Kooky kid sister, romantic lead, comic turn, cantankerous old dame … we pick out her greatest roles
An early Shirley in this epic Technicolor comedy-adventure based on Jules Verne, overstuffed with superstar cameos and produced by the impresario Mike Todd. David Niven sauntered through the role of the globe-circling gent Phileas Fogg and 22-year-old MacLaine was cast in the way Hollywood sometimes saw her in those days … as someone whose feline, gamine looks had something exotic and Asiatic about them. She was the Indian Princess Aouda, widowed after a loveless arranged marriage but rescued from the funeral pyre by the bold Fogg, whom she then joins on his travels for a while. A sweet and likable comic turn.
