LOS ANGELES - Virginia Mayo, the beautiful blonde who rose to movie stardom in the 1940s in comedies opposite Bob Hope and Danny Kaye and had memorable dramatic turns with James Cagney in "White Heat" and Dana Andrews in "The Best Years of Our Lives," died Monday. She was 84.
Mayo died of pneumonia and heart failure after a long illness in a nursing facility near her home in Thousand Oaks, said family friend Alex Ben Block.
A former vaudevillian who came under the wing of producer Samuel Goldwyn, Mayo launched her movie career with a small part in the 1943 movie "Jack London," starring her future husband, Michael O'Shea.
As a young star known for her ash-blond hair, peaches-and-cream complexion, green eyes and curvaceous figure, Mayo caught the fancy of the sultan of Morocco, who wrote her a fan letter in which he proclaimed her to be "tangible proof of the existence of God."
But Goldwyn cast Mayo against her dream-girl-next-door image in "The Best Years of Our Lives." As war veteran Andrews' callous, two-timing wife in the Oscar-winning 1946 film, Mayo was widely praised for her first major dramatic role.
Three years later, after moving to Warner Bros., Mayo gave one of her best-remembered performances, in "White Heat," director Raoul Walsh's crime melodrama, opposite Cagney.
"Jimmy was the master actor, the most dynamic star the screen ever had," Mayo told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. "His acting was so real that I was really scared half the time we were on the set."
During the 1940s and '50s, Mayo appeared in more than 40 films.
Born Virginia Clara Jones in St. Louis on Nov. 30, 1920, Mayo's father was a newspaper reporter.
Mayo married O'Shea in 1947, and they remained together until his death in 1973.
She is survived by their daughter, Mary Johnston, and three grandsons.
