Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison (born March 19, 1915) is a retired American stage and film actress and mezzo-soprano singer. She made her feature film debut in 1939 after several years on the stage. She was lauded as a beauty with large eyes and extremely long, dark hair. During this period of her career, she was often cast as the femme fatale or "other woman". It was only when she returned to the Broadway stage that she achieved her greatest success as the lead in the original production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate. 　　She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she celebrated her 100th birthday on March 19, 2015. 　　Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison was born in New York City on March 19, 1915, although some sources have erroneously given her year of birth as 1914. 　　Her father, William Morison, was a playwright and occasional actor who billed himself under the name Norman Rainey. Her mother, Selena Morison (née Fraser) worked for British Intelligence during World War I. After graduating from Washington Irving High School in New York, Morison studied at the Arts Students League while taking acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She also studied dance under Martha Graham. During this time she was employed as a dress shop designer at Russeks Department Store. 　　Morison made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in the musical revue Don't Mind the Rain, in which she sang a song "Simple Silly I." Her Broadway debut came in November 1933, with a short-lived play, Growing Pains. After that, she proceeded to understudy Helen Hayes in the role of Victoria Regina. She understudied all the other women in the cast. Hayes, however, never missed a performance and Morison never had the opportunity to play the lead role.[citation needed] 　　In 1935, four years before her official film debut, Morison made her first appearance on film in an automobile propaganda short[clarification needed], Wreckless. In 1938, Morison appeared in the musical The Two Bouquets, which ran for only 55 performances. Among the other cast members was Alfred Drake, who, years later, would star opposite Morison in the Broadway hit Kiss Me, Kate. 　　While appearing in The Two Bouquets, Morison was noticed by talent scouts from Paramount Pictures, who — at the time — were looking for exotic, dark-haired glamorous types similar to Dorothy Lamour, one of their star commodities. Morison was subsequently signed to a contract with Paramount. She made her feature film debut in the "B" film Persons in Hiding (1939). Also in 1939, Paramount considered her for the role of Isobel in their adventure film Beau Geste, starring Gary Cooper and Ray Milland, but she was replaced by Susan Hayward. The following year she appeared opposite Milland in the Technicolor romance Untamed, a remake of the Clara Bow vehicle, Man Trap (1926). 　　Despite the promising beginnings, she was assigned to several second-tier pictures such as Rangers of Fortune (1940) and One Night in Lisbon (1941), both with Fred MacMurray, and The Round Up (1941) with Richard Dix and Preston Foster. On a loan-out to 20th Century-Fox she played one of her first villainess roles in Romance of the Rio Grande (1941), which starred Cesar Romero as the Cisco Kid. She left Paramount after a series of unrewarding roles, such as Night in New Orleans (1942), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942), and Are Husbands Necessary?