Actress, Singer. A soprano whose operatic ambitions came up short, she is remembered as Christine in the Oscar-winning 1943 remake of "Phantom of the Opera". Born Suzanne DeLee Flanders Larson, she was raised in Minneapolis under conditions of poverty, showed early evidence of talent, was able to mimic stars of the day by age three, and was singing on the radio at five. Signed by MGM at 12, she was relocated to Hollywood and groomed for stardom but lost her contract after refusing the lead in "National Velvet". Signing with Paramount and renamed 'Susanna Foster', she made her silver screen debut in 1939's "The Great Victor Herbert" and had a major hit with the 1942 "There's Magic in Music". Moving on to Universal, she played Christine in the first sound version of "Phantom"; after a succession of films including "Top Man" and "Star Spangled Rhythm" (both 1943) and the 1944 horror flick "The Climax" with Boris Karloff, she quit Hollywood in 1945. Susanna had dreamed of performing grand opera and though she had turned-down a tour with Nelson Eddy was sponsored on a post-war tour of Europe with soprano Dusolina Giannini, and while the opera career didn't work-out she did once get to sing at the White House for Harry Truman. Susanna returned to California and sang "Naughty Marietta" with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, but in 1948 she married baritone Wilbur Evans (1905-1987) in what turned out to be a match-made-in-Hell and was out of show business by the late 1940s. A 1962 comeback attempt was foiled when Evans, from whom she had been divorced since 1956, proved to be vindictive, blocking her from taking their two children away from New York and then refusing to make court ordered alimony and child support payments. After working long hours on Wall Street and as an answering service operator she eventually moved to California but returned to the east coast in her final years. Susanna died in a New Jersey nursing home for actors in which she had lived since 2003; a number of her films are preserved on DVD.