1950s 'supermodel' Suzy Parker dead at 69
Los Angeles Times
Suzy Parker, one of the fashion world's great beauties who became the industry's highest-paid cover girl in the 1950s, has died at 69.
Advertiser library photo • September 1960
Parker, who parlayed her modeling fame into a short-lived Hollywood acting career, died Saturday after a long illness at her home in Montecito, Calif.
In 1960, model and actress Suzy Parker briefly visited Hawai'i before heading to a Vogue photo shoot in Tokyo.
During her modeling heyday in the '50s, Parker was photographed in Paris, Rome, London and New York City wearing fashions by all the top designers. At $200 an hour, the tall, auburn-haired Parker was the era's highest-paid model.
"We didn't use the term (supermodel) then, but she certainly qualified for being a supermodel. She was absolutely phenomenal," said Edie Locke, former editor in chief of Mademoiselle magazine.
"A lot of the models are beautiful, but it takes a lot of makeup and this, that and the other trick to make them look fabulous," Locke said. "But all Suzy had to do was shake out that mane and she'd look fabulous."
Parker was a favorite subject of fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who used one of his photographs of Parker on the cover of his 2001 book "Made in France," a collection of his work.
"Suzy Parker gave emotion and reality to the history of fashion photography," Avedon said yesterday. "She invented the form, and no one has surpassed her."
Parker was one of three Paris models who appeared in Stanley Donen's stylized 1957 musical "Funny Face," starring Fred Astaire as a fashion photographer who transforms Audrey Hepburn into an elegant Paris model.
Her first leading role was in Donen's 1957 comedy "Kiss Them for Me," starring Cary Grant. She is best remembered for playing Gary Cooper's young lover in the film "Ten North Frederick" (1958), but her film career never really took off.
She was born Cecelia Ann Rene Parker in Long Island City, N.Y., and got into modeling at age 14.
In 1963, Parker married actor Bradford Dillman, with whom she had three children. Parker also had a daughter from a previous marriage.
Parker and Dillman moved to Montecito in 1968, where Parker devoted her time to a life of domesticity.
"She acted through the still camera brilliantly, but when she acted in front of the moving camera she was not so free and comfortable and she said she wasn't the actress she wanted to be," said her stepdaughter, Pamela Dillman Harman.
"So she decided, 'OK, I'm going to give up on this and devote my talents to being the best wife and mother,' and she really was that."
Parker is survived by her husband four children, two stepchildren and four grandchildren.
