EVE WHITNEY

February 6, 1923

Eve Whitney was born Eva Whitney on February 6, 1923 in Lincoln, Nebraska.

She worked as a model in New York, later modelling for illustrators Alberto Vargas and George Petty. She appeared on the cover of Yank magazine in January 1945.

She made her screen debut with Lucille Ball in Du Barry Was A Lady (1943).  Above, actor Robert Taylor (who was not in the film and is in costume for MGM’s Billy the Kid) is surrounded by (left to right) Kay Williams, Ruth Ownbey, Theo Coffman, and Eve Whitney. 

Also in 1943, Whitney had an uncredited role in Thousands Cheer in which Lucille Ball played herself. 

In 1944, Whitney was once again an uncredited showgirl in a Lucille Ball MGM film, Meet the People, again with Kay Williams. 

Whitney, Ball, and Williams were all Ziegfeld Girls in 1945′s Ziegfeld Follies from MGM. 

Finally, in 1954, Eve Whitney (using her own name) was seen on “I Love Lucy” as the inspiration for Lucy and Ethel to enroll in “The Charm School” (ILL S3;E15).  The episode was filmed on December 10, 1953 and first aired on January 25, 1954.  It was her one and only television appearance. 

After this episode, Whitney did one more acting job (an uncredited background appearance in 1957′s The Helen Morgan Story) and then retired from show business to become a real estate agent.

Her real-life husband Eddie Cherkose (aka Eddie Maxwell) wrote the lyrics to the song “There’s a Brand-New Baby in Our House” which was commercially released by Desi Arnaz and sung on “I Love Lucy.” 

The couple had two children, Casey and Christine. Casey has written a memoir about her parents which is promoted with the description that “Their mother, Eve Whitney, a stunning Hollywood beauty, didn’t much care for children. Unfortunately, she had two of them.”

This photo from a 1953 magazine TV Mirror shows Casey (center) and her dad Eddie (back to us right) watching television with the Arnaz family. 

Eve Whitney died on February 13, 2002 in Studio City, California, at age 79.