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In spite of the fact that her screen career was brief, Iowa born Peggy Moran remains one of Universal's most fondly remembered ingénues of the era. Her infectious smile and charming demeanor ingratiated her to screen audiences for the three years that she was under contract at the studio. Her marriage to director Henry Koster in 1942 brought a premature end to her career, yet her popularity among film buffs remains undiminished by the passing of time.

Moran was born Marie Jeanette Moran in Clinton, Iowa on October 23, 1918. At age five, her parents divorced, and the youngster relocated to southern California with her mother and siblings. Her father, Earl Moran, would later achieve fame for his popular pin up paintings.

How Moran attained the desire to become an actress is an unusual and interesting story. "When I was six years old, my mother and a girlfriend of hers wanted to have their fortune told. At that time in Hollywood there was a famous psychic called Darrio. He had predicted Rudolph Valentino's death (in 1926), and so everybody wanted to see him. They took me with them, and they couldn't get an appointment, he was much too busy. So, they were standing out in the hallway wondering what to do next when he happened to walk out of his office and came down the hall. When he came by us he stopped for a second, and he put his hand under my chin and said, 'Ah, an actress,' and then he walked on."

The episode made an indelible impression on the youth, and ultimately her whole life would be changed by it. "I don't think that was a particularly great event or anything, but it was to me. Being six years old, I thought it was a fact that he was telling me. I believed it implicitly. When I was in school I was always thinking, 'I should join the drama class because if I'm going to be an actress I should learn something about it.' All through school I joined every drama class, and I usually ended up being the lead in the play."

Within a month of her graduation from high school, the teenager attained a contract with Warner Brothers. The prediction of a childhood chance encounter had proven true, although in retrospect it was clearly an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I believed it so much," she says. "Maybe what you believe about yourself has a great power, you know."

The contract with Warner's would last but a mere six months. Following that, Moran free-lanced at various Hollywood studios. During this period, she landed her first featured role, co-starring with Gene Autry in the 1938 Republic western "Rhythm of the Saddle." The following year found her appearing in the Greta Garbo classic "Ninotchka," which also starred Melvyn Douglas and Bela Lugosi.

Moran with the legendary Gene Autry in "Rhythm of the Saddle" (1938).

An opportunity to meet Joe Pasternak, who was then producing the immensely popular Deanna Durbin films at Universal, was at first declined by the actress for fear that it might lead to a compromising situation. "It was some friend, he was standing on the doorstep, some Hungarian, one of my suitors or something," she recalls. "He kept saying 'I want to introduce you to Joe Pasternak.' I said, 'I'm really not interested in meeting somebody like that.' He said, 'Why not?' I said, 'Well, I hear that it's how nice you are to people that gets you to work and I don't want to be that kind.' I was very idealistic. I had a mother that brought me up that way and I didn't want to think that in order to work in pictures I had to go and sleep with somebody. I just didn't believe in it. So, I didn't want to meet him (Pasternak) and he kept insisting."

Moran finally relented when her persistent Hungarian friend mentioned a specific part. "So, one day he came in and said 'I happen to know that Joe Pasternak is doing a picture, it's a Deanna Durbin picture, and they need a lot of girls around in that picture on a scene. It's a weeks work.' He said, 'Can't I take you out just to meet him?' I said, 'Okay, I'll go.' So, I went out and it was an uneventful meeting except that Joe Pasternak met me and said, 'Yes, she can be in the picture.' He turned me over to his secretary, and his secretary said, 'You have got to go out to get some wardrobe because we start shooting on Monday.'"

Her fears unfounded, Moran returned to the producer's office after her appointment with the wardrobe department, and it would be a much more eventful meeting than the first. "I came back and I thought, 'Well, I can play a little politics and I can say thank you to the secretary who was so nice to me.' I went in to see her and she said, 'Don't you want to talk to Joe Pasternak?' I said, 'No, don't bother him.' She said, 'Don't be silly!' She pressed a button and she said, 'Miss Moran is out here, would you like to see her?' He said, 'Send her in.' So, I went in and it just happened that he was sitting with his director of the picture, and director of the picture was Henry Koster. Well, that was the beginning of something in my life."

"I went in and Mr. Koster looked at me and said, 'You want to be an actress?' I said, 'Yes, I do.' He said, 'Well, I don't think you can become a star.' I said, 'Why not?' He said, 'Well, you're too pretty and people won't believe that you can act.' I said, 'Well, I don't think I'm too pretty. I think I look like an Irish mix or something. But, I think I'm smart enough to put makeup on and make you think I'm pretty.' He laughed at that and he turned to Joe and said, 'Why isn't she in the picture?' Joe said, 'Well, she is.' After I did the picture, Joe and Henry decided I should be under contract there (Universal)."

Wallace Ford, Moran and Dick Foran in a staged publicity photo for

"The Mummy's Hand" (1940).

That film, "First Love," also led her to become acquainted with its star, Deanna Durbin. "We were close friends for a while," Moran recalls. "She asked me to go - this was before I was married you see, while I was at Universal - she wanted me to go be with them on a blind date for me. It was a friend that was visiting them from Canada. That friend turned out to be Bert Parks, who later made a big career."

Following her work in the Durbin picture, she appeared in such studio faire as "The Big Guy" with Victor MacLaglen and Jackie Cooper, and the Baby Sandy comedy "Little Accident," which also featured Hugh Herbert.

By 1940, Moran was firmly established as a one of Universal's busiest leading ladies. In that year alone, a dozen of her films were released to theaters. She starred opposite leading man Tom Brown in Charles Lamont's "Oh Johnny, How You Can Love," and was cast in two of Richard Arlen's popular dramas, "Danger on Wheels" and "Hot Steel." She co-starred with Johnny Mack Brown in "West of Carson City" and joined the Ritz Brothers and the Andrews Sisters for "Argentine Nights." She also appeared with Johnny Downs and Broderick Crawford in "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby."

Pasternak and Koster utilized her talent for another of Durbin's musical adventures that year as well. "Spring Parade" would become the next in a string of moneymaking successes starring the golden voiced Durbin. It also featured actress Anne Gwynne, who became a close personal friend of Moran's. The two remain in contact to the present day.

Another 1940 release that performed well at the box office was "Trail of the Vigilantes" with Franchot Tone. "In fact, he picked me out for the picture with him," she says. "I hadn't known about that. When he came over to Universal, he was to do a big western spoof sort of, he was a sophisticated actor. They asked him to look at a picture of who is leading lady was to be, they wanted it to be Nancy Kelly. She had been a star on Broadway." Tone instead opted for Moran, and a short romance developed. Moran remembers that he paid her a compliment one evening, comparing her most favorably to his former wife, actress Joan Crawford.

Kelly would be slated for another production, and as fate would have it, Moran would also be assigned a role in the same film. "The picture she did was "One Night in the Tropics" with Abbott and Costello, and I was the other girl in the picture," she remembers. Another co-star from the film was Bob Cummings. "We became close friends later because he worked with my husband," she says. "We used to make fun about that picture." Cummings and Moran would come to refer to the film as "One Night in the Flopics." The production was the first for former burlesque comics Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, who were referred to Universal by none other than Henry Koster. The director saw one of their stage shows in New York, and suggested to studio executives that they be brought to Hollywood.

Perhaps Moran's best-remembered motion picture was also released that year. "The Mummy's Hand" would mark her first appearance in a Universal horror film. She portrayed Marta Solvani, the daughter of a Brooklyn magician who finances an expedition to locate the tomb of the Princess Ananka. The group would find more than they bargained for when they unearthed the living mummy, Kharis.

Her leading man in this effort was western star Dick Foran. "We had a very nice friendly relationship, he was a good friend," she remembers. "Some of the others I did earlier, sometimes you have little romances with your leading man. But, he and I, no, we were just good friends."

Of actor George Zucco, who portrayed the villainous Andoheb, she can recall very little. "As I remember he was very professional," she says.

In 1941, she joined Foran for another thriller, "Horror Island." The Ben Pivar production is noteworthy for being one of director George Waggner's first horror films. The cast also included such familiar players as Fuzzy Knight, Leo Carrillo, John Eldredge, Lewis Howard, Hobart Cavanaugh and Iris Adrian.

Fuzzy Knight, Dick Foran and Peggy Moran in a scene from "Horror Island" (1941).

Moran hardly remembers making the film, and understandably so. "I made so many of them and did them so fast that it's hard to remember," she explains. "It would be two weeks or three weeks out of my life, sixty years ago! Would you believe that!"

Another of her films that year was "Double Date" with Edmund Lowe, Una Merkel and Rand Brooks. The latter is remembered as Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick "Lucky" in a series of popular 1940's westerns, and as Scarlett O'Hara's first husband in the MGM classic "Gone with the Wind" in 1939. She also co-starred with comedian Hugh Herbert in "Hello Sucker," along with Tom Brown. Appearing with Moran in both of these features, albeit in minor roles, was another of the studio's popular leading ladies of the period, Nell O'Day.

Moran also held the female lead opposite William Gargan and Lowe in the adventure film "Flying Cadets." Frankie Thomas was also featured, and would later achieve his greatest fame via television as the lead character in the hit series "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet."

"Treat 'em Rough" was the first of her films released in 1942, with Eddie Albert as her leading man. William Frawley and Lloyd Corrigan were also in the cast. She then rejoined director Christy Cabanne, who had helmed "The Mummy's Hand" and several of her other earlier features, for the drama "Drums of the Congo." The story of an African expedition in search of a meteorite also starred Ona Munson, Stuart Erwin and Turhan Bey.

She was then cast with Herbert and Tom Brown for another comedy, "There's One Born Every Minute." Interestingly, a very young Elizabeth Taylor and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer were also in the picture. It was to be Moran's final Universal film, although technically she did appear in "The Mummy's Tomb" in 1942 as well, thanks to the use of stock footage from "The Mummy's Hand."

The lovely actress departed Universal that year when director Henry Koster proposed marriage, an offer she happily accepted. "Finally, I discovered that Mr. Koster and I were in love, and there began the big romance," she recalls. "So he came to me, and asked me, when it was time."

There was a price that she had to pay, however. "When I got married my husband said, 'I don't want you to work in pictures, I don't want every electrician to pinch you on the fanny,' or something like that," she says. "He said, 'If you give up your career I'll use you in every one of my pictures.' Of course, he was doing all the big pictures that it took months to make. I thought, 'That's a pretty good deal.' But what he did was he had a bust made of me and he used that statue in every picture after that."

In spite of this slight deception, his bride didn't mind. "It didn't matter," she adds most sincerely. "I had such a wonderful life with him, and I was always on the set. In Hollywood, we were known as the closest couple there was. I had so much fun on the set with him. Every time I talk about any of his pictures I have a feeling that I was part of the making of the picture. We would say, 'Oh, we did that picture or we made that picture.' He would even ask my advice, I would sometimes read scripts for him and he would say 'Do you think it's good?' You know, he really kind of depended on me. I had a wonderful life."

The pair made many of Hollywood's most prestigious films together. Perhaps chief among them is the fantasy classic "Harvey," a 1950 Universal-International picture based on Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize winning play and featuring delightful performances by Jimmy Stewart and Josephine Hull. The latter earned the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal. Also in the cast were veteran players Cecil Kellaway and Wallace Ford, two of Moran's co-stars from her earlier classic, "The Mummy's Hand." She has fond memories of both actors, especially Kellaway. "He was such a good friend of ours," she recalls. "I used to love him. He had such humor and such sweetness about him, and I think every time we ever saw each other it was a pleasure. He was very sweet."

Following her marriage in 1942, Moran made one additional film. She played leading lady to cowboy star Roy Rogers in Republic's "King of the Cowboys," which was released the following year. It was to be her final feature film appearance.

The life of a movie star was not as glamorous as portrayed, and Moran had no difficulty leaving it behind. Reminiscing about her days at Universal, she recalls that her schedule left little time for any of life's pleasantries. "They worked me very hard, so they started giving me little bonuses for every picture because I made about eleven pictures in one year," she remembers. "I would work and just get off for maybe two or three days and then start another picture. I would get up at five in the morning and would be at the studio at six, and I would work through until eight at night before they would break for the day. I would come home so tired because I did physical things, too. I remember doing a picture where I had to do roller-skating all through the picture. I really got tired, so when my husband came to me and proposed, it was kind of a relief you know, when you work that hard day in and day out."

Peggy Moran flashes the dimpled smile that made

her a favorite of moviegoers in the early 1940's.

Moran enjoyed 46 years of wedded bliss before being widowed in 1988. Her devotion to her late husband is as strong today as ever. “People come to my house and they can see what an icon my husband is to me,” she says. “We really had a wonderful, wonderful life together. We really did.”

Does Peggy Moran think that she enjoyed a better life by becoming Mrs. Henry Koster than she would have had as actress Peggy Moran? She answers that question unhesitatingly, with a most emphatic response. “I think I did!”

Foy Van Dolsen and Peggy Moran in a publicity pose for "Horror Island."