Frances Bergen was an American actress and fashion model.
Background
Bergen was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of Lille Mabel (née Howell) and William Westerman. In 1932, her father died of tuberculosis, when Frances was ten years old. Shortly after, her mother moved the family to Los Los Angeles
Career
Her paternal grandfather Frank Westerman was German. In 1936, she suffered a skull fracture in an auto accident, at age 14. While recuperating, she was given a Charlie McCarthy doll to cheer her up.
While in New York City, she became a successful John Robert Powers model.
She was "the Chesterfield Girl" and "the Ipana Girl" in magazines and on billboards. She was thereafter professionally known as Frances Westcott.
As an actress, Bergen had supporting or minor roles in a number of films. She made her debut in Titanic (1953), after which she appeared in Robert Z. Leonard"s Her Twelve Men (1954), and Douglas Sirk"s Interlude (1957).
During the 1958-1959 television season, Frances became the recurring love interest on the cult western show Yancy Derringer as Madame Francine, the strong willed but beautiful owner of a members-only gambling house in New Orleans set in 1868.
Frances also made numerous other appearances on television, with guest starring roles on The Millionaire, The Dick Powell Show, Barnaby Jones, MacGyver, and Murder, She Wrote. She returned to films in the 1980s, with small roles in American Gigolo (1980), The Sting II (1983), The Star Chamber (1983), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Hollywood Wives (1985), The Morning After (1986), and Made in America (1993). She also had a major part in Henry Jaglom"s independently made film Eating (1990).
She appeared on two episodes of Murphy Brown, her daughter"s hit show, including Participant One of the series finale in 1998.
Bergen died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of undisclosed causes on October 2, 2006, aged 84.