Coleen Gray

Coleen Gray, a Midwest farmer’s daughter who became an actress known best for the films “Nightmare Alley,” “Red River” and “The Killing,” died Monday of natural causes, according to multiple news sources. She was 92.

“My last dame is gone. Always had a feeling she'd be the last to go,” wrote Eddie Muller, founder and editor of the nonprofit Film Noir Foundation, in a Facebook post. Muller noted that he became friends with the actress after collaborating on his book "Dark City Dames."

“She was an exceptional person, who made a fulfilling life for herself,” Muller said of the self-effacing actress.

Born Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska, Doris Jensen later took the stage name Coleen Gray.

In 1948’s “Red River,” she played the love interest of the character played by John Wayne.

In 1947’s “Kiss of Death,” Gray made her debut in a starring role as Nette, “the girlfriend and future wife of ex-con Nick Bianco,” played by Victor Mature, “who battles psychopathic killer Tommy Udo … in a bid to go straight once and for all,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.

By the 1970s, Gray had quit show business to help actual criminals go straight as part of the Prison Fellowship, a nonprofit charity organization founded by born-again Watergate convict Chuck Colson, according to her Turner Classic Movies biography.