Person
Carol Bruce
Great Neck, Long Island, New York, USA
Carol Bruce was an American band singer, Broadway star, and film and television actress. Bruce began her career as a singer in the late 1930s with Larry Clinton and his band, and…
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Carol Bruce was an American band singer, Broadway star, and film and television actress. Bruce began her career as a singer in the late 1930s with Larry Clinton and his band, and later sang with Ben Bernie's orchestra in 1940-1941. Bruce made her Broadway debut in Louisiana Purchase, with songs by Irving Berlin, who discovered her at a nightclub in Newark, New Jersey. She was the first actress to play the role of Julie in a Broadway production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat since the 1932 Broadway revival. Bruce played the role onstage in 1946 and garnered favorable comparisons to Helen Morgan, who had originated the role onstage in 1927 and repeated it in both the 1932 revival and the 1936 film. Bruce appeared with Abbott and Costello in Keep 'Em Flying (1941). Her first serious film role was in This Woman Is Mine (1941). She had supporting roles many years later in the films American Gigolo (1980) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. After a long career as a singer and in films, Bruce is probably best-remembered for her recurring role as the domineering and meddlesome Lillian "Mama" Carlson (mother of the station manager played by Gordon Jump) on CBS' WKRP in Cincinnati.
Filmography
Movies and shows, newest first
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1996
The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists
Movie Old One (voice)
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1996
Profiler
TV show Petra Strauss
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1994
Party of Five
TV show Sarah's Grandmother
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1993
Diagnosis: Murder
TV show Constance Lockwood
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1991
The New WKRP in Cincinnati
TV show
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1989
Doogie Howser, M.D.
TV show Beatrice Portmeyer
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1987
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Movie Joy Page
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1987
Jake and the Fatman
TV show
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1987
Marblehead Manor
TV show Margaret Stonehill
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1985
The Twilight Zone
TV show (segment "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium")
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1985
The Golden Girls
TV show Lucille
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1980
American Gigolo
Movie Mrs. Sloan
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1979
Knots Landing
TV show Mrs. Cunningham
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1978
WKRP in Cincinnati
TV show Lillian Carlson
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1976
Charlie's Angels
TV show Mrs. Pattison
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1969
The Girl Who Returned
Movie (voice)
More credits
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1962
The Merv Griffin Show
TV show Self
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1948
Studio One
TV show
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1948
The Ed Sullivan Show
TV show Self
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1942
Behind the Eight Ball
Movie Joan Barry
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1941
Keep 'Em Flying
Movie Linda Joyce
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1941
This Woman Is Mine
Movie Julie Morgan
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1937
Koo Koo Korrespondance Skool
Movie Singer
