Nina Foch (April 20, 1924 – December 5, 2008) was a Dutch-born American actress and leading lady in films from the 1940s to the 1950s as well as a guest star on numerous television shows from the 1950s to 2007.

Early life

Nina Foch was born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock in Leiden, Netherlands to American actress and singer Consuelo Flowerton and Dutch classical music conductor Dirk Fock. After her mother and father divorced when Foch was a toddler, she went with her mother to the United States, settling in New York. As Foch grew up in New York, her mother encouraged her artistic talents; Foch learned piano and enjoyed art but was more interested in acting.

Career

Foch's movie career came during the height of the 1940s, when she played cool, aloof, and often foreign women of sophistication. She would ultimately be featured in over 80 films and hundreds of television shows. The actress was a regular in John Houseman's CBS Playhouse 90 television series. In 1951, she appeared with Gene Kelly in the musical An American in Paris, which was awarded the Best Picture Oscar. Foch appeared in Scaramouche (1952) as Marie Antoinette, and in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) as Bithiah, the Pharaoh's daughter who finds the infant Moses in the bulrushes, adopts him as her son, and joins him and the Hebrews in their Exodus from Egypt.

Foch received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the boardroom drama Executive Suite (1954), starring William Holden. In Spartacus (1960), starring Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier, she played a woman who chooses gladiators to fight to the death in the ring, simply for her entertainment. In 1961, she guest starred in the NBC series about the family divisions from American Civil War entitled The Americans. In 1963, she appeared on the NBC game show Your First Impression. In 1964, she played the title role in the episode "Maggie, Queen of the Jungle" of Craig Stevens's short-lived CBS dram series, Mr. Broadway.

She was cast as Eva Frazier in the Outer Limits episode "The Borderland". She appeared in an episode of Gunsmoke as the widowed matriarch of a lawless town. She was also cast as the first murder victim of the Columbo mystery series starring Peter Falk, appearing in the pilot movie, Prescription: Murder (1968), with Gene Barry as her husband, a homicidal psychiatrist. In the early 1970s, she guest starred on NBC's The Brian Keith Show. In 1975, she appeared in the film Mahogany, starring Diana Ross. She played in an episode on Combat! titled episode "The Casket".

Later in her career, Foch appeared in War and Remembrance (1988) as the seemingly-nice librarian who soon advises Jane Seymour's character that the best place for her and her uncle would be the un-aptly named "Paradise Ghetto". She also appeared as 'Frannie Halcyon' in the TV miniseries Tales of the City (1993). Another notable TV role was as the Overseer Commander (or "Kleezantzun") in the first of the Alien Nation TV movies, Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994).

In her final years, she appeared on the television series Just Shoot Me, Bull, Dharma & Greg, and NCIS, the latter portraying Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard's elderly mother.

Foch taught "Directing the Actor" classes at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, classes she had taught since the 1960s up to her death. She also worked as an independent script-breakdown consultant for many prominent Hollywood directors.

Personal life

Foch lived in Beverly Hills, California, for 40 years and married three times. Her first marriage was to James Lipton, future host of Inside the Actors Studio. She married her second husband, Dennis de Brito, in 1959; and the couple had one child before divorcing in 1963. Her third and last marriage was to Michael Dewell in 1967. The couple divorced in 1993.

Foch died December 5, 2008, of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Her only son, Dirk de Brito, told the Los Angeles Times that she had become ill while teaching at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.

Filmography

• Wagon Wheels West (1943)
• The Return of the Vampire (1944)
• Nine Girls (1944)
• She's a Soldier Too (1944)
• Shadows in the Night (1944)
• Cry of the Werewolf (1944)
• Strange Affair (1944)
• She's a Sweetheart (1944)
• A Song to Remember (1945)
• I Love a Mystery (1945)
• Escape in the Fog (1945)
• My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
• Boston Blackie's Rendezvous (1945)
• A Thousand and One Nights (1945)
• Prison Ship (1945)
• Johnny O'Clock (1947)
• The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947)
• The Dark Past (1948)
• The Undercover Man (1949)
• Johnny Allegro (1949)
• St. Benny the Dip (1951)
• An American in Paris (1951)
• Young Man With Ideas (1952)
• Scaramouche (1952)
• Studio One (Television series, 8 episodes from 1952 to 1956)
• Sombrero (1953)
• Fast Company (1953)
• Executive Suite (1954)
• Four Guns to the Border (1954)
• You're Never Too Young (1955)
• Illegal (1955)
• The Ten Commandments (1956)
• Three Brave Men (1956)
• Rawhide (1959), Season 1/20 Incident of the Judas Trap, Madrina Wilcox
• Ten Little Indians (1959)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (1959); assistant director (uncredited)
• Cash McCall (1960)
• Spartacus (1960)
• Rebecca (1962)
• Combat! (1966)
• Columbo: Prescription: Murder (1968)
• Gidget Grows Up (1969)
• Such Good Friends (1971)
• The Scarecrow (1972)
• Female Artillery (1973)
• Salty (1973)
• Mahogany (1975)
• The Great Houdini (1976)
• Jennifer (1978)
• Child of Glass (1978)
• Ebony, Ivory and Jade (1979)
• Nomads (1986 film) (Small part - she plays the real estate agent; she is named in the credits)
• War and Remembrance (TV) (1988)
• Getting It Right (1989); creative consultant
• Sliver (1993)
• Tales of the City (1993)
• Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994 made for TV)
• 'Til There Was You (1997)
• Hush (1998)
• Family Blessings (1999, made for TV); actress, co-director with Deborah Raffin
• Pumpkin (2002); Betsy Collander
• How to Deal (2003)
• NCIS (2005) 2 episodes as Mrs. Victoria Mallard
• The Closer (2007), 1 episode as Doris Donnelly