‘Old Hollywood Royalty’: Actress Barbara Rush Dead Running At 97

Fox News reporter Claudia Cowan praised her mother Barbara Rush as “among the last of Old Hollywood Royalty” and called herself her mother’s “biggest fan.”

Rush’s death was announced by her daughter, Fox News reporter Claudia Cowan, who posted on Instagram on Monday that her mother died on Easter Sunday. Additional details were not immediately available.

Cowan praised her mother as “among the last of ”Old Hollywood Royalty” and called herself her mother’s “biggest fan.”

Spotted in a play at the Pasadena Playhouse, Rush was given a contract at Paramount Studios in 1950 and made her film debut that same year with a small role in “The Goldbergs,” based on the radio and TV series of the same name.

She would leave Paramount soon after, however, going to work for Universal International and later 20th Century Fox.

“Paramount wasn’t geared for developing new talent,” she recalled in 1954. “Every time a good role came along, they tried to borrow Elizabeth Taylor.”

RIP Barbara Rush, 1927-2024 pic.twitter.com/qiSU6r1gtl

— Old Hollywood (@TheOldHollywood) April 1, 2024

Wide range of films

Rush went on to appear in a wide range of films.

She starred opposite Rock Hudson in “Captain Lightfoot” and in Douglas Sirk’s acclaimed remake of “Magnificent Obsession,” Audie Murphy in “World in My Corner” and Richard Carlson in the 3-D science-fiction classic “It Came From Outer Space,” for which she received a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.

Other film credits included the Nicholas Ray classic “Bigger Than Life”; “The Young Lions,” with Marlon Brando, Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift and “The Young Philadelphians” with Newman. She made two films with Sinatra, “Come Blow Your Horn” and the Rat Pack spoof “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” which also featured Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

Rush, who had made TV guest appearances for years, recalled fully making the transition as she approached middle age.

“There used to be this terrible Sahara Desert between 40 and 60 when you went from ingenue to old lady,” she remarked in 1962. “You either didn’t work or you pretended you were 20.”

Instead, Rush took on roles in such series as “Peyton Place,” “All My Children,” “The New Dick Van Dyke Show” and “7th Heaven.”

“I’m one of those kinds of people who will perform the minute you open the refrigerator door and the light goes on,” she cracked in a 1997 interview.

Her first play was the road company version of “Forty Carats,” a comedy that had been a hit in New York. The director, Abe Burrows, helped her with comedic acting.

She went on to appear in such tours as “Same Time, Next Year,” “Father’s Day,” “Steel Magnolias” and her solo show, “A Woman of Independent Means.”

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE – Jack Arnold, 1953

Barbara Rush #RIP pic.twitter.com/sQ97HthKZd

— Judy Cohen (@IKnewThemWell) April 1, 2024