two had previously co-starred in the 1944 film The Navy Way. In late 1951, Parker and Lowery co-starred in a touring stage production of Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story. Critic Harold Whitehead, reviewing a Montreal performance of the play, observed that Parker seemed "shaky and ill-at-ease" throughout. The following year, on September 24, 1952, Parker gave birth to her only child, a son, Robert Lowery Hanks II, in Los Angeles. Parker continued to appear occasionally in films throughout the remainder of the 1950s, including a starring role opposite Edward G. Robinson in the film noir Black Tuesday (1954), followed by a role in A Lawless Street (1955). In 1954, Parker played the role of "Cattle Kate Watson of Wyoming" in an episode of the syndicated television series Stories of the Century, the first western program to win an Emmy Award. The series starred and was narrated by Jim Davis. Later in her career and life, Parker continued a successful stint on the West Coast theatre circuit and worked as an acting coach. Parker filed for divorce from her fourth husband, Lowery, in September 1957, but it was never finalized. She made her last film appearance was in Apache Uprising (1965). Parker worked as an acting coach in the 1970s for a time, but spent the following several decades largely out of the public eye, earning a reputation as a "Hollywood recluse." In 1998, she moved into the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles. Death Parker died of a stroke at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital on November 30, 2005. She is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. Legacy In the 1950s, columnist Erskine Johnson deemed Parker "the Liz Taylor of the 1930s." Upon her death, journalist Ronald Bergan noted Parker as an undervalued actress whose career was stifled by the studio system who gave her "too little chance to shine." Filmography Notes References Sources External links Photographs of Jean Parker Age controversies 1910s births 1915 births 2005 deaths American acting coaches American film actresses American stage actresses Actresses from Montana Actresses from Pasadena, California Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players People from Deer Lodge, Montana 20th-century American actresses 21st-century American women