Lenore Aubert

The first time I saw Lenore Aubert (pronounced "Oh-bear") in a movie, it was in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein". I immediately became attracted to her beauty and her accent, which I thought was sexy in itself. The entire output of Abbott and Costello feature movies were shown constantly on New York tv in the 1960s, and repeated often, so I got to see Ms. Aubert many times. And to my delight, she was also in another of their features, "Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer".

It wasn't until many years later, during the beginning of my autographed photo-collecting days, that I'd tried to get an address for her. I'd asked many other collectors, and some movie biographers, too, but none knew what had become of her. She seemed to have dropped off the planet.

About this time, I started to do my own research, perusing clippings folders at the NY Public Library, as well as browsing through any actors' directories for more information on favorite movie people, including Ms. Aubert. I did find one article which gave some information, but it was from 1947, and the few bits of what I thought would be useful, turned into dead ends.

I did call the two largest actors' unions, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). SAG had no address for her, not even an old one. But AFTRA referred me to their Pension Fund department, and while they had no address information, the person to whom I'd talked did give me Ms. Aubert's Social Security Number! (This was in about 1980, long before such things became extremely private). I held on to the number, but had given up in my quest to locate her.

Some years later, while on my job delivering parcels, I'd often passed a small Social Security Office, and one day decided to stop in and ask if they could/would tell me anything about Ms. Aubert. I gave her number to the front desk clerk, a young girl who wanted to be helpful. She ran the number through their computer system, and bingo! The record showed that Lenore was collecting benefits, and living in New York City. The clerk could not give me the address, but she did tell me that Lenore's name in their records was "Greene".

With that information, upon returning home, I looked in the Manhattan white pages, and found a few listings for "L. Greene". The first two I called were not Lenore, but the third was! However, she was less than friendly, not in an offensive way, but when I asked if I could talk to her about her movie career, she replied "I'm sorry, I cannot do that, I'm sorry." I told her I just wanted to let her know that she was remembered for her movies, thanked her for her time, and hung up.

Shortly after, I was contacted by Jim McPherson, who was the editor of the TV/Movies Magazine weekly, published by the Toronto (Canada) Sun newspaper. He'd heard of my success in locating in some of the "lost players" and asked about some of them. When I told him I'd recently located Lenore Aubert, he nearly melted away. She was on his "want list" for several years. After giving him all the contact information I had for her, he called her, and had better success than I did. He made arrangements to meet her at her apartment and interview her. This was in August 1987.

To thank me for putting him in contact with one of his all-time favorite actresses, Jim had her sign a photo to me. Due to several strokes she'd suffered in recent years, it took her about 10 minutes to inscribe the photo, according to Jim.

When Jim returned to Toronto, he wrote and published a two-part article about the lovely Ms. Aubert. It can be read here. And below is a photo Jim took, on the day of the interview.