Darla Hood

Darla Hood is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. Kirk did appear as a guest in some TV shows and was a panalist on Mantrap in 1971. At forty-seven, Hood died in North Hollywood, California, of acute hepatitis contracted while in the hospital for a minor surgery. Subsequently, Phyllis Kirk performed on stage before she left show business to enter public relations, working as a publicist for CBS News. During the 1960s and 1970s, she went to many Our Gang/Little Rascals festivals and conventions, meeting and greeting the various generations of fans. Kirk was also a regular on the Red Buttons Show. And she appeared in her own nightclub act at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, the Copacabana in New York and the Sahara in Las Vegas. She also appeared with Jerry Lewis in his 1957 film The Sad Sack, with Robert Ryan, Anita Ekberg, and Rod Steiger in the 1956 film Back from Eternity.

She did singing and voice-over on TV commercials, which included Campbell Soup and Chicken of the Sea Tuna. Her most notable television role was with Peter Lawford in The Thin Man (1957 - 1959), where they played Nick and Nora Charles. Hood was a guest on such TV shows of the early 1960s as Tell It to Groucho starring Groucho Marx and The Jack Benny Show, where she appeared as "Darla" in a spoof of the old Our Gang shows with Jack Benny. She appeared with Vincent Price in the film House of Wax in 1953. She played a secretary in the suspense drama The Bat (1959) with Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. She is best known for her many television and film roles throughout the 1950s. Joe Rivkin, who discovered her as a child, saw the cover and cast her in her first adult role in a movie. Later she became a Hollywood contract player for MGM and Warner Brothers.

In January 1959, she released a new record, Quiet Village. She worked as a sales clerk, waitress, and model before entering show business on the stage. She and Granson had three children. Reportedly, she had polio as a child and had difficulty walking later in life. Decker (married 1955-divorced 1957) and record company head Jose Granson (married 1957). Phyllis Kirk (born 18 September 1929) is an American actress born in Syracuse, New York. Hood had two marriages, insurance salesman Robert W.

She had a hit record in 1957, I Just Wanna Be Free, and appeared in the movie Calypso Heat Wave singing a duet with Johnny Desmond. In 1955, she was a leading lady in the act of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She was a regular on The Ken Murray Show from 1950 to 1951. Hood then went out on her own with singing engagements in nightclubs and guest appearances on TV.

The group remained with Murray's Blackouts during its long run in New York and Hollywood. Shortly after graduation, the quartet was booked by producer and star Ken Murray for his famous "Blackouts," a stage variety show. While at Fairfax High School, she organized a vocal group called the Enchanters with four boys. When she outgrew her role in Our Gang, she appeared in a couple of other movies and attended school in Los Angeles.

The comedy movie shorts were later syndicated for television, in the mid-1950s, under the title The Little Rascals. From 1935 to 1941, she played Darla in Our Gang. She was then taken to Culver City, California, to appear in the Our Gang movies. Just after her third birthday, she was taken to New York City where she was seen by Joe Rivkin, a casting director for Hal Roach Studios, who arranged a screen test.

Her mother started her in singing and dancing at an early age, taking her to lessons in Oklahoma City. Her father worked in a bank and her mother was a music teacher. She was born Darla Jean Hood in Leedey, Oklahoma, the only child of James Claude Hood and Elizabeth Davner. Darla Hood (November 4, 1931 – June 13, 1979) was an American child actress.