Billie Bird
Birthday: 1908-02-28
Place of Birth: Pocatello, Idaho
Synopsis
Vaudeville comedienne Billie Bird Sellen was discovered at an orphanage at the age of eight years and hired to tour theater circuits with a vaudeville troupe. During the Vietnam War she accompanied 12 USO tours entertaining the troops in the war zone in the 1960s and 1970s. She had worked as recently as 1995 when she appeared in Jury Duty (1995), starring Pauly Shore. Other notable performances were in Dennis the Menace (1993) and Home Alone (1990).
One of her best-known film appearances was in the 1968 movie The Odd Couple (1968). Her last appearance was a cameo in 1997 in the short-lived television comedy George & Leo (1997) with Judd Hirsch and Bob Newhart. She had also been a regular from 1988-1992 in the sitcom Dear John (1988), and in a series of performances as a cheerful and sassy senior citizen in such productions as Ernest Saves Christmas (1988) and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987).
Date of Death: 27 November 2002, Granada Hills (Alzheimer's disease)
Acting
Dear John
as Margie Philbert
Dear John starred Judd Hirsch as easygoing Drake Prep high school teacher John Lacey who is dumped by his wife, Wendy, via a Dear John letter. Wendy ends up with everything in the divorce settlement, including custody of the couple's son, forcing John to move into an apartment in Ozone Park, Queens. John soon joins the One-2-One Club, a self help group for divorced, widowed or lonely people. The group is led by Louise (Jane Carr), a sex-obsessed British woman. Other members of the group include Kate McCarron (Isabella Hofmann), a sweet divorcée; Kirk Morris (Jere Burns), a cocky ladies' man; Ralph Drang (Harry Groener), a shy and neurotic tollbooth collector; Bonnie Philbert (Billie Bird), a feisty senior citizen; and Tom, Mrs. Philbert's quiet boyfriend (Tom Willett).
Ernest Saves Christmas
as Mary Morrissey
When Santa Claus decides to retire and pass on his magic bag of Christmas surprises to a new Saint Nick, he enlists the aid of a hilarious assortment of characters. A perky teen runaway and hapless taxi driver Ernest P. Worrell must convince a skeptical kiddie-show host to take over the post of Father Christmas.
One Crazy Summer
as Grandma
An aspiring teenage cartoonist and his friends come to the aid of a singer trying to save her family property from developers.
Benson
as Rose Cassidy
A butler deals with life at the governor's mansion.
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The Odd Couple
as Chambermaid (uncredited)
In New York, Felix, a neurotic news writer who just broke up with his wife, is urged by his chaotic friend Oscar, a sports journalist, to move in with him, but their lifestyles are as different as night and day are, so Felix's ideas about housekeeping soon begin to irritate Oscar.
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The Cat Burglar
as Mrs. Prattle
Unwitting pickup artist Jack Coley (Jack Hogan) nabs a briefcase holding a costly scientific formula, turning himself into a moving target for owner Alan Sheridan (John Baer), foreign agents and the fuzz -- all bent on a blistering game of finders, keepers. In this stylized crime drama, the quarry coolly eludes the pack while eliciting the aid of an unlikely party: blonde beauty Nan Baker (June Kenney), the attaché's original carrier.
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Too Soon to Love
as Mrs. Jefferson
Unmarried teenage lovers turn to desperate measures after their clandestine tryst results in an unplanned pregnancy.
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Born to Be Loved
as Drunk's Wife
Director Hugo Haas reprises the theme of romantic love in this routine yet innocent story of matchmaking. The setting is an overcrowded tenement building in which the residents seem to live beyond the reach of muggers or drug dealers or trigger-happy gangs because they mingle and mix in the halls as they energetically interact with each other.
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Somebody Loves Me
as Essie
Backstage musical biography of nightclub star Blossom Seeley that charts her rocky relationship with vaudeville singer Benny Fields.
