowfinger (1999)) would arguably have been more entertaining.
The most prestigious film Noreen appeared in was Giant (1956), though she later recalled not her minor role as actress Lona Lane but the tension on set between director George Stevens and James Dean. From 1952 until her retirement a decade later, she also appeared in numerous early television episodes, including Dragnet (1951), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), and Yancy Derringer (1958). Encouraged by her son, she left show business in 1962, returning to study at UCLA, where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in history in 1971. In 1980, she published her first novel, By Love Fulfilled, set in the 16th century and chronicling the life of a physician at Catherine de Medici's court. This was followed by Agnès Sorel, Mistress of Beauty in 2013 and her memoir, Titans of the Muses: When Henry Miller Met Jean Renoir, in 2015.
In 2001, Noreen married actor James Whitmore. At her passing on June 6, 2023, at the age of 99, she was known as Noreen Siegel Whitmore. She had two sons from her first marriage: Lee Siegel Jr., an author and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Robert James Siegel, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
