Jean Heather

Heather was the only child of Dewey and Florence Heatherington. She was born in Omaha. After she and her parents moved to Oakland, California, she graduated from Oakland High School. She began her collegiate studies at the University of California at Berkeley before studying at Oregon State University, 1940 to 1941. She transferred to the University of Washington in 1942. She was an initiate of the Alpha Theta chapter of Alpha Delta Pi at the University of Washington. Following her college graduation, Heather signed a contract with Paramount. She acted in two Oscar-nominated movies in 1944: the crime drama Double Indemnity, in which she played Lola Dietrichson, a young woman convinced that her stepmother Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) is responsible for the murder of her father, and Going My Way, where she played a runaway teenager assisted by Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby).

Heather's acting career was cut short by an automobile accident in December 1947, in which she was thrown from her car onto the pavement and suffered severe facial lacerations.