Eleanor Parker was a film and television actress who earned three Oscar nominations and one Primetime Emmy nomination over the course of a career lasting more than 50 years. She is perhaps best known for the role of the Baroness in the Oscar-winning movie The Sound of Music.
Born in Ohio, Parker performed in school plays as a child and went on to study at the Rice Summer Theater in Massachusetts and the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Spotted by talent scouts, she signed a contract with Warner Bros. and began appearing in films, many of them serious dramas.
She received Oscar nominations for the 1950 drama Caged, the 1951 drama Detective Story and the 1956 drama Interrupted Melody.
Her first television appearance came in a 1953 episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. She had her first scripted TV role in the 1960 telefilm The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio, and went on to appear in many other movies and series, including Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bracken's World, Hawaii Five-O, Vega$, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hotel and Murder, She Wrote.
She received her Emmy nomination for the 1963 for the anthology series The Eleventh Hour, in an episode titled “Why Am I Grown So Cold?”
Parker died December 9, 2013, at age 91.
