Kathleen Hughes
American actress
Kathleen Hughes (born Elizabeth Margaret von Gerkan; November 14, 1928 – May 19, 2025) was an American actress who appeared during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Early life
Hughes was born in Hollywood, California, on November 14, 1928. Her maternal uncle, F. Hugh Herbert, was a playwright who authored Kiss and Tell and The Moon Is Blue. Her desire to act was inspired by a film she saw featuring Donald O'Connor, which gave her the idea that "acting looked like fun." After graduating from Fairfax High School, Hughes attended Los Angeles City College and UCLA.
Film
Hughes was discovered in a Little Theater production in 1948. Signed to a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox, she made 14 films for the studio. She appeared in five motion pictures for Universal Studios, including the cult film It Came From Outer Space. Hughes co-starred with Edward G. Robinson in a 1953 crime drama, The Glass Web, and appeared in an adventure film that year, The Golden Blade.
Television
By 1956, Hughes was appearing in television series. She played in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1956–1957), Telephone Time (1956), The Bob Cummings Show (1958), The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, 77 Sunset Strip (1959), Hotel de Paree (1959), Tightrope! (1959), General Electric Theater (1960–1962), The Tall Man (1961), Bachelor Father (1962), Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (1965), and I Dream of Jeannie (1967).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kathleen Hughes” is american actress. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kathleen, Hughes and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “american actress” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1391538. VIAF identifies the subject as 167960363. The Library of Congress control number is no2011054643. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2025, 1948 and 1953.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kathleen Hughes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.