"Superman: III" Actress Annie Ross Passes Away at Age 89

British-American singer and actress, Annie Ross who portrayed the role of Vera Webster in "Superman: III" has passed away at the age of 89.

Ross was born Annabelle Allan Short in Mitcham, London on July 25th, 1930, the daughter of Scottish vaudevillians John "Jack" Short and Mary Dalziel Short. At the age of four, she traveled to New York by ship with her family; she later recalled that they "got the cheapest ticket, which was right in the bowels of the ship".

Shortly after arriving in the city, she won a token contract with MGM through a children's radio contest run by Paul Whiteman. She subsequently moved with her aunt, Scottish-American singer and actress Ella Logan, to Los Angeles, and her mother, father and brother returned to Scotland. At the age of seven, she sang "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" in Our Gang Follies of 1938, and played Judy Garland's character's sister in Presenting Lily Mars (1943).

At the age of 14, she wrote the song "Let's Fly", which won a songwriting contest and was recorded by Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers.

At the end of tenth grade, she left school, changed her name to Annie Ross, and went to Europe, where she established her singing career. She changed her surname to Ross during the plane trip to Prestwick; in a 2011 interview, she said, "My aunt was very fanciful and she said I had an Irish grandmother called Ross, so that's where that surname came from".

In 1952, Ross met Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock, who asked her to write lyrics to a jazz solo in a similar way to King Pleasure, a practice that would later be known as vocalese. The next day, she presented him with "Twisted", a treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray's 1949 composition of the same name, a classic example of the genre. The song, first released in 1952 (later collected on the album King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings), was an underground hit, and resulted in her winning Down Beat magazine's New Star award.

In February 1956, the British music magazine NME reported that Ross's version of the song "I Want You to Be My Baby" was banned by the BBC due to the lyric "Come upstairs and have some loving".

She recorded seven albums with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross between 1957 and 1962. Their first, Sing a Song of Basie (1957), was to have been performed by a group of singers hired by Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert with Ross brought in only as vocal consultant. It was decided that the trio should attempt to record the material and overdub all the additional vocals themselves, but the first two tracks were recorded and deemed unsatisfactory so they ditched the dubbing idea. The resulting album was a success, and the trio became an international hit. Over the next five years, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross toured all over the world and recorded such albums as Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross! (aka The Hottest New Group in Jazz, 1959), Sing Ellington (1960), High Flying (1962), and The Real Ambassadors (1962), written by Dave Brubeck and featuring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae.

Ross left the group in 1962 and in 1964 opened a nightclub in London called Annie's Room which hosted Joe Williams, Nina Simone, Stuff Smith, Blossom Dearie, Anita O'Day, Jon Hendricks, and Erroll Garner.

Beginning the 1970's, Ross would make a return to acting with such roles as Liza in the film "Straight On till Morning" (1972), "Claire in Alfie Darling" (1976), Diana Sharman in "Funny Money" (1983), Vera Webster in "Superman III" (1983), Mrs. Hazeltine in "Throw Momma from the Train" (1987), Rose Brooks in "Witchery" (1988), Loretta Cresswood in "Pump Up the Volume" (1990), and Granny Ruth in the horror films "Basket Case 2" (1990) and "Basket Case 3: The Progeny" (1991).

On stage, she appeared in "Cranks" (1955; London and New York City), "The Threepenny Opera" (1972), "The Seven Deadly Sins" (1973) at the Royal Opera House, "Kennedy's Children" (1975) at Arts Theatre, London, "Side by Side" by Sondheim, and in the Joe Papp production of "The Pirates of Penzance" (1982).

In July 2006 a one-woman play entitled TWISTED: The Annie Ross Story by Brian McGeachan premiered at The Space Theatre in London, starring Verity Quade. It focused on her stormy relationship with her aunt, Broadway legend Ella Logan, her brief affair with the comedian Lenny Bruce and her addiction to heroin. The play transferred to the Brockley Jack Theatre in London that same year, with Ross being played by Betsy Pennington.

In 2009, Ross received the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame Award followed by the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters' Award in 2010 and the MAC Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011.

A documentary about Ross's life, entitled "No One But Me", premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2012.

Sadly, Ross passed away in New York City on July 21st, 2020 from emphysema and heart disease, four days before what would have been her 90th birthday.




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