Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, Leigh was discovered at 18 by actress Norma Shearer, who helped her secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

[9] Though Leigh initially left college to pursue her film career, she re-enrolled in night classes at the University of Southern California in early 1947.

[10] In February 1946, actress Norma Shearer was vacationing at Sugar Bowl, a ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains where Leigh's parents were working at the time.

[11][12] In the resort lobby, Shearer noticed a photograph of Leigh taken by her father over the Christmas holiday, which he had printed and placed in a photo album available for guests to browse.

"[13] Through her association with MGM, Shearer was able to facilitate screen tests for Leigh with Selena Royle,[14] after which Wasserman negotiated a contract for her, despite her having no acting experience.

[16] Prior to beginning her film career, Leigh was a guest star on the radio dramatic anthology The Cresta Blanca Hollywood Players.

[20] Immediately after the release of The Romance of Rosy Ridge, Leigh was cast with Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr, and Angela Lansbury in the drama If Winter Comes (1947), playing a young pregnant woman in an English village.

[23] Leigh appeared in a number of films in 1949, including the thriller, Act of Violence (1949), with Van Heflin and Robert Ryan, directed by Fred Zinnemann.

[24] She also had a significant hit with MGM's version of Little Women, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, in which she portrayed Meg March, alongside June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor.

[25] Also in 1949, Leigh appeared as a nun in the anti-communist drama The Red Danube, which earned her critical acclaim,[26] followed by a role as Glenn Ford's love interest in The Doctor and the Girl.

[28] That December, she started work on Josef von Sternberg's adventure-drama film Jet Pilot, in which she starred as the female lead opposite John Wayne.

[33] Leigh had a significant commercial success with the swashbuckler-themed Scaramouche (1952), in which she starred as Aline de Gavrillac opposite Stewart Granger and Eleanor Parker.

[34] Next, she received top-billing in the critically acclaimed[35] comedy Fearless Fagan (1952), about a clown drafted into the military, followed by a role opposite James Stewart in the Western The Naked Spur (1953).

[33] Less well received was the comedy Confidentially Connie (1953), in which Leigh starred opposite Van Johnson as a pregnant housewife who helps trigger a price war at a local butcher shop.

[38] Leigh was cast as Robert Wagner's love interest in the Fox-produced adventure film Prince Valiant (1954), a Viking-themed feature based on Hal Foster's comic of the same name.

[39] Also in 1954, Leigh had a supporting role in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Living It Up (1954) for Paramount,[40] followed by Universal's swashbuckler film The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), in which she appeared opposite Curtis, marking their second feature together.

[41] Leigh also starred opposite Robert Taylor in MGM's film noir Rogue Cop (1954), portraying a femme fatale lounge singer.

[44] Leigh appeared in Pete Kelly's Blues (1954) with Jack Webb (who also directed), and subsequently starred in her first feature under the deal with Columbia: the title role in the musical comedy My Sister Eileen (1955), co-starring Jack Lemmon, Betty Garrett and Dick York, and based on a series of New Yorker stories about two sisters living in New York City.

[54] Also in 1960, Leigh was cast in her most iconic role, as the morally conflicted murder victim Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, co-starring with John Gavin and Anthony Perkins, and released by Universal.

[63][64] The divorce was finalized in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on September 14, 1962; the following day, Leigh married stockbroker Robert Brandt (1927–2009) in a private ceremony in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[72] She next portrayed a psychiatrist opposite Jerry Lewis in the comedy Three on a Couch,[73] followed by a lead role in An American Dream, based on the Norman Mailer novel of the same name; the latter film received critical backlash.

[74] Leigh's initial television appearances were on anthology programs such as Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre and The Red Skelton Hour.

She also starred in several made-for-TV films, most notably the off-length (135 minutes instead of the usual 100) The House on Greenapple Road, which premiered on ABC in January 1970 to high ratings.

In 1972, Leigh starred in the science fiction film Night of the Lepus with Stuart Whitman, as well as the drama One Is a Lonely Number with Trish Van Devere.

In 1975, she played an ex-Hollywood song and dance star opposite Peter Falk and John Payne in the Columbo episode "Forgotten Lady".

two-part episode, "The Concrete Overcoat Affair", in which she played a sadistic Thrush agent named Miss Dyketon, a highly provocative role for mainstream television at the time.

Leigh made her stage debut opposite Jack Cassidy in the original Broadway production of Murder Among Friends, which opened at the Biltmore Theatre on December 28, 1975.

Leigh subsequently appeared opposite her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, in John Carpenter's supernatural horror film The Fog (1980), in which a phantom schooner unleashes ghosts on a small coastal community.

[99] Leigh was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, on May 14, 2004, where she had attended college.

This memorial is a tribute to her life and career in the Stockton region as well as her magnificent contributions to the Hollywood film industry as an actress, wife, mother and humanitarian.