Ann Rutherford, Gone With the Wind Star, Dies at 94

Ann Rutherford, who played Scarlett O'Hara's sister Carreen in Gone with the Wind, died Monday evening in her Beverly Hills home. She was 94.

The actress, who made her mark opposite Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy's girlfriend Polly Benedict in the late '30s, had been in declining health.

Born in Vancouver to a singer father and a silent-film actress, Rutherford moved with her family to Los Angeles when she was nine years old.

As a teenager, she figured out that if she became a radio actress she could get out of school. So she became a radio actress. Simple as that!

Her first movie role - of more than 60 - was in the low-budget 1935 Waterfront Lady. She then made Westerns with John Wayne and Gene Autry.

After she began appearing in the Andy Hardy series, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer tried to prevent her from being in Gone with the Wind.

This was because he thought Carreen, who was Scarlett's understanding little sister, was "a nothing part," Rutherford said in later interviews.

But she prevailed upon the boss, and, as the Times quotes her as saying in 2009 how the "'nothing part' turned my golden years into platinum."

Her death leaves only one star alive from that 1939 classic: Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie. The two-time Oscar winner turns 96 July 1.

Married twice, including to Batman TV producer William Dozier, who died in 1991, Rutherford is survived by a daughter and two grandsons.

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