Jan Sterling, 82, a platinum-blond leading lady who specialized in portraying icy tramps in such films as "Ace in the Hole," died March 26 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund home in Woodland Hills, Calif., after a series of strokes.
On film, she first made an impression in "Johnny Belinda" (1948) in a pivotal secondary role as the protective wife of a man who has raped a deaf-mute woman. Jane Wyman won the Best Actress Academy Award for portraying the victim.
In Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" (1951), Ms. Sterling had one of her greatest roles. As a trampy wife, she gave memorable zest to such lines as: "I don't pray. Kneeling bags my nylons." When her spelunker husband gets trapped in a cave, an unscrupulous journalist played by Kirk Douglas prolongs the rescue to advance his reporting career and persuades the wife to grieve for the cameras.
She won a Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in "The High and the Mighty" (1954), playing a woman of easy virtue who is a passenger on a threatened jetliner. Her character is described as "the punchboard of Honolulu."
She showed some comic flair in "Rhubarb" (1951), about an old man who wills his baseball team to his cat. But Ms. Sterling became largely identified with a slew of women-behind-bars dramas ("Caged," "Women's Prison"); minor thrillers ("Mystery Street," "Union Station"); and boxing stories ("Flesh and Fury," "The Harder They Fall").
In 1987, she told the Toronto Star the secret to her career of playing lusty women: "Well, you've got to smoke and drink a lot. And you've got to be a busty blonde, like me. If you look at the old Hollywood movies, you'll notice that the nice girls were almost invariably flat-chested."
Ms. Sterling was born Jane Sterling Adriance. Her father was an advertising executive, and her family was in the Social Registry. She accompanied her mother to Europe after her parents divorced.
She studied acting in London with actress Fay Compton and appeared on the London stage before playing on Broadway in such shows as Noel Coward's "Present Laughter."
She replaced Judy Holliday on Broadway as the flighty but resourceful ingenue in Garson Kanin's hit comedy "Born Yesterday." That role led to film offers, and she made her uncredited screen debut in the John Wayne adventure "Tycoon" (1947).
By that time, Ms. Sterling nearly was divorced from actor John Merivale. She married actor Paul Douglas in 1950 and gradually withdrew from her career after his death in 1959. A son from her second marriage died this year.
She was the longtime companion of actor Sam Wanamaker, who died in 1993. They lived in London for years, and she spent her time on humanitarian causes there and in the United States.
Oscar-nominated Jan Sterling, shown in 1951, specialized in portraying film noir floozies.
