The actress Piper Laurie was actually called Rosetta Jacobs – but when she entered the film business at 17, Hollywood was an even more merciless modeling machine than it is today. In the late 1940s, the big studios treated actors – and even more so, actresses – like puppets with whom you could do whatever you wanted. The young Rosetta signed a contract with Universal, where they renamed her Piper Laurie and cast her as a shy young girl love interest for older men. She played her first role in 1950 alongside Hollywood superstar Ronald Reagan, who was still a long way from his political career. In her autobiography “Learning to Live Out Loud” she later reported that Reagan, then in her mid-forties, was her first lover. The German title of the joint film, of all things: “Age does not protect against love”.
Obituary for Piper Laurie: the rebel. – Culture
