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Lenore Lonergan

film actress (1928-1987)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ6523095
Source-derived summary

Lenore Lonergan (June 2, 1928 – August 31, 1987) was an American stage and film actress during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

Biography

She came from a long line of actors; her paternal grandfather, Lester Lonergan, was an actor, and her father, Lester Lonergan II, was a renowned actor. Her mother, Julia Mary (Juliet) McIntyre-Lonergan, daughter of Hector McIntyre and Julia Fennell of Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, was also an actress and opera singer who trained at New England Conservatory of Music. There was a floor-to-ceiling portrait of her as Juliet Capulet from Romeo and Juliet that hung in their apartment at 58 West 58th Street in New York City. Her brother, Lester Lonergan III, was an actor as well.

Lonergan appeard in some Paramount films in 1933. She made her stage debut on Broadway at the age of 6, in Mother Lode, starring Melvyn Douglas. When she was 11, Lonergan was in the original cast of The Philadelphia Story on Broadway, playing the impish younger sister to Katharine Hepburn's character. A review in the trade publication Variety said, "Eleven-year-old Lenore Lonergan, of the veteran Lester Lonergan tribe, is acceptably precocious and makes much of her many fat lines."

She later played juvenile roles in Junior Miss by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields, and in Dear Ruth by Norman Krasna. She appeared in Crime Marches On, Fields Beyond, and in the film Tom, Dick and Harry, among others.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lenore Lonergan” is film actress (1928-1987). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lenore, Lonergan and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1928, 1987, 1933—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1928-06-02. For this dossier, Lenore, Lonergan and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “film actress (1928-1987)” 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.

Evidence profile

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 Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6523095. VIAF identifies the subject as 65957618. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1987 and 1933.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lenore Lonergan”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lenore Lonergan primary sources, Lenore Lonergan archive and Lenore research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lenore Lonergan”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lenore Lonergan” 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.