Vanessa Brown (March 24, 1928 – May 21, 1999) was an Austrian-American actress who was successful in radio, film, theater, and television.
Born Smylla Brynd in Vienna, Austria to Jewish parents, Brown and her family fled to Paris, France in 1937 to escape persecution with the rise of the Nazi Party. Within a few years the family had settled in America and Brown auditioned for Lillian Hellman for a role in Watch on the Rhine. Fluent in several languages, the youngster impressed Hellman with her presence and authentic Teutonic accent, and she was signed as understudy to Ann Blyth, eventually doing the role of Babette on Broadway and in the touring production. In high school she wrote and directed school plays.
Her IQ of 165 led to two years of work as one of the young panelists on the radio series Quiz Kids, and she was also a junior member of the National Board of Review, the critical panel serving the motion picture industry. RKO Radio Pictures brought her family to Los Angeles, and Brown made her film debut (as Tessa Brind) in Youth Runs Wild (1944). RKO changed her screen name to Vanessa Brown and assigned her to a series of ingenue roles over the next few years. In the late
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