Francine York

Biography

Francine York (born Francine Yerich; August 26, 1936 – January 6, 2017) was an American actress and model. She also used her birth name Francine Yerich in her occupation.

== Early life == Francine Yerich was born to Frank and Sophie Yerich in the small mining town of Aurora, Minnesota. She attended Hamline University for a few terms on a drama scholarship.

== Career ==

=== Model === At age 17, she was runner-up in the Miss Minnesota contest.

=== Nightclub performer === York soon got a job as a showgirl at Bimbo's nightclub in San Francisco. Bimbo's headliner, Mary Meade French, brought her to Hollywood and helped get her signed with an agent. York worked at Frank Sennes' Moulin Rouge, a popular Hollywood nightclub on Sunset Blvd., where she performed in three shows a night, seven nights a week, for six months. Tired of sharing a stage with elephants, pigeons, and horses, she began taking acting classes with actor/teacher Jeff Corey. A theatrical producer cast her in a play called Whisper in God's Ear at the Circle Theatre, and she was also cast in her first movie, Secret File: Hollywood, a film about the day-to-day operations of a sleazy Hollywood tabloid.

=== Actress ===

==== Film ==== York's first screen role was in Robert Clarke's Hollywood exploitation film Secret File Hollywood shot in 1960 but not distributed until 1962. Her big break came when Jerry Lewis cast her in It's Only Money, in which she played a tantalizing sexpot, a role which brought her much publicity. This led to Lewis hiring her for five more of his films, including The Nutty Professor, The Patsy, The Disorderly Orderly, The Family Jewels, and Cracking Up, in which she portrayed a 15th-century marquise. Other film appearances include Bedtime Story, Tickle Me, Cannon for Cordoba, and science fiction cult films such as Curse of the Swamp Creature, Mutiny in Outer Space, and Space Probe Taurus. In The Doll Squad (1973), she played CIA agent Sabrina Kincaid. She portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Marilyn: Alive and Behind Bars, and in 2000, she played Nicolas Cage's mother-in-law in The Family Man.

==== Television ====