ALICE PEARCE (Gladys Kravitz from 1964-1966)

Alice Pearce was born October 16, 1917, the only child of Robert E. Pearce, a National City Bank vice president, and Margaret Clark Pearce. After attending a series of schools in Belgium, France, and Italy, Alice studied drama at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NewYork, and graduated in 1940.

She went on to become one of the stars of New Faces of 1943 on Broadway, which led to her performance in Look, Ma, I'm Dancin' a nightclub act she and her first husband, John Cox (songwriter of such hits as It's a Big, Wide, Wonderful World), performed, wrote, and produced for the Blue Angel nightclub in New York.

She also was in On the Town with Gene Kelly in 1947. Other stage hits included Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bells Are Ringing, and Noel Coward's Sail Away in 1961, her final appearance in the theater.

Her film history includes On the Town(1949), How to be Very, Very Popular (with Robert Cummings, 1955), My Six Loves (1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), The Disorderly Orderly (1964), Dear Bridget (with James Stewart, 1965) and The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), in which she costarred as the wife of fellow Bewitched spouse George Tobias.

Her television appearances include The Milton Berle Show, The Garry Moore Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jack Paar Show, and Hazel. She starred in her own series in 1948, The Alice Pearce Show, which she called "fifteen minutes of songs, topical skits, and me.

John Cox died in 1957, and she married Broadway director Paul Davis in 1964.

Pearce played Gladys Kravitz for two years, knowing all the while she was ill with cancer. She was forty-eight when she passed away on March 3, 1966. To no one's surprise, there was applause the night her husband, Paul, accepted her TV Emmy Award (from Elizabeth Montgomery) for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy in 1966. Members of the television academy and the audience recalled Alice's wonderful, wordless squeals as Gladys, which she had said was her favorite role.

* Biography from "Bewitched Forever" by Herbie J. Pilato

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