Former 'Days of our Lives' and 'Bright Promise' Actress Coleen Gray Dead at 92

Coleen Gray

Actress Coleen Gray died Monday of natural causes at her home in Bel Air, longtime friend David Schecter told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 92.

She was born Doris Bernice Jensen on October 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska. At age 7, she and her family moved to Hutchinson, Minnesota, and she studied drama at Hamline University in St. Paul.

With only $26 to her name, she took a Greyhound bus to Hollywood. She enrolled at USC and then drama school and starred in the play Brief Music. She was seen by an agent and signed with Fox, where she made her movie debut for the studio in State Fair (1945).

In 1949, Gray starred on Broadway in "Leaf and Bough" with Charlton Heston.