Nancy Gertrude Guild ( ;"Success Story," LIFE (magazine), 17 September 1945. Retrieved 7 January 2026. October 11, 1925 – August 16, 1999) was an American film actress of the 1940s and 1950s. She appeared in Somewhere in the Night (1946), The Brasher Doubloon (1947), and the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951). Although appearing in major films, Guild never achieved as much fame at 20th Century Fox, the studio that had signed her to a seven-year contract, as she had hoped, and eventually stopped acting.
Early life Guild was born at Hollywood Hospital on October 11, 1925, the third child and only daughter of Herbert Hamilton Guild and the former Zilpah Hebert."Births". Illustrated Daily News. October 18, 1925.
Career Guild was a freshman at the University of Arizona when a photographer from Life magazine noticed her. After her picture was published in a spread on campus fashions, Guild received screen tests at five Hollywood studios, and she was signed by 20th Century Fox. The studio's publicity writers declared "Guild rhymes with wild!" when hyping her in Somewhere in the Night (1946), her first film, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Guild went on to play the female lead in The Brasher Doubloon (1947). She and then-husband Charles Russell then appeared together in the musical Give My Regards to Broadway (1948). She played a dual role as Marie Antoinette and the hypnotized love interest of Orson Welles in the 1949 adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ historical novel about Count Cagliostro and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. After leaving Fox, she appeared in movies as a freelance and as a contract star at Universal-International, where she appeared in Little Egypt, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man picture and the Francis the Talking Mule movie Francis Covers the Big Town (1953).
Guild was a panelist on the DuMont network's Where Was I? game show in 1952-1953. She appeared occasionally on television and briefly returned to the movies in Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends (1971).
Personal life Guild's first husband was actor Charles Russell, whom she married on April 26, 1947. They divorced in November 1949 after their daughter was born. On August 14, 1951, she married producer Ernest H. Martin. They had two daughters and divorced in 1975. On April 5, 1983, Guild married photojournalist John Bryson;"Tipoff". The Ledger. April 8, 1983. they divorced in 1995.
Death On August 16, 1999, she died of emphysema in the village of East Hampton, New York at the age of 73.
Filmography Year Title Role1946 Somewhere in the Night Christy Smith1947 The Brasher Doubloon Merle Davis1948 Give My Regards to Broadway Helen Wallace1949 Black Magic Marie Antoinette / Lorenza1951 Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man Helen Gray1951 Little Egypt Sylvia Graydon1953 Francis Covers the Big Town Alberta Ames1971 Such Good Friends Molly
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