Hope Elise Ross Lange (November 28, 1933 – December 19, 2003)[1] was an American film, stage, and television actress.

[2] Her father, John George Lange, was a cellist and the music arranger for Florenz Ziegfeld and conductor for Henry Cohen; her mother, Minette (née Buddecke), was an actress.

[4][5][6] John worked in New York City and the family moved to Greenwich Village when Hope was a young child.

[citation needed] Lange sang with other children in the play Life, Laughter and Tears, which opened at the Booth Theatre in March 1942.

The entire family worked there; Minelda ran the cash register, and Joy and Hope waited on tables.

[13] When her photo appeared in the newspaper, she received an offer to work as a New York City advertising model.

[17] After completing her first year of studies, Lange transferred to Barmore Junior College in New York,[18] where she met her first husband, Don Murray.

She came to prominence in her first film role in Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray, whom she married on April 14, 1956.

She starred as the wife of Jeffrey Hunter's character in Anton Myrer's wartime drama In Love and War (1958).

She then appeared in Frank Capra's final movie, Pocketful of Miracles, with Glenn Ford (for whom she had left her husband, fellow actor Don Murray).

In 1985, she appeared in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, and in 1986, she took a role as Laura Dern's mother in David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

She took a Broadway role in Same Time, Next Year and then made appearances in the television movie based on Danielle Steel's Message from Nam and in Clear and Present Danger (1994).

Lange left Don Murray in 1961 for actor Glenn Ford, the associate producer and co-star of Pocketful of Miracles.

[2] Lange died on December 19, 2003, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, as a result of an ischemic colitis infection at the age of 70.