Career
She initially entered films at Radio-Keith-Orpheum, working as Renee Haal, and made her début in Sam Wood"s Kitty Foyle (1940), the film that garnered Ginger Rogers her Oscar. Beginning two years later in the Danny Kaye starring vehicle Up in Arms (1944), she began working as Renee Godfrey. She continued working in small but important roles, such as Vivian Vedder in Terror by Night (1946) and Mistress in Stanley Kramer"s Inherit the Wind.
Renee Godfrey worked into the 1960s, appearing in Can-Can and Tender Is the Night.
Foreign the most part, however, Haal was out of view. Her director-husband, who had flourished on 50s television, was in ill health by the end of the decade.
Taking secretarial and real estate classes to help support the family income, Haal tried making a comeback of sorts, finding bit roles in the films. Still a robust beauty, she was also a guest player on such popular shows as Perry Mason, Hazel, The Donna Reed Show and Wagon Train.
At the age of 44, she died on May 24, 1964 in Los Angeles, California, after an extended battle against cancer, and before the release of her final film, the Disney-produced Those Calloways.
Her husband died in 1970.
