lit a candle 1h agoMy mother called to tell me, she used to watch The Ten Commandments every Holy Week back home. 102 years old. Didn't even know her name until today.
Their story
Charmienne Harker was an American model, dancer and actress whose screen career ran from 1944 to 1959, the heart of Hollywood's studio era. She never became a household name, and most of her more than thirty film roles were uncredited, but she worked steadily for some of the most celebrated…
Charmienne Harker was an American model, dancer and actress whose screen career ran from 1944 to 1959, the heart of Hollywood's studio era. She never became a household name, and most of her more than thirty film roles were uncredited, but she worked steadily for some of the most celebrated directors and stars of her time, and she was especially associated with the spectacular epics of Cecil B. DeMille. When she died on October 14, 2026, at the age of 102, she was a rare living link to the casts of The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments.
Harker was born in Denver, Colorado, on May 13, 1924, the only girl in a family of six boys. When she was five years old the family moved to Hollywood. She attended Hollywood High School and afterwards took private drama lessons from the coach Kathryn James, according to a 1947 newspaper column on rising Hollywood talent.
She began as a professional model, and her earliest screen work drew on that background. Her first known film appearance was as a co-ed in the Esther Williams musical Bathing Beauty (1944), and the same year she danced the can-can in Mrs. Parkington. By 1947 she was working regularly, playing a model in When a Girl's Beautiful, a stenographer in the Charlie Chan mystery The Chinese Ring, a chorus girl in My Wild Irish Rose, a cameo girl in Linda, Be Good, and a role in DeMille's frontier epic Unconquered.
In 1948 she appeared in If You Knew Susie, Race Street, The Velvet Touch and the Bob Hope comedy The Paleface, and she played Miss King in Every Girl Should Be Married opposite Cary Grant. That year also brought the assignment that newspapers liked best. Because her figure was said to match Hedy Lamarr's almost exactly, DeMille sent her to the costume designer Edith Head to stand in for Lamarr at wardrobe fittings for Samson and Delilah (1949). A Los Angeles Mirror item in October 1948 ran under the headline "Charmienne Harker Stands In, Gets In", noting that there was no facial resemblance between the two women, only a shared silhouette.
The early 1950s were her busiest years. She was a cigarette girl in A Dangerous Profession (1949), and in 1950 alone she played Ethel in The Secret Fury, a flashy Arab girl in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, a clerk in Union Station, Lana in The Milkman, Mary in the Betty Hutton and Fred Astaire musical Let's Dance, and a party guest in Bing Crosby's Mr. Music. She danced in The Lemon Drop Kid (1951), played a student in the science fiction classic When Worlds Collide (1951), and was a guest in Here Comes the Groom (1951).
In DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, she played a circus character who shared her own first name, Charmienne. The same year she was Bessie in Son of Paleface, a dance director in Frank Sinatra's Meet Danny Wilson, and Miss Preston, a secretary, in Otto Preminger's film noir Angel Face with Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. Later film roles included Affair with a Stranger and The French Line (both 1953), Rowena Whitman in Foxfire (1955), a court lady in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), and Margaret in Violent Road (1958).
As film work thinned, Harker moved into television. She appeared in Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, played Betty Fuller in My Little Margie and Ann Waller in Craig Kennedy, Criminologist (all 1952), and in 1956 took parts in Dragnet, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (as Helen Townsend) and two episodes of Death Valley Days. Her last credits were Colt .45 in 1958 and Tales of Wells Fargo in 1959, after which she left the screen.
Her private life stayed largely out of view. She was married first to Edward A. Salven, a marriage that ended in divorce, and in 1963 she married Julius Krauss, whose surname she used in later life. From 1973 she lived in the Palos Verdes Estates area of Los Angeles County, California. She died near Palos Verdes Estates on October 14, 2026, at the age of 102; a mortuary notice listed her as Charmienne Krauss. No cause of death was made public.
Harker's career is a reminder of the hundreds of models, dancers and bit players who filled the frames of Hollywood's golden age. Film historians and classic movie fans marked her death by recalling her small but vivid moments in DeMille spectacles, Bob Hope comedies and film noir.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (Charmienne Harker); AFI Catalog; Los Angeles Mirror (1948-10-25); The Independent (1947-03-03); Wilmington Daily Press Journal (1947-06-03); LW Weekly In Memoriam (2026-10-14); IMDb nm03631.
In their own words
“Charmienne Harker, a former model, happens to have a figure exactly like Hedy Lamarr. There is no facial resemblance.”
Los Angeles Mirror, "Charmienne Harker Stands In, Gets In", October 25, 1948, on her work as Lamarr's stand-in for Samson and Delilah
“When Miss Lamarr was unavailable for wardrobe fittings for "Samson and Delilah" Director C. B. DeMille sent the model to Edith Head to fit costumes for the Biblical drama.”
Los Angeles Mirror, October 25, 1948
“Adiós (con 102 años) a Charmienne Harker, bailarina y actriz vista en tres DeMille.”
Spanish film critic Fausto Fernandez on X, October 19, 2026 ("Farewell, at 102, to Charmienne Harker, dancer and actress seen in three DeMille films")
“R.I.P. Charmienne Harker (small parts in many classic films, including: The Paleface, Abbott & Costello in the Foreign Legion, The Greatest Show on Earth, Son of Paleface, and The Ten Commandments (1956))”
Film fan tribute on X by @FilmRSchulz, October 24, 2026
Photos
1Charmienne Harker, publicity portrait
by People Forever
Same here, that film played every Easter on our TV growing up.