A tall, cool blonde whose good manners were usually a warning. Nina Foch played rich women, secretaries and schemers with the same held-back poise, and Hollywood gave her too few parts large enough to show what was behind it.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Nina Foch listen. In An American in Paris (1951) her Milo Roberts buys Jerry's paintings, offers to fund his show and sits through his rudeness with a small, level smile, deciding how much of it she will take. That was the Foch manner: tall, fair, well dressed, polite to the point of coolness, with something under the poise that might be want or might be calculation. She was cast again and again as the sophisticated blonde whose surface hides manipulation or insecurity, and she rarely needed to raise her voice to suggest either.
Columbia signed her at nineteen in 1943 and put her in horror and noir, starting with Return of the Vampire (1943). The one from that stretch still talked about is My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), a Gothic thriller with her in the title role as an imperilled secretary; she later dismissed much of the Columbia contract work as limited. Broadway came in 1947. Then An American in Paris took her out of B-pictures and into the sophisticated supporting part she would play in different clothes for a decade: a loyal, grieving secretary in Executive Suite (1954), the pharaoh's daughter who adopts Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), a scheming Roman noblewoman in Spartacus (1960).
She is best when a film gives her something to hold back. Milo is the only adult in Jerry's love story, and Foch plays her with a dry wit the rest of the picture lacks. When the film loses interest in her we minded more than we expected to, because she was the one person on screen who seemed to know what she was doing. That is the recurring Foch problem. Her parts were reactive by design, and directors used her as an obstacle for the hero and then took her away. In The Ten Commandments she is one more figure in a film we found stiff as a temple frieze, and our review did not single her out, which is the usual fate of a supporting player in a DeMille picture.
From the 1960s the work was mostly television guest parts, and the bigger job was elsewhere. She taught directing the actor at USC for more than forty years and at the American Film Institute until her death in 2008, and she was clear about which career she valued: "I think the biggest thing I've done in life is teach." Given the parts Hollywood offered her, it is hard to argue. Start with An American in Paris, watch Milo, and notice how much of the film's good sense goes with her when she does.
Biography
Nina Foch was a Dutch-born American actress. Born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock in Leiden, Netherlands, on 20 April 1924, she signed with Columbia Pictures at the age of 19 and appeared in a series of horror films and films noir before moving into leading roles.
She played Milo Roberts in the 1951 musical An American in Paris. Foch received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Executive Suite (1954). Other film roles included Bithiah in The Ten Commandments (1956) and Helena Glabrus in Spartacus (1960). She also appeared on Broadway from the late 1940s and later taught drama at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
Foch died in Los Angeles on 5 December 2008.
