Biography
Jean Willes made her acting career playing brassy, tough, sexually appealing, and sometimes vulgar characters, taking mostly costarring roles in B-movies, and even more minor ones in bigger films. She was often featured as one of the only female characters in a number of Three Stooges shorts, most notably in "A Snitch in Time" and "Gypped in the Penthouse." In the former, Willes played the attractive owner of a boarding house who teams up with the Stooges to hunt down a robber. In "Gypped in the Penhouse," Willes plays a calculating gold digger who scams all three of the Stooges. In one of her more significant roles, though still a costarring one, in a movie that was an unexpected hit and now a sci-fi cult classic, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Willes played Nurse Sally Withers, right-hand assistant to the protagonist, who eventually becomes possessed by the alien pod people. The same year, Willes took another large role in a Western film that, though not particularly distinguished, was one of Clark Gable's last, "The King and Four Queens"; Willes played one of four calculating and sexy widows trying to seduce Gable's character. Willes became quite prevalent in the Western genre, though more so on television after the 1950s. One of her last bigger film parts was in the Rat Pack heist film "Ocean's Eleven," playing the widow of an electrician who was in on the casino robbery.
