Lady Westerners, early 1900s.
Born 1900 - 1919.
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- Terry Walker was born on 7 January 1913 in Petersburg, Alaska, USA. She was an actress, known for Twisted Rails (1934), Blonde Trouble (1937) and Billy the Kid in Texas (1940). She died on 1 April 1979 in Hillsborough, Florida, USA.
- Patricia Paz Maria Medina was born on July 19, 1919 in Liverpool, England to a Spanish father and an English mother. She began acting as a teenager in the late 1930s and worked her way up to leading roles in the mid-1940s, then left for Hollywood. Medina teamed up with British actor Louis Hayward and they appeared together in Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), The Lady and the Bandit (1951), Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) and Captain Pirate (1952). Voluptuous and exotic-looking, Medina was often typecast in period melodramas such as The Black Knight (1954). Two of her more notable films were William Witney's Stranger at My Door (1956) and Orson Welles's Confidential Report (1955), a follow-up of The Third Man (1949), based on the radio series "The Lives of Harry Lime". Although prolific during the early 1950s, her film career faded away by the end of the decade, leading to stage and television roles.
Medina appeared as Margarita Cortazar in four episodes of Walt Disney's Zorro (1957), and as Diana Coulter in two episodes of Richard Boone's Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). She returned to the screen in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of the lesbian-themed drama The Killing of Sister George (1968). She and her husband, American actor Joseph Cotten, toured together in several plays and on Broadway in the murder mystery, "Calculated Risk". Her appearances on television include episodes of Bonanza (1959) titled "The Spanish Grant" and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) titled "See the Monkey Dance". She played Harriet Balfour in an episode of Perry Mason (1957) titled "The Case of the Lucky Loser", and as Lucia Belmont in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) titled "The Foxes and Hounds Affair".
Patricia Medina retired from acting in 1978 after 40 years in the motion picture industry. She died at age 92 of natural causes on April 28, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. She was interred at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia, alongside Cotten. - Actress
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Jan Clayton was born on 26 August 1917 in Tularosa, New Mexico, USA. She was an actress, known for Lassie (1954), This Man's Navy (1945) and Flight Angels (1940). She was married to George Greeley, Robert Warren Lerner and Russell Hayden. She died on 28 August 1983 in West Hollywood, California, USA.- Actress
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Karin Booth was born on 19 June 1916 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. She was an actress, known for Swing Shift Maisie (1943), The Unfinished Dance (1947) and Tobor the Great (1954). She was married to Allan Pinkerton Carlisle. She died on 27 July 2003 in Jupiter, Florida, USA.- Doris May was born on 15 October 1902 in Seattle, Washington, USA. She was an actress, known for 23 1/2 Hours' Leave (1919), Gay and Devilish (1922) and Up and at 'Em (1922). She was married to Wallace MacDonald. She died on 12 May 1984 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- This lovely Austrian-born actress was born (in 1917) and raised in Vienna, performing as a child on stage and appearing in various productions for the renown Max Reinhardt. Trained in dance, she was a member of the Bodenwieser Ensemble, a European troupe. Following a few high school plays and dance recitals, she went on to study drama and voice at the Vienna Conservatory. Maria arrived in the United States at the outbreak of war in 1938 and first performed on the New York stage, notably in the 1942 production of "The Moon Is Down." Spotted for films, she was one of many foreign actresses Hollywood took in at the time to fill their quota of exotic mystery ladies in war-era intrigue and film noir. She made her debut in Mission to Moscow (1943) for Warner Bros. and continued on freelancing for other studios with Days of Glory (1944), opposite Gregory Peck, Lady on a Train (1945), The Web (1947), The Other Love (1947), Strictly Dishonorable (1951), By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), and Outcasts of the City (1958), among others. Her film career waned in the 50s and she turned to radio, TV and commercials. She formed her own production company, Maria Palmer Enterprises, and hosted her own local Los Angeles show "Sincerely, Maria Palmer" in the early 60s. In later years she wrote a number of non-produced teleplays, often under the pseudonym Eliot Parker White. Dying of pulmonary failure while battling cancer in 1981, she kept extensive journals of her life and career which were later available to the public.
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Osa Massen (born Aase Madsen Iversen) was a newspaper photographer with an ambition to become a film editor. Prolific Danish film director Alice O'Fredericks gave her a role in her film Kidnapped (1935). After only two films in Denmark, she was given a screen test by 20th Century Fox and arrived in Hollywood in 1938.- Actress
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Kitty Kelly was born on 27 April 1902 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Beginner's Luck (1935), So Proudly We Hail! (1943) and Men of Chance (1931). She died on 29 June 1968 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Jean Fenwick was born on 30 May 1907 in Trinidad, British West Indies [now Trinidad and Tobago]. She was an actress, known for I've Been Around (1935), Arrest Bulldog Drummond (1938) and Mary of Scotland (1936). She died on 5 December 1998 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Mary Philbin's life should be a lesson to domineering parents. Mary was born on July 16, 1903, in Chicago, Illinois, to John Philbin and his first wife and namesake, Mary. The child was regarded as a little beauty from an early age and her mother was exceedingly proud of her and loved to show her off. Howevr, unlike her gregarious mother (who many regarded as controlling and domineering, to the point of imprinting her strict religious beliefs on the child), Mary took after her shy, quiet and reserved father, whom she adored. Many of her contemporaries remarked how she didn't seem to belong to the current age; her personality was a throwback to the 19th century with her mannerisms and religious, quiet and very gentle nature. Being an only child, Mary grew up quite spoiled by her mother. Her father would take her often to see the plays at local theaters and even, on rare occasion, to see an opera at the Chicago Opera House. She fell in love with the stage immediately and, once home, would re-enact what she saw to her dolls--performing the leading heroine roles. She decided at an early age that she wanted a career in the theater. She took up classical dancing (ballet and waltz) and was quite adept at playing the pipe organ and piano (in her later years she kept her family's pipe organ close at hand), although much to her chagrin, she could not sing. However, she did not train in an acting school and this would ultimately impact on her later career.
Mary's early life was relatively uneventful; her mother's strong nature created friction between her parents and she became even more reserved and quite shy in public when meeting new people. The only real friend she had at that age (who would be her lifelong friend and even colleague in The Phantom of the Opera (1925)) was Carla Laemmle (aka Rebecca Laemmle), the daughter of Joseph Laemmle, brother of Universal Studios mogul Carl Laemmle. Through her friend's uncle Mary became interested in films and put her stage career on hold. Upon seeing her first "Nickelodeon", she was bitten by the film bug and eagerly awaited any new ones that came out. She was particularly fond of the films of Erich von Stroheim, so much so that at the age of 16, when she heard that the director was making his new film Blind Husbands (1919) and a contest was set up to search for talent for the film, Mary tried to sign up. At first she could not find the right photograph worthy of submission, but her mother had taken a picture and submitted it and was allowed to join the contest. The contest was held in Chicago at the Elks Club and was sponsored by her church, with Von Stroheim himself as the judge. The Teutonic director was smitten with her beauty and her eagerness to behave and speak well, and gave her the leading role in one of his films. When finding out she was to move to Los Angeles to make the film, Mary at first had reservations and (as always) consulted her parents. Her parents refused until they found out their old family friends, the Laemmles, were moving out to Los Angeles as well, and they gave consent for Mary to go but only with her parents as her chaperones (due to their fear that the "sheiks" of Los Angeles would corrupt Mary's moral character).
Once in Los Angeles, Mary was under watch all the time by her parents (in particular her mother) and, when working, by her new boss, Carl Laemmle. When arriving at the studio, she found out that she had been replaced in the leading role in "Blind Husbands". Mary was deeply hurt at the time and felt cheated, and was considering going home had it not been for her friend Rebecca (whom was now known as Carla) who recommended her to her uncle, the owner of Universal City, Carl Laemmle, and the man in charge of production, Irving Thalberg. Although Carl Laemmle had met Mary some time earlier and always regarded her as an "angelic, sweet, quiet" young lady, he was none too impressed with her at the time to consider her for a contract, owing mostly to her moralistic and reserved disposition. Thalberg held the same reservations about her. However, after being persuaded by Mary's family and Carla, Carl caved and gave 17-year-old Mary her first big part: "Talitby Millicuddy", the leading lady, in the melodrama The Blazing Trail (1921), directed by Robert Thornby. Mary caught on in films very quickly and was considered by the public, initially at least, in the same league as her bigger contemporaries - Mary Pickford, Florence Lawrence, Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish, one of those "child-woman" actresses particularly noted for her subtle but extraordinary ethereal Irish beauty.
After the moderate success of "The Blazing Trail" she was cast in Danger Ahead! (1921) in the role of Tressie Harlow; the one-reel comedy Twelve Hours to Live (1921); the western Red Courage (1921) as Eliza Fay, and Sure Fire (1921) in an extra part (her earliest known surviving film); and False Kisses (1921) as Mary. In all, she made six films in 1921. After seeing her work in "False Kisses" and in particular "Danger Ahead"; Erich von Stroheim cast Mary for his next film, which would become the most expensive (to that date) production ever for Univeral City (the costs rising up to a million dollars) - the part of the crippled girl (an extra part) in Foolish Wives (1922). Mary can be seen in the film as the little girl on crutches with her back turned, and you only quickly get a darkened glimpse of her face through her curly ringlets. Although her role in the film was just a bit part, Mary relished being under Von Stroheim's tutelage and it was from him, as she always said, she learned about "true" acting in comparison to stage acting. It has always been said of Mary Philbin that when the director was really good (such as von Stroheim, Paul Leni, William Beaudine), people noticed she could be equally as good an actress as her colleagues. However, in the hands less talented directors (such as Rupert Julian', - who would partly direct her later in Merry-Go-Round (1923) and "The Phantom of the Opera"--her lack of acting training became a real handicap for her (this is clearly evident in some of her later films).
Mary began to get more notice from Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg, after Erich von Stroheim's high recommendation of her (and of course the public's approval), and after a minor film, _The Trooper (1922)_ (v), she was given the role of "Ruth" in Human Hearts (1922). Mary began to get even further recognition and it was around this time that her face always was featured on movie magazines as the 'Cover' Girl. But Mary's personal life was darkened by her father's divorce and remarriage to Alice Mead. Mary was shattered by the event, and as a result became even closer to her mother (her biggest mistake), but nevertheless was very loving to her new stepmother and continued to adore her father.
Mary made two more films before she received her first big break as the heroine "Agnes Urban", in von Stroheim's "The Merry-Go-Round" in 1923. The casting for this film was impeccable and many of its stars would later repeat many films with Mary afterward - in particular her leading man, Norman Kerry. He always had a crush on Mary and flirted with her many times on the set, although von Stroheim, Mary's mother and father (who always were on the set with her; her stepmother stayed at home) and even Mary herself kept him from getting too carried away. Mary said in her later years how deep down she always had a great crush on Norman Kerry and considered him "a very handsome, dashing man". Everything was going well in the production until it came to a standstill for the most unusual and even hilarious reason. Erich von Stroheim was known to be a perfectionist in his work, so much so that in the plot of this film (set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the time of 'Emperor Franz Josef') he insisted that some of the actors wear underwear embroidered with the Imperial Austrian Royal Family insignia - infuriating Carl Laemmle. After an intense argument with Laemmle the wildly extravagant director was dropped from the picture. The cast was stunned and the two most affected were Wallace Beery (who was originally cast as Agnes' father) and Mary Philbin. Wallace, infuriated with Carl Laemmle's decision walked out, as did many others--even Mary considered it. To clean up the mess quickly, Carl hired Universal actor Rupert Julian to direct (who previously had directed and starred in The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918) with Lon Chaney). Mary, at first, refused until Carl insisted that Julian would be just as good a director as von Stroheim. Not having met or worked with Julian before, she decided to stay and Cesare Gravina (a favorite actor of von Stroheim) was re-cast in Beery's role. However, it became clearly evident that Julian was a novice compared to von Stroheim, although he reportedly considered himself equal to, if not better than, von Stroheim in directorial skills. Much of the original footage was cut or re-filmed upon its release, "The Merry-Go-Round" launched Mary as an "official" Hollywood star.
Although not as popular as her contemporaries, Mary graced many more magazine covers and was the feature girl for various products - even the Victrola Recording Company. During this time, Mary met the love of her life, Universal Studio executive/producer Paul Kohner - through the Laemmles. Paul Kohner was only a year older than Mary and born in Teplitz-Schoenau, Austria-Hungary (now Teplice, Czech Republic). They were immediately smitten with each other - but due to Mary's parents' religion (Roman Catholicism) and the fact that Paul was a Jew - they kept their relationship, in the early years, secret as much as possible. They exchanged love letters to each other (which both of them kept till their deaths).
Mary's film career took off with "Where Is This West?"; "The Age of Desire"; "The Temple of Venus"; "The Thrill Chaser"; among others with Paul Kohner sometimes as the producer (affording her more time to be with him, under the protection from her parents observance). But it wasn't until 1924, after she made good in the role of Marianne in The Rose of Paris (1924) that Mary was to be cast in her next, most famous and best- remembered film role of her entire career.
In 1924, Carl Laemmle was searching among the elite list of Hollywood starlets (among those listed were Lillian Gish, Madge Bellamy, Betty Bronson, Patsy Ruth Miller, Mildred Davis) for the role of the young Swedish soprano Christine Daaé in the film adaption of Gaston Leroux's novella "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra" (The Phantom of the Opera) starring in the leading role of Erik (the Opera Ghost/Phantom of the Opera) was one of Hollywood's best actors - Lon Chaney, fresh from his success in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and, much to the concern of the cast and crew, the director hired for the picture was the temper-mental Rupert Julian. Julian remembered Mary from "The Merry-Go-Round" (he also remembered Norman Kerry and hired him for role of Viscount Raoul de Chagny). Mary was cast in the key role of Christine, the chance of a lifetime. But the production was one of the most difficult for the cast to endure. Although Mary was working alongside of many of her former colleagues and friends (Norman Kerry, Cesare Gravina, John St. Polis, and Carla Laemmle), she had never met Lon Chaney personally before and, in keeping with her nature, was initially very shy and nervous around him.
During the filming Chaney and Julian exchanged heated arguments. Charles Van Enger, the main cameraman for the film, commented on how they "just hated each other" and how Julian was obsessed with Mary; adjusting her clothes, wigs, even the padding on her legs and chest. Mary put up with it - because of not only was her mother on the set most of the time, but Julian's wife Elisie Wilson was an old friend of Mary's. Upon seeing Julian's conduct- Elisie took over Mary's wardrobe and makeup for the film. On the Phantom set Mary seldom worked with Chaney alone, most of the time it was under Julian's supervision - but due to Chaney and his arguments- Chaney would direct his own scenes including several scenes with
- Little Mary Miles Minter was a child star who was dominated by her mother. At the age of 5 she first appeared on the stage in the play "Cameo Kirby". From that time on she worked steadily without a single vacation. Her greatest stage success was in "The Littlest Rebel", with William Farnum and Dustin Farnum. In 1911, at the age of 9, a New York paper described her as " . . . a ragged, straight-haired, woman-faced little one". She continued on the stage until 1915, when she started her film career. She was being groomed as a Mary Pickford star - a child of innocence. Her early pictures carried this theme with such titles as Lovely Mary (1916), Faith (1916) and Dimples (1916). Mary was described by the press as "of the screen as a sweet, pretty little girl with an abundance of blonde curls, a picture actress slightly bigger than a faint recollection, a little queen with delicate features and endearing young charms". She later worked for Adolph Zukor at Realart Pictures and one of her favorite directors was William Desmond Taylor. While at Realart Mary made a number of films including Anne of Green Gables (1919), Judy of Rogues' Harbor (1920), Jenny Be Good (1920) and The Little Clown (1921). Her salary, which started at $150 per week in 1915, increased to $2250 per week. At that time she also became involved with Taylor, but it is not known whether Taylor was looking out for his biggest star or if there was any real romance.
Then everything crumbled. On February 1, 1922, Taylor was shot to death in his Hollywood bungalow. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major scandals, coming at the same time as the Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle incident. Though she was never considered a suspect in the murder, when the public learned of Mary's involvement with a man who had questionable dealings with women and was more than twice her age, they boycotted her films. The discovery of her belongings in Taylor's bungalow effectually killed her career in pictures. Mary was so weak from grief that she was barricaded in her home for a month. By the next year she had moved out of the home she shared with her mother and was out of pictures forever. - Barbara Weeks was born on 4 July 1913 in Somerset, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for The Violent Years (1956), By Whose Hand? (1932) and Dad Rudd, M.P. (1940). She was married to William Cox, Lewis Parker and Big Boy Williams. She died on 24 June 2003 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
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Sheila Terry was born Kathleen Eleanor Mulhern on March 5, 1910 in Warroad, Minnesota. Despite her Irish surname, one of her ancestors was John Wycliffe, who had translated the Bible into English. Kathleen dreamed of being an actress from a very young age. When she was a teenager, she studied dramatics at the Dickson Kenwin Academy of Dramatic Art in Toronto. She began her career acting in stock companies. Unfortunately, her wealthy uncle wanted her to become a teacher instead of an actress. She returned to Minnesota and taught school for a brief time so she could claim her inheritance.
On August 16, 1928, she married Laurence Clark, a banker. Then she moved to New York City and was cast in the play The Little Racketeer. A talent scout saw her in the play, and she was signed by Warner Brothers. In 1932, she made her film debut in the comedy Week-End Marriage (1932). She had small roles in more than a dozen films including Scarlet Dawn (1932) (starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Nancy Carroll), Madame Butterfly (1932) (starring Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney), and Convention City (1933) (starring Joan Blondell, Adolphe Menjou, and Mary Astor). The blue-eyed blonde was John Wayne's leading lady in the westerns Haunted Gold (1932), The Lawless Frontier (1934), and 'Neath the Arizona Skies (1934). Her marriage to Laurence Clark ended in 1934. She claimed he often criticized her and said she was a "rotten singer". She married William McGee, a San Francisco millionaire, in October 1937, but that union was short-lived.
Unhappy with the roles she was getting, she decided to quit acting. Her final film was the drama I Demand Payment (1938). Then she moved back to New York City and started a new career as a press agent. She had brief romances with actor John Warburton and producer Tay Garnett. In a 1948 interview she said she wanted to start acting again. As she got older she suffered financial problems and depression. On January 19, 1957, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of pills. She was only 49. Impoverished, she was buried at Potter's Field in New York City.- Actress
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Born into a show-business family--her father was a director and her mother was a film cutter--Virginia Grey made her film debut at age 10 as Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927). After a few more films as a child actress, she left the business to finish her schooling. Returning to films as an adult in the 1930s, she started out getting extra work and bit parts, but soon graduated to speaking roles and was eventually signed to a contract by MGM. The studio gave her leading parts in "B" pictures and supporting roles in "A" pictures. She left MGM in 1942 and went out on her own, working at almost every studio in Hollywood. She worked steadily in both films and TV, and retired from the business in 1970.- Jo Ann Sayers (real name: Miriam Lucille Lilygren) was born in Seattle, Washington. Named after Moses' dancer-sister Miriam, she danced as a child, took violin and piano lessons and acted in school plays. She attended the University of Washington with hopes of becoming a lawyer, but was drawn to the drama department instead. An agent "spotted" her and offered her a chance to make a screen test, which in turn led to Sayers' brief but busy run in Hollywood features and shorts. While under contract at MGM, Sayers was among the multitudes to test for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). She later co-starred with Shirley Booth in the Broadway smash "My Sister Eileen," but left the show after a year and a half to marry. She subsequently worked in summer theater, radio and TV. Widowed after the death of her second husband, Sayers resides in Princeton, New Jersey.
- The fourth and youngest child of Horace and Robina Kelly, Jean Brooks spent her early years in her native Texas before relocating to Costa Rica with her mother after her father's death. Her time in Costa Rica enabled her to become fluent in Spanish, and she began her professional career as a singer with Enric Madriguera and Orchestra in New York City. She had a small role in the New York City-filmed The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) and the second lead in a state play, "Name Your Poison" (1938), with Lenore Ulric. She was signed by an independent film production company that had gone under by the time she got to Hollywood. She spent several years at Universal as a leading lady in "B" pictures, including several Johnny Mack Brown westerns, but her option was dropped in late 1941. By this time she had married writer (later director) Richard Brooks and, with a certain Broadway hoofer having just signed at MGM, dropped the Kelly and became Jean Brooks. She signed with RKO, where film buffs know her for her three appearances for cult producer Val Lewton, particularly her stunning performance as a haunted devil worshiper in The Seventh Victim (1943).
Her clipped delivery and intense, forceful acting style made her a promising bet for stardom, but RKO lost interest in her by mid-'44 and her roles got gradually smaller until she was dropped in 1946. She and Brooks divorced (his later studio biographies omitted her name as one of his ex-wives). For many years she was listed as a "Lost Player" championed in several magazine articles by writer Doug McClelland. She was eventually located in San Francisco, where she had moved after her film career petered out, and was employed as a classified ad solicitor on the "San Francisco Examiner" newspaper. She had married a printer named Thomas Leddy. Her death at the Kaiser Hospital in Richmond, California, in 1963 of complications resulting from cirrhosis marked a sad ending for a stylish and talented performer who didn't get the breaks she deserved, both personally and professionally. - The daughter of a clergyman and a mother, who was an accomplished painter of portraits and landscapes, Stella Dorothy Sabiston spent her formative years in her home state of Alabama. She had three siblings, all of whom died relatively young. She attended the University of Alabama, but always harbored ambitions of becoming an actress. In the early 1920s, the curly-haired brunette abandoned her studies and ran away to New York (as Dorothy Sebastian), where she took up acrobatic dancing at the prestigious Ned Wayburn academy. By the time she took elocution lessons to get rid of her noticeable southern drawl, Dorothy had her first failed marriage (1920-24) behind her. Living in a cheap apartment, and after several rejections, she landed her first job in show business as a chorus girl in "George White's Scandals" in June 1924. The show opened at the Apollo Theatre and ran for 198 performances, closing in December. Sometime prior to that, according to recollections of fellow cast member and friend Louise Brooks, Dorothy struck up a somewhat personal connection with then-British cabinet minister Lord Beaverbrook. Their meeting took place during a party at the Ritz Hotel in an apartment owned by producer Otto Kahn, at which several Scandals girls and Hollywood producers were present. The end result was an MGM contract for Dorothy.
She showed promise in her first film, Sackcloth and Scarlet (1925), starring Alice Terry. Much to her chagrin, as her career went on she was often cast as vamps or, at least, disreputable or hard-boiled "other women" in films like Hell's Island (1930). On occasion she played nice girls, for instance in A Woman of Affairs (1928), with Greta Garbo. Then there were 'friends of the heroine' roles, which included her major successes, Our Dancing Daughters (1928) with Joan Crawford, and Spite Marriage (1929) with Buster Keaton(to whom she was romantically linked at the time). At the end of her five-year contract with MGM she asked for a raise (her weekly salary amounted to $1,000 per week), but was refused. Out of a contract, her film career faltered after several "Poverty Row" productions at Tiffany and, finally, a leading role in the (for her) ironically titled They Never Come Back (1932). Thereafter, like so many other actors who bucked the studio system or simply failed to make the grade as major stars, she was relegated to minor supporting roles (though some of them were in A-grade pictures like The Women (1939) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942), which starred Ray Milland and John Wayne).
Sadly, Dorothy Sebastian grabbed the headlines not always as a result of her profession: the three-times-married actress was involved in several well-publicized court cases over tax evasion (1929), acrimonious divorce proceedings from ex-husband William Boyd (of 'Hopalong Cassidy' fame) (1936), a drunk driving charge after a party at Keaton's house in November 1938 (naively suggesting that a meal of spaghetti and garlic had been responsible for "retaining the intoxicating odor of the wine") and a charge by a San Diego hotel of not paying a $100 account, which was later dismissed (she eventually countersued the hotel for defamation of character and was awarded $10,000). During the war years Dorothy worked as an X-ray technician at a defense plant, Bohn Aluminium & Brass, but continued to act in small parts. She met her third husband at this time, the aircraft technician Herman Shapiro. Dorothy had a brief scene with Gloria Grahame in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but it ended up on the cutting room floor. After being ill for some time, Dorothy died of cancer in August 1957 at the Motion Picture Country House, Woodland Hills. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard. - Actress
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As a child she studied at Seattle's Cornish School. Still in her early twenties, after several years of stock work in New York, she joined Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theater where she won critical praise for her title role in "Alice in Wonderland." She came to Hollywood in 1934 under contract with Warners, debuting in Happiness Ahead (1934). She co-starred with Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and played in many small roles, both in films - e.g., the phony U.N. ambassador's wife in North by Northwest (1959) - and television: The Twilight Zone (1959), Gunsmoke (1955), and Perry Mason (1957) in the fifties and sixties. She died at Manhattan's Florence Nightingale Nursing Home, aged 94.- Svelte brunette Esther Estrella deserves a footnote to Hollywood history just because of how she got into pictures. The story goes that she haunted the casting offices -- along with countless other hopefuls waiting for their big break -- when a director called out to her to board a bus for immediate location shooting. The picture was The Light of Western Stars (1940), an old-fashioned horse opera starring Victor Jory. It took a fortnight after the film had been completed for director Lesley Selander to notice that he'd picked the wrong actress. By that time, producer Harry Sherman had seen the rushes and was happy with the result. So happy, that he picked Esther to play the romantic lead in his next (and arguably best) Hopalong Cassidy opus, Three Men from Texas (1940). In truth, Esther's career only spanned a couple of years and never amounted to more than decorative south-of-the-border señoritas in B-westerns or uncredited bit parts in major studio productions like Blood and Sand (1941) and Aloma of the South Seas (1941). She finished her brief fling with the movies the way she had begun: opposite William Boyd and directed by Selander (in one of the lesser Hopalong entries, Undercover Man (1942)), then quietly faded from the scene.
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Dorothy Granger was one of the first members of SAG when the Screen Actors Guild was founded in 1933. A Texas beauty contest winner at the age of thirteen, Dorothy's career ran from a long-running two-reel series, as the wife of Leon Errol for RKO, to the long-running television series Death Valley Days (1952) with Ronald Reagan. 'Dott-ee,' as Stan Laurel would call her, worked as a young foil with Laurel & Hardy, a damsel-in-distress for The Three Stooges, and a prop for Lucille Ball to pop in Perfectly Mismated (1934). From one short comedy to another, she worked with every popular comic or comedy team of the twenties and thirties, from Bert Wheeler to W.C. Fields. But Dorothy wanted to be a dramatic actress. She appealed to her funny buddy Andy Devine, who told her, "Put on a petticoat and you'll work forever." She did, and she did. In the forties, it was western after western, working with Lon Chaney Jr. and Devine in North to the Klondike (1942), Randolph Scott and Broderick Crawford in When the Daltons Rode (1940), Robert Young and Betty Grable in Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943), and Gene Autry in Blue Montana Skies (1939). Tiring of westerns, Dorothy ventured into everything from horrors with Bela Lugosi to musicals to the Charlie Chan series with Sidney Toler. By the fifties, she'd hit her stride, working episodic TV, regularly on The Abbott and Costello Show (1952), Cameo Theatre (1950) with James Drury, and The Jack Benny Program (1950). But like the westerns, Dorothy's style had passed, reducing her to bit roles in films like Dondi (1961) with Walter Winchell and David Janssen, New York Confidential (1955) with Anne Bancroft, and Raintree County (1957) with Montgomery Clift. Devine was right - the petticoat was the most natural wardrobe for Dorothy, since she spent most of her career in petticoats and covered wagons. Dorothy accepted that the West was done. Ending her career with over 250 films, she quit. The three most enjoyable things for Dorothy were making movies, her affair with Clark Gable, and watching her grandnephew, Alex Wilde, grow as an actor.- Actress
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Born in McAllen, Texas, Lois January trained as a dancer almost from infancy. Her mother believed that Lois and her younger brother were talented enough as dancers to make it in the movies, and she took the two children to Los Angeles for a short period to check out employment opportunities for child dancers and performers. Though she returned to Texas, the family eventually moved to California, settling in Los Angeles, and Lois not only continued her dancing but began taking acting lessons in school. After graduating high school Lois joined a touring dance troupe, and when the group broke up in 1931, she focused most of her efforts toward acting rather than dancing. She began appearing in plays at the famed Pasadena Playhouse, where she was spotted by a Universal Pictures executive, who offered her a contract. She got some small parts in several Universal "B" pictures, then the studio loaned her out to Columbia Pictures, where she made several appearances in that studio's comedy shorts, and she also made a string of ultra-cheap "B" westerns for such independent producers as Willis Kent and Sam Katzman. After her contract at Universal was up, she signed with Republic Pictures and made more westerns, appearing with such staples of the genre as Johnny Mack Brown and Bob Steele. She had a small part in the classic The Wizard of Oz (1939) as a manicurist doing Dorothy's nails in the city of Oz. After completing that film she journeyed to New York and appeared on Broadway in "Yokel Boy". When that play's run was completed, she got an engagement singing at the world-famous Rainbow Room. Throughout the 1940s she alternated between nightclub engagements and stage work. Eventually she was offered her own radio show, and took it. She appeared in her last film in 1961, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s she made a spate of TV guest-starring roles. She died in Los Angeles in August of 2006 of Alzheimer's Disease.- Actress
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From the grand old school of wisecracking, loud and lanky Mary Wickes had few peers while forging a career as a salty scene-stealer. Her abrupt, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor made her a consistent audience favorite on every medium for over six decades. She was particularly adroit in film parts that chided the super rich or exceptionally pious, and was a major chastiser in generation-gap comedies. TV holds a vault full of not-to-be-missed vignettes where she served as a brusque foil to many a top TV comic star. Case in point: who could possibly forget her merciless ballet taskmaster, Madame Lamond, putting Lucille Ball through her rigorous paces at the ballet bar in a classic I Love Lucy (1951) episode?
Unlike the working-class characters she embraced, this veteran character comedienne was actually born Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a well-to-do banker. Of Irish and German heritage, she grew into a society débutante following high school and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science. She forsook a law career, however, after being encouraged by a college professor to try theater, and she made her debut doing summer stock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The rest, as they say, is history.
Prodded on by the encouragement of stage legend Ina Claire whom she met doing summer theater, she transported herself to New York where she quickly earned a walk-on part in the Broadway play "The Farmer Takes a Wife" starring Henry Fonda in 1934. In the show she also understudied The Wizard of Oz (1939)'s "Wicked Witch" Margaret Hamilton, and earned excellent reviews when she went on in the part. Plain and hawkish in looks while noticeably tall and gawky in build, Wickes was certainly smart enough to see that comedy would become her career path and she enjoyed showing off in roles playing much older than she was. New York stage work continued to pour in, and she garnered roles in "Spring Dance" (1936), "Stage Door" (1936), "Hitch Your Wagon" (1937), "Father Malachy's Miracle (1937) and, in an unusual bit of casting, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre production of "Danton's Death". All the while she kept fine-tuning her acting craft in summer stock.
A series of critically panned plays followed until a huge door opened for her in the form of Miss Preen, the beleaguered nurse to an acid-tongued, wheelchair-bound radio star (played by the hilarious Monty Woolley) in the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner"; for once, it was Wickes doing the cowering. The play was the toast of Broadway for two wacky years and she went on tour with it as well. She also become a Kaufman favorite.
Hollywood took notice as well, and when Warner Bros. decided to film the play, it allowed both Wickes and Woolley to recreate their classic roles. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), which co-starred Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, was a grand film hit and Wickes was now officially on board in Hollywood, given plenty of chances to freelance. At Warners she lightened up the proceedings a bit in the Bette Davis tearjerker Now, Voyager (1942) as the nurse to Gladys Cooper. Elsewhere, she traded quips with Lou Costello as a murder suspect in the amusing whodunit Who Done It? (1942); played a WAC in Private Buckaroo (1942) with The Andrews Sisters; and dished out her patented smart-alecky services in both Happy Land (1943) and My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).
Wickes returned to Broadway for a few seasons, often for Kaufman, and did some radio work as well, but returned to Hollywood and played yet another nurse in The Decision of Christopher Blake (1948), a part written especially for her. She appeared with Bette Davis for a third time in June Bride (1948), finding some fine moments playing a magazine editor. Wickes went on to perform yeoman work in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and its sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953); I'll See You in My Dreams (1951); White Christmas (1954) and The Music Man (1962), the last as one of the "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little" gossiping housewives of River City.
Television roles also began filtering in for Wickes she continued to put her cryptic comedy spin on her harried housekeepers, teachers, servants and other working commoner types. She played second banana to a queue of comedy's best known legends in the 1950s and 1960s, notably Lucille Ball (who was a long-time neighbor and pal off-screen), Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lind Hayes and Gertrude Berg. Her stellar work with Berg on The Gertrude Berg Show (1961) garnered Wickes an Emmy nomination. Among the Baby Boom generation, she may be best remembered as Miss Cathcart in Dennis the Menace (1959).
In later years her gangly figure filled out a bit as she continued to appear here and there on the small screen in both guest star and series' regular parts. Later in life she enjoyed a bit of a resurgence. Recalled earlier for her Sister Clarissa in the madcap comedy films The Trouble with Angels (1966) and its sequel, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968), both with Rosalind Russell, She donned the habit again decades later as crabby musical director Sister Mary Lazarus in the box-office smash Sister Act (1992) and its sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She appeared in Postcards from the Edge (1990) as Meryl Streep's grandmother, and in Little Women (1994) as the matriarchal Aunt March. True to form, the last role in which she appeared was voicing the gargoyle "Laverne" in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), which was released after her death.
The never-married Wickes died in 1995 after entering the hospital with respiratory problems. She suffered a broken hip from an accidental fall and complications quickly set in following surgery. She was 85 years young.- Caryl Lincoln was born on 16 November 1903 in Oakland, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Lost Special (1932), Wolf Fangs (1927) and Charlie Chan's Courage (1934). She was married to Bert Stevens. She died on 20 February 1983 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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This shapely starlet had a minor career at Warner Brothers during the 1930's and 40's. She possessed all the physical endowments that had propelled other screen sirens of the period to stardom. Hollywood's premier glamour photographer, George Hurrell Sr., thought her alluring. Her face adorned covers of Vogue and the rotogravure section of numerous women's magazines. Yet, in spite of this, Maris Wrixon never quite made the grade and is almost forgotten today. She had a smattering of a theatrical background before she began in films in 1939. That year, Warners put her in thirteen films and then in twelve during 1940. For the majority of these, she was glimpsed as uncredited background characters, or, at best, had a line or two. Sometimes, she was a brunette, at other times a blonde. Maris did eventually move up the list of credits to undemanding leads in films like The Case of the Black Parrot (1941) and Bullets for O'Hara (1941). In between these assignments, Maris was loaned out to Monogram, which she likened to "being in a foxhole".
Her best remembered role at the Poverty Row outfit was in The Ape (1940), a lesser entry into the horror genre. Maris co-starred as a crippled girl, whose condition so moves an obsessive country doctor (Boris Karloff), that he endeavours finding a serum to affect her cure by any means, even murder (for which task he disguises himself by wearing the hide of a slain gorilla, hence the film's title). In later years, Maris fondly recalled Karloff regaling her with amusing stories in between takes. Sadly, that was pretty much the high point of her career, though she popped up in a similar offering from Monogram, menaced this time by John Carradine (as another mad doctor) and his voodoo-practising maid in The Face of Marble (1946). She also appeared in a trio of routine wartime propaganda films of negligible artistic merit: Women in Bondage (1943), Waterfront (1944) and The Master Key (1945). None of these were enough to establish her as a star.
Maris made her last film in 1951, then had a few small TV guest spots before retiring from the screen in 1963. Unlike her desultory movie career, her personal life seems to have been rather more of a success story: she was married for 59 years to the German-born editor Rudi Fehr, surely an impressive feat for Hollywood.- Helen Lynch was born on 6 April 1900 in Billings, Montana, USA. She was an actress, known for Romance of the Underworld (1928), Minnie (1922) and Bustin' Thru (1925). She was married to Carroll Nye. She died on 2 March 1965 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.
- Vera Steadman was born on 23 June 1900 in Monterey, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Nervous Wreck (1926), Elmer and Elsie (1934) and 813 (1920). She was married to Joseph Milton Flynn, Martin Padway and Jack Taylor. She died on 14 December 1966 in Long Beach, California, USA.
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As an avid movie fan, Dorothy got her chance to go to Hollywood when she won a Salt Lake City beauty contest sponsored by Universal Pictures. Signed by Universal after her successful screen test, Dorothy became one of the many contract actors working in small bit parts. She became well known due to her roles in series and serial movies from 'College Love (1929)' to 'The Last Frontier (1932)'. Dorothy appeared in a number of low budget Westerns such as 'In Old Cheyenne (1931)' and 'The Fighting Marshal (1932)'. Over the years that she appeared in Westerns, she worked with actors such as Jack Hoxie, Hoot Gibson, Wild Bill Elliott and John Wayne. By 1933, Dorothy found that her roles had become so small that in the film 'King Kong (1933)', she would be credited as "Girl". For the rest of the decade, she appeared in but a handful of films which were mostly 'B' movie Westerns. After that, she left films.- Beatrice Roberts was born on 7 March 1905 in Manhattan, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Bill Cracks Down (1937), Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) and Outlaws of the Orient (1937). She was married to John Wesley Smith and Robert L. Ripley. She died on 24 July 1970 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA.
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Kay Linaker was educated at a private school in Connecticut and later attended New York University. While living in New York, she became interested in the stage and began attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her work in several small Broadway roles brought her to the attention of screen scouts and she was signed for movie work. She appeared in many films of the 1930s and '40s (including a quintet of Charlie Chans and James Whale's final two films) before meeting and marrying singer-turned-writer Howard Phillips. She relocated to the East and, now calling herself Kate Phillips, began writing for television (her husband became an NBC-TV executive). In more recent years, Phillips taught at universities in Canada and New Hampshire.- Actress
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Bebe Daniels already had toured as an actor by the age of four in a stage production of "Richard III". She had her first leading role at the age of seven and started her film career shortly after this in movies for Imperial, Pathe and others. At 14 she was already a film veteran, and was enlisted by Hal Roach to star as Harold Lloyd's leading lady in his "Lonesome Luke" shorts, distributed by Pathe. Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife. The two eventually broke up but would remain lifelong friends. Bebe was sought out for stardom by Cecil B. DeMille, who literally pestered her into signing with Paramount. Unlike many actors, the arrival of sound posed no problem for her; she had a beautiful singing voice and became a major musical star, with such hits as Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In 1930 she married Ben Lyon, with whom she went to England in the mid-'30s, where she became a successful West End stage star. She and her husband also had their own radio show in London, and became the most popular radio team in the country--especially during World War II, when they refused to return to the US and stayed in London, broadcasting even during the worst of the "blitz".
They later appeared in several British films together as their radio characters. Her final film was one in that series, The Lyons Abroad (1955).- Actress
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Eleanor Stewart was born on 2 February 1913 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for The Rangers Step In (1937), Rolling Caravans (1938) and Pirates on Horseback (1941). She was married to Maurice Greiner and Les Peterson. She died on 4 July 2007 in Rancho Bernardo, California, USA.- Actress
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Rosemary Shirley DeCamp was the quintessential small-town American mother, a calming and steadying presence in scores of films in the 1940s and 1950s. She came to Hollywood after a successful career on the stage and in radio, making her film debut in 1941. Though she worked for many studios, she was most closely associated with Warner Bros., for whom she made many pictures, often playing a young mother or the friend or sister of the heroine. Her best-known role was probably as the mother of George M. Cohan (played by James Cagney) in the classic Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). She also did a lot of work on television; she was a regular on The Bob Cummings Show (1961) and played Marlo Thomas's mother on That Girl (1966).- Sheila Bromley was born on 31 October 1907 in San Francisco, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Prescott Kid (1934), Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite (1939) and Death Goes North (1939). She was married to Arthur Morris Applebaum. She died on 23 July 2003 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Dorothy Adams was born on 8 January 1900 in Hannah, North Dakota, USA. She was an actress, known for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Killing (1956) and The Ten Commandments (1956). She was married to Byron Foulger. She died on 16 March 1988 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.Mrs. Noonan, The Devil and Doctor O'Hara (1956). 1956.
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15 feature westerns.
1900 - 1988, 88. - Kathleen Myers was born on 16 April 1899 in Covington, Kentucky, USA. She was an actress, known for Babbitt (1924), Midnight Secrets (1924) and Go West (1925). She was married to Andrew H Nordheim and Harold Gowdy Ohnstein. She died on 27 September 1959 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
- Dorothy Dunbar was born on 28 May 1902 in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA. She was an actress, known for Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), Breed of the Sea (1926) and The Amateur Gentleman (1926). She was married to Russell H. Lawson, Tino Costa, Max Baer, Jaime S. de Garcon, Thomas Bucklin Wells II and Thomas Maurice. She died on 23 October 1992 in Seattle, Washington, USA.
- Irene Coleman was born on 13 August 1913 in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA. She was an actress, known for Tripping Through the Tropics (1934), Romance of the Potato (1939) and Old King Cole (1933). She died on 19 July 1975 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Gail Bonney was born on 15 December 1901 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Star Trek (1966), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) and The Six Million Dollar Man (1974). She was married to Joseph Saul Solomon. She died on 7 December 1984 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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In 'Some Day We'll Laugh: An Autobiography', she says, "In 1902 the family moved to Bar Harbor, Maine. (...) At 9 p.m. on Wednesday, September 17, 1902, I was born at No. 1 Eden St. and Papa immediately dubbed me, 'Maid of Bar Harbor!'"
The child "born in a trunk" of parents who graced the carnival and vaudeville circuits, was christened Esther Worth, but at age 2 she became part of the family act (with her four brothers and her parents) with the billing now extended to "The Ralston Family with Baby Esther, America's Youngest Juliet."
The wholesome but fun-loving teen Esther broke into silent films in several uncredited roles. Her first appearance in a motion picture was in The Deep Purple (1915), filmed at the World Studios, New Jersey. She also appeared in the serial Phantom Fortunes (1916). Afterwards, she appeared with her family in live theatre productions at the smaller venues, eventually crossing the continent and finding themselves in Los Angeles. As early as 1918 she and her brothers began finding extra work at Universal City.
At her peak, she she became one of the industry's highest-paid silent stars in scores of dramas, comedies and westerns, notably opposite Hoot Gibson and Tom Mix. Her more familiar earlier silent roles were as Mrs. Darling in the silent classic Peter Pan (1924), as the Fairy Godmother in A Kiss for Cinderella (1925), and as Mary Jane Wilks in the film version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1920). She was publicized as "The American Venus" by none other than showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. after appearing as a dazzling beauty queen in the film of the same name (The American Venus (1926)).
Appearing in close to 100 films over a 30-year period, she made several for Paramount and MGM come the advent of sound, including her first talkie The Sawdust Paradise (1928); the title role in The Case of Lena Smith (1929) a "lost" film directed by Josef von Sternberg; Betrayal (1929) starring Emil Jannings and Gary Cooper, and the romantic musical The Prodigal (1931) opposite Metropolitan opera star Lawrence Tibbett.
In England, she appeared opposite Basil Rathbone in After the Ball (1932) and Conrad Veidt in Rome Express (1932). Esther wanted Paramount Studios to up her contract to $100,000 when talkies came in; the company did not agree, and let her go. She went free lance in small productions. After supporting roles in Tin Pan Alley (1940) and San Francisco Docks (1940), and 7th billing in a B film in 1940 (San Francisco Docks (1940)), she retired from the screen at 38.
She earned a fortune from investments but eventually lost it due to the stock market crash of 1929. Forced to find work outside of the world of entertainment in the 1950s and 1960s she appeared on radio shows and TV commercials. In the ensuing years she was employed as a department store salesperson and talent executive.
Esther Ralston was married and divorced three times, and had three children - one from the first marriage, and two from the third.
She was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her film work.- Actress
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Born in Boston, Veda Ann Borg was a New York model in 1936 when a screen test brought her a short-lived contract at Paramount, where she made her debut film, Three Cheers for Love (1936). She fit better at Warner Brothers, where she played at least 15 roles (some of them bits) in 1937-38; but in 1939 a severe auto crash, requiring full facial reconstruction by plastic surgery, interrupted her career. Still attractive, she freelanced through the 1940s, often at "poverty row" studios like Monogram. In many of her films (both before and after the accident) she played a brassy, man-hungry, lower-class sexpot. Despite considerable talent, she received leading roles only in a few B films like What a Blonde (1945). Veda could make the smallest bit part memorable, though, with one line or a bit of business. Who could forget the sassy once-over she gives Wayne Morris in Kid Galahad (1937) or her "modderen singer of modderen songs" in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). Her later roles were more varied, from a zombie to Blind Nell (a memorable last role) in The Alamo (1960). Veda's second marriage (1946-1958), to director Andrew V. McLaglen, produced three children: Mary McLaglen, Josh McLaglen, and Andrew Victor McLaglen II. She died of cancer in Hollywood at age 58 after at least 100 film roles.- Verna Hillie was born on 5 May 1914 in Hancock, Michigan, USA. She was an actress, known for The Star Packer (1934), I've Been Around (1935) and Romance in the Rain (1934). She was married to Dick Linkroum and Frank Gill Jr.. She died on 6 October 1997 in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA.
- Viora Daniel was born on 24 January 1902 in San Lucas, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Quarantined Rivals (1927), The Life of the Party (1920) and The Fourteenth Man (1920). She died on 9 May 1980 in Los Angeles, California, USA.12 westerns
1902 - 1980, 78 - Born Agnes Zetterstrand in 1902 in the small industrial town of Naugatuck, Connecticut, Grey was the seventh surviving and youngest child of Swedish immigrants. Her life and that of her family was sent into turmoil when her father died suddenly of a heart attack in 1911. Grey's family eventually moved to Waterbury, Connecticut while she was in her sophomore year of High School. She graduated from Waterbury's Wilby High School in 1919. Grey began her acting career with Sylvester Poli's Stock Theater Company, The Poli Players. She made her stage debut in the August 1920 production of "A Tailor Made Man" at the Lyric Theater in Bridgeport, Connecticut. While with the Poli Players, she performed in weekly stock performances throughout Poli's chain of theaters. She performed with the Poli Players until 1924. During the fall of 1924, Grey was "discovered" by Crane Wilbur while performing in a theater production in Springfield, Massachusetts. She was subsequently offered a part in Wilbur's play, "The Imported Wife". Although, the play was ultimately a failure, her exposure in this production opened numerous theatrical doors over the next several years. During the balance of the 20s she co-starred with many of the periods more popular theater performers including, Edward Arnold, William Collier Sr. and George M. Cohan. Grey married Jack Crosby, Ronald Colman's business manager, in 1927. Under Crosby's guidance, she was able to break into film. She performed in bit movie parts at first, but by 1929 and 1930 was working at RKO Radio Pictures' shorts division. In March of 1931, she was offered the opportunity to screen test for Samuel Goldwyn. Busby Berkeley subsequently signed her to a five-year contract for Goldwyn's company. Grey performed in more than 45 films during her brief movie career. She received great reviews, as Edith Varney in Secret Service (1931). Phantom Ship (1935), a movie in which she co-starred in with Bela Lugosi, remains a cult favorite. She co-starred with Ralph Bellamy in the Inspector Trent film series at Columbia Pictures and was seen in numerous B westerns during her career supporting such actors as John Wayne, Tim McCoy and Buck Jones. She married British actor, Arthur Margetson, in 1936. This marriage, as with two prior marriages, ended in divorce. After her only son died in 1945 in World War II, her divorce, loss of her son and her inability to find work led to despair. She lived the remainder of her life - reclusive - with sisters in Providence, Rhode Island and Arlington, Virginia until she finally settled in Florida. She died in a Jacksonville Beach convalescent home in 1981.6 westerns
1902 - 1981, 79. - Actress
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Jean Parker was born Lois Mae Green in 1915. Her father was Lewis Green, a gunsmith and hunter, and her mother was Pearl Melvina Burch (later known professionally as Mildred Brenner), one of 18 children of a pioneer family that came to Montana from Missouri and Iowa. Jean's maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister.
Parker was an accomplished gymnast and dancer, and was adopted by the Spickard family of Pasadena during her formative years when both her father and mother were unemployed during the Great Depression. As Lois Green, she entered a poster-painting contest and won for portraying Father Time. Ida Koverman, assistant to MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer, heard that a pretty teenage girl had won the contest; she contacted the would-be starlet, and had Mayer offer her an MGM contract.
Parker made several important films in her career, including The Ghost Goes West (1935) with Robert Donat; Sequoia (1934) with Russell Hardie, shot in the Sequoia National Forest near Springville, California; Little Women (1933) with Joan Bennett and Katharine Hepburn; Operator 13 (1934) with Marion Davies; and many other films.
After several successful cross-country trips entertaining injured servicemen during World War II, Parker wed and divorced Curt Grotter of the Braille Institute in Los Angeles; and moved on to New York to star in the play "Loco". She also starred on Broadway in "Burlesque" with Bert Lahr, and in the hit "Born Yesterday", filling in for Judy Holliday. Parker's fourth and last husband, actor Robert Lowery, played opposite her as Brock in the play for a short stint. By this marriage, Parker bore her only child, a son, Robert Lowery Hanks.
Parker died on November 30, 2005 at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, aged 90, from a stroke. She was survived by her son and two granddaughters, Katie and Nora Hanks.- Yvonne Pelletier was born on 6 November 1915 in Port Haney, British Columbia, Canada. She was an actress, known for The Crystal Cup (1927), Riders of the Purple Sage (1931) and Children of Divorce (1927). She was married to Robert Lincoln Springfels. She died on 9 October 1995 in Canoga Park, California, USA.
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Many recognise Marion Mack as the beautiful but brainless heroine Annabelle Lee, of Buster Keaton's classic 'The General'. However, few realise that Marion was also a talented screenwriter who, with her husband, formed a successful production team. Born Joey Marion McReery, she began her career as a Mack Sennet Bathing Girl. She soon progressed to become a popular figure in two-reelers and serials. On one of these, 'Mary of the Movies' (1923) she featured - uncredited - as screenwriter as well as star, something she was to do many times. She did not earn her first credit until 1938 - `and only because I insisted'. She married the movie's producer, Lewis Lewyn, in 1924. She heard of the part in `The General' through her hairdresser. The resulting six month shoot was arduous, and Marion decided afterwards that she would rather quit acting than endure such a long separation from her husband again. Her last starring appearance was in `Alice in Movieland' (1927). From then on, her work was mainly done behind the camera. She and her husband produced a number of successful series of shorts, including as `Voice of Hollywood' and `Hollywood on Parade'. Soon after Lewis' death in 1969, interest in `The General' was revived and Marion toured extensively with the movie, giving interviews and lectures about working with the comic legend Buster Keaton.- Actress
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The heroine of a host of westerns, crimes and serial adventures during the 1940s, this attractive, full-faced "B" movie item was born Adele Pearce on August 6, 1915 (several movie resources list 1918). Born in Oakland, California, Pamela Blake won a beauty contest at age 17 and decided to try her luck in Hollywood soon after. The lovely brunette began with an unbilled part in 8 Girls in a Boat (1934) but then took some time off and returned to her hometown of Oakland to study acting. She eventually relocated back to the Los Angeles area and continued to apprentice in a succession of uncredited bit roles until earning her first lead opposite cowboy star Tex Ritter in Utah Trail (1938).
Billed as Adele Pearce, this breakthrough sparked a series of featured and co-starring roles. RKO director John Farrow guided her briefly in such programmers as Sorority House (1939) and Full Confession (1939), the latter starring Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. The petite actress then appeared opposite a towering young John Wayne in Wyoming Outlaw (1939). This film, along with Full Confession (1939), also featured actor/stuntman 'Malcolm "Bud' McTaggart', who would become Pamela's first husband. The couple went on to appear as husband and wife in the exploitive and unsubtle programmer No Greater Sin (1941), which posed the dangers of venereal disease and the importance of hygiene. Their career struggles eventually damaged the marriage and the couple divorced within a few years. McTaggart tragically drowned in a Beverly Hills swimming pool in 1949 at the age of 39.
Following a small role in the Alfred Hitchcock hit comedy romance Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, Pamela's best opportunity came at Paramount with the secondary femme role as a cleaning lady Annie in the film noir classic This Gun for Hire (1942) wherein she shares a notable face-slapping, dress-ripping scene with Alan Ladd's lethal hit man Philip Raven. At this point the actress's marquee name had been changed from Adele Pearce to Pamela Blake.
Pamela was subsequently signed by Metro and featured in the studio's comedy series' entries Maisie Gets Her Man (1942) and Swing Shift Maisie (1943) both starring Ann Sothern as the breezy title character. She was also romanced by co-star James Craig in the standard western The Omaha Trail (1942), and appeared here and there in other MGM pictures such as Slightly Dangerous (1943) starring Lana Turner and Kay Kyser's Swing Fever (1943). The actress failed, however, to rise above the studio's lower tier of stars, and was eventually dropped.
Elsewhere, Pamela was given the top-billed "Poverty Row" lead in the Republic crime mystery Three's a Crowd (1945); played the heroine in the dramatic Why Girls Leave Home (1945); and appeared in Captain Tugboat Annie (1945) with Jane Darwell taking over the vinegary title role. Moreover, she worked with Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall when they were The East Side Kids in Kid Dynamite (1943), and rejoined them when they became The Bowery Boys in their first venture Live Wires (1946).
The actress received extended visibility co-starring in a number of multi-chaptered cliffhangers, including Chick Carter, Detective (1946), The Sea Hound (1947), The Mysterious Mr. M (1946) and Ghost of Zorro (1949). She finished up the decade co-starring with Tom Neal in two crimes -- The Hat Box Mystery (1947) and The Case of the Baby Sitter (1947) -- and also played opposite Monte Hale in the western Son of God's Country (1948); Robert Lowery in the "B" noir Highway 13 (1948); and Richard Travis in the espionage tale Sky Liner (1949).
Into the next decade Pamela essayed the role of wife Anne Palooka opposite Joe Kirkwood Jr.'s Joe Palooka in Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey (1950) and played one of The Daltons' Women (1950) in the "B" western. She wound up her film career with the "Wild" Bill Elliott western Waco (1952). She broken into TV in the early 1950s and had already graced such westerns as "The Cisco Kid" and "The Range Rider" by the time she decided to retire in 1953.
Pamela and her family moved to Las Vegas and she retired completely from the limelight and never returned. Instead, she went on to raise her two children by second husband, writer/actor/producer Mike Stokey, who created the popular 1960s TV game show "Pantomime Quiz" (aka "Stump the Stars"). That union also ended up in the divorce courts. A third marriage in 1983 to John Canavan, an Air Force master sergeant, lasted until his death. One of her children, Mike Stokey Jr., was a Vietnam War combat veteran and demolition expert who became a technician and military advisor for such war films/epics as Born on the Fourth of July (1989), The Thin Red Line (1998), Alexander (2004) and Tropic Thunder (2008). Pamela passed away peacefully on October 6, 2009, at the ripe old age of 94, at a Las Vegas care facility.- Actress
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Collette Lyons was born on 3 October 1908 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for Frisco Sal (1945), Blondie's Big Deal (1949) and Three Texas Steers (1939). She was married to George Randolph Hearst and Alan Dinehart. She died on 5 October 1986 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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The highly versatile character actress Lee Patrick could readily play a tough, scrapping, hard-bitten dame as she did in the gritty women's prison drama Caged (1950), or a meek and twittery wife as exemplified by her uppity socialite Doris Upson in the freewheeling farce Auntie Mame (1958). She would have plenty of places to show off her range from the late 1930's on for over five decades.
She was born in New York City on November 22, 1901, the daughter of an editor of a trade paper who initially prompted her interest in theater. Lee started off on the stock stage as a teen and debuted on Broadway as part of the ensemble of the musical "The Bunch and Judy" with the dancing Astaires in 1922. She continued regularly on Broadway, despite many short runs, in more visible roles with "The Green Beetle" (1924), "Bachelor Brides" (1925), "The Matrimonial Bed" (1927), "June Moon" (1929), "Little Women" (as Meg) (1931), "Blessed Event" (1932), "Knock on Wood" (1935), "Stage Door" (1936) and "Michael Drops In" (1938).
Lee's film career began at the advent of sound. Making her debut as the star of the drama Strange Cargo (1929), she focused thereafter on theatre work until returning to the big screen with a vengeance in 1937 when she was featured in the RKO western Border Cafe (1937) starring Harry Carey. Appearing in scores of films, Lee made strong impressions as a stock player in such Warner Bros. films as Law of the Underworld (1938), The Sisters (1938), Invisible Stripes (1939), Saturday's Children (1940), City for Conquest (1940), Ladies Must Live (1940), Dangerously They Live (1941), Footsteps in the Dark (1941), Million Dollar Baby (1941), Kisses for Breakfast (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), In This Our Life (1942), and Mildred Pierce (1945), as well as other studio pictures of quality, including A Night to Remember (1942), Larceny with Music (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944) and See My Lawyer (1945). Lee's most fondly-remembered role of that period would be that of Effie, the wry, altruistic Girl Friday to Humphrey Bogart' 's Sam Spade in the Warner film noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Lee also found time to do radio with a running part on the family drama "The O'Neils." She later appeared in the 50's detective drama "Let George Do It" and in "Suspense." She continued in post-WWII filming with roles including The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1946), Mother Wore Tights (1947), The Snake Pit (1948), The Fuller Brush Girl (1950) and Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951). During her potboiler run at Warner Bros., she seemed to play everything with a biting, cynical edge, from nurses to floozies, but in the mid-1950's, the more matronly actress suddenly seemed to blossom into a dithery and obtuse Billie Burke-like delight.
As she geared herself towards these comedy eccentrics, TV got a heads up on this delightful angle and signed her to play society doyenne Henrietta Topper, the flighty, quivery-voiced wife of Leo G. Carroll on the popular ghostly sitcom Topper (1953) which ran from 1953 to 1955. Henrietta was initially played on late 1930's film by none other than Billie Burke.
There would be other fun and fluttery film turns as snooty patricians or gossipy types in such films as Pillow Talk (1959), Wives and Lovers (1963) and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), to name a couple, in addition to standard dramas like Vertigo (1958), Summer and Smoke (1961) and A Girl Named Tamiko (1962). TV guest appearances would include "Circus Boy," "The Lineup," "Wagon Train," "Lawman," "Hawaiian Eye," "77 Sunset Strip," "The Real McCoys," "The Farmer's Daughter," "The Donna Reed Show" and "Hazel." She also had a recurring role on Mr. Adams and Eve (1957) and occasionally lent her voice to animated projects ("The Alvin Show").
In the mid-1960s Lee retired to travel and paint, but was coaxed back one more time to revive her role of Effie in the Maltese Falcon spoof The Black Bird (1975) starring George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr. The only one to join her from the original cast was Elisha Cook Jr.. Long and happily married to newsman-writer H. Thomas ("Tom") Wood of the book "The Lighter Side of Billy Wilder," Lee was plagued by health problems (heart disease) in later years. Following a New York trip with her husband and a guest appearance on a live segment of Good Morning America (1975) honoring her Topper (1953) TV series, the couple returned to their Laguna Hills, California home. She died just days later of a coronary occlusion on November 25, 1982, three days after her 81st birthday. Many references list the date of her death as November 21st, but her death certificate confirms the date of November 25th. The couple had no children.- Denver-born supporting actress Irene Tedrow is another in a long line of "I know the face...but not the name" character actors whose six-decade career was known more for its durability than for the greatness of roles she played. Born in 1907, she was a lady primarily of the stage, beginning her acting career as a teen. She trained in drama at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, PA, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1929. A slim, handsome woman in her early days, her features grew more severe with age, which ultimately typed her as puritanical meddlers and no-nonsense matrons practically from her entrance into film in 1937. She seldom, if ever, found a meaty part, appearing way, way down the list of credits, if at all. A founding member of the Old Globe Theatre, she was featured in such classical productions as "Richard III," "Hamlet" and "Henry IV, Part I." She became a primary player on radio during the war years, notably for the maternal role of Mrs. Janet Archer in the popular serial Meet Corliss Archer (1950), which she transferred to TV for one season. Her radio role lasted for nine years (43-52). Irene appeared in hundreds of episodic guest appearances for nearly 35 years in everything Dragnet (1951), The Andy Griffith Show (1960), and The Twilight Zone (1959) to the more recent The Facts of Life (1979), St. Elsewhere (1982) and L.A. Law (1986). Never a regular series player, she is probably best remembered as the kindly Mrs. Elkins who appeared occasionally on the Dennis the Menace (1959) sitcom. Over the years, Irene never abandoned the stage, gracing a number of shows in her senior years including "Our Town" on Broadway, plus "Foxfire," "The Hot L. Baltimore" and "Pygmalion." Continuing to work as an octogenarian, she died of a stroke at age 87 in the Los Angeles area.
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Lillian Bronson was born on 21 October 1902 in Lockport, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Spencer's Mountain (1963), In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and Front Row Center (1955). She was married to Henry Daniels Mygatt. She died on 2 August 1995 in Los Angeles, California, USA.57 westerns, 50-71.
1902 - 1995, 92.- Actress
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Formerly a stage actress in San Francisco and on Broadway, Ainsworth went to Hollywood in the 1920s as an agent. She helped many actors attain stardom: Guy Madison, Marilyn Monroe, Rhonda Fleming, Carol Channing and Howard Keel, among others. She also put together a deal for Guy Madison to star in the television series "Wild Bill Hickok."- Born near St. Louis in 1902, and trained in Europe in opera as a mezzo-soprano, square-faced, lantern-jawed, full-figured Nina Varela came to the United States in the late 1930s and ended up in Hollywood. During the 40s, 50's, and 60's, she worked frequently at the Shubert Theater, accompanying plays that went on the road, including runs on Broadway. Most notable of those was the musical"The Student Prince," in which she played The Grand Duchess of Anastasia.
When she wasn't on stage, movies and television offered Verla other outlets for her talents. She generally played a no-nonsense matron type. The best-known of the movies were "The President's Lady (1953) and "Madigan" (1968). Her most-seen TV appearances would probably be two episodes of "Gunsmoke."
Varela's sense of humor was showcased in a suggestion to the U.S. patent office in the early 1950s: "How about listing American inventions this way: 'Patented U.S. 1952, invented in Russia in 1952.' Thus they'll have a complete record!"
Varela's last known role was in in the early 1970s. She died in Los Angeles in 1982. - Actress
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This adorable character actress tended to play older than she really was on stage, screen and TV. Petite and quite pretty in her youth, Nydia Westman was born in 1902 to vaudevillian parents, actor-composer Theodore Westman and actress-playwright Lily Wren, and was thrust into the limelight at an early age as part of the family act ("Troubles of Joy"). Her younger brother, Theodore Westman Jr., was also an actor/writer who died tragically at a very young age in 1927.
In her teens, Nydia grew in experience on the Orpheum, Ziegfeld and Keith circuits, and later made her Broadway debut with the comedy "Pigs" in 1924. A mainstay throughout the late 1920s, other prominent NY theater roles include "Two Girled Wanted" (1926), "Jonesy" (1929) and "Lysistrata" (1930). With the advent of sound, films soon became a viable medium for her as well. She began her movie career in 1932 featured in two dramas, Strange Justice (1932) and Manhattan Tower (1932) and, while she appeared in plenty more heavier material, including Success at Any Price (1934), Craig's Wife (1936) and The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), it was comedy that became her forte, lending cute and flighty foil support in Ladies Should Listen (1934) with Cary Grant, The Cat and the Canary (1939) with Bob Hope, The Remarkable Andrew (1942) with William Holden, and The Late George Apley (1947) with Ronald Colman, among others. Elsewhere, she gave her usual sparkle in the glossy musicals Sweet Adeline (1934), in which she joined Irene Dunne and others in the title song, Pennies from Heaven (1936), Hullabaloo (1940), The Chocolate Soldier (1941) and Hers to Hold (1943), playing assorted friends, maids, gossips and society types.
In the post WWII years, Nydia veered away from filming and concentrated instead on stage and TV work. On Broadway, she appeared in "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1948), "The Emperor's New Clothes" (1953) and "The Sleeping Prince" (1956), and went on to win an Obie Award for her off-Broadway eccentrics in Samuel Beckett's "Endgame" (1958). On TV, the small, round matron was featured in a number of showcase-type dramas and comedies and was a fluttery, twinkle-eyed delight on such programs as The Donna Reed Show (1958), Perry Mason (1957), The Addams Family (1964), The Munsters (1964), F Troop (1965), Family Affair (1966) and Bewitched (1964). She also appeared with relative frequency on the revamped Dragnet 1967 (1967) series in the 1960s. Nydia died of cancer in 1970 and was survived by her daughter.- Helen Kleeb was born on 6 January 1907 in South Bend, Washington, USA. She was an actress, known for The Party (1968), Seven Days in May (1964) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). She was married to Elmer Garrison and John Gerald Prendergast. She died on 28 December 2003 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Kathleen Freeman's introduction to show business came very early in life. Her parents were vaudevillians, and she made her debut at age 2 in their act. Later she attended UCLA with intentions of becoming a pianist, but was bitten by the acting bug and never looked back. She gained experience on stage in various stock and repertory companies, and made her film debut in 1948. One of the most memorable character actresses in recent memory, her stocky build, incredibly expressive face and hearty laugh have kept audiences convulsed for decades, playing a variety of neighborhood gossips, busybodies and eccentrics. Memorable as Sister Mary Stigmata ("The Penguin"), Dan Aykroyd's and John Belushi's nemesis, in The Blues Brothers (1980). She was used as a comic foil by Jerry Lewis in many of his films, always to great advantage. She did much television work, playing in everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) to Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964) to Hogan's Heroes (1965) to Married... with Children (1987), where she was the voice of Peg's monstrous but never-seen mother, Al Bundy's nemesis. She was working on Broadway in a production of "The Full Monty" when she died of lung cancer in 2001.- Actress
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When, at 50, Mabel Albertson was given the supporting role of Mrs. Carter, young actress Aileen Stanley Jr.'s mother in a Warner Bros. Technicolor musical romance, little did she know that she was starting out a movie and TV career in which she would shine as "the ultimate haughty judgmental (often wealthy) mother-in-law (or mother, or stepmother, or auntie)" in an impressive series of films, TV films or TV series episodes. Mabel Albertson's comic gifts helped her to make these generally obnoxious characters hilarious. She is indeed memorable as Jerry Lewis' mother-in-law in Don't Give Up the Ship (1959), as George Hamilton's mother in All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) or the domineering mother-in-law of poor Anthony Franciosa in Period of Adjustment (1962). On television, Tom Ewell, Dick Van Dyke and Dick Sargent, among others, were given the same treatment by their screen mother.
Even at 50 years of age, Mabel Albertson was no newcomer to the business. In fact, she had been a successful vaudeville performer in the 1920s, a radio star in the 1930s and a theater actress and director in the 1940s. She had tried her hand in films twice (in 1928 and 1940) but without much success. Ironically, it was the film business that had previously rejected her which would make her unforgettable from the early 1950s to the late 1970s when Alzheimer's Disease put an and end to a long and fruitful career.- Actress
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Dorothy Neumann was born on 26 January 1914 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Ten Commandments (1956), The Undead (1957) and Hot Rod Gang (1958). She died on 20 May 1994 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Actress
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Patsy Kelly was born Bridget Sarah Veronica Rose Kelly on January 12, 1910, in Brooklyn, New York. She began performing in vaudeville when she was just twelve years old. Patsy worked with comedian Frank Fay and starred in several Broadway shows. She was discovered by producer Hal Roach, who paired her with Thelma Todd in a series of comedy shorts. They became a popular onscreen team and made thirty-five films together including Top Flat (1935) and Done in Oil (1934). Although Patsy never became an A-list star she continued to work throughout the 1930s. She had supporting roles in Pigskin Parade (1936), Merrily We Live (1938), and Topper Returns (1941). Patsy was a lesbian and she was always open with the press about her sexuality. She had a long-term relationship with actress Wilma Cox. By the early 1940s Patsy was drinking heavily and making headlines for her erratic behavior. She decided to quit show business and moved to New York City. She started dating Tallulah Bankhead and worked as her secretary. Eventually, Patsy went back to acting and appeared on numerous television shows. She also had small roles in the films Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Freaky Friday (1976). Patsy won a Tony award in 1971 for her performance in No No Nanette. After suffering a stroke she moved into a nursing home. She died from pneumonia on September 24, 1981. Patsy is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York.- She attended grammar school in Portland, Oregon until her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where she graduated from Fort Worth Polytechnic High School. Shortly afterward she proceeded to New York City to become a model. She graced the cover on many national magazines, and was selected as the model for the Chesterfield Girl, and her likeness appeared on Chesterfield ads and billboards across the United States. She won the "Miss America Aviation" crown in Birmingham, Alabama, which led her to being hired as a hostess/model for Trans-World Airlines (TWA) before being signed to a contract at Paramount Pictures.
- Coming from a theatrical family (her mother was an actress), Pauline Curley was an actress from the age of five, and toured the vaudeville circuit with her family. Her first known film role came in 1913, and although her movie career lasted 16 years, she never made the top, or even the middle, ranks of stardom. She made a few well-received serials for Vitagraph, and was in one of Douglas Fairbanks' more popular swashbucklers, Bound in Morocco (1918), but she doesn't seem to have been able to capitalize on it, as she was soon appearing in very low-budget, two-reel Leo D. Maloney and Jack Perrin westerns. Soon the pictures got even cheaper, her roles got even smaller, and by 1929 (the year of her last known film, The Locked Door (1929), in which she had an unbilled bit part) she had apparently left the industry altogether. She was married, from 1922 to his death in 1988, to cinematographer Kenneth Peach. Two of their children followed them into the film business: Kenneth Peach Jr., who became a cinematographer, and Martin Peach, who had a career as a key grip.
Pauline Curley died in 2000 in Santa Monica, CA, aged 96. - Actress
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Alta Gwendolyn Gaze was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Her father was a film actor and singer in comedies in his homeland of Australia as well as London and New York. Gwen achieved a degree from The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, then immigrated to America and received a drama degree from Pasadena College. She began acting in plays in New York, landing a starring role in "The Women" before moving on to Hollywood for a career in motion pictures. Her first role was as Pamela Armitage in "I Cover the War" in 1937, playing the leading lady to John Wayne. In 1938 she played opposite William Boyd in two Hopalong Cassidy films, the first of which, "Partners of the Plains" offered one of her strongest roles as a domineering English girl named Lorna Drake. She also performs the song, "Moonlight on the Sunset Trail" within the film. Gwen Gaze appeared in a total of 13 films between the years 1937 and 1943. She was married in Vancouver, Canada, where Gwen had a radio show. She had two children, Carol and Peter. Gwen died peacefully in Seattle, Washington on August 29th, 2010.- Writer
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Betty Louise Foss was born during the final days of World War I in Alameda, California as the country plagued by a flu epidemic. Within six weeks, her mother died, her father had a nervous breakdown, and relatives passed her care around. As babies were thought to draw the deadly flu, Betty was eventually placed in a San Francisco orphanage where she was later adopted by Scottish immigrants William and Jessie Harrower and raised in Berkeley and Los Angeles. During the Great Depression her adoptive father's salary was cut in half and her adoptive mother decided to take Betty out of school and off to Hollywood to begin an acting career. After trying out several alter egos in the hopes of making an impression on someone in the industry, Betty Foss eventually settled on the identity of Elizabeth Harrower. Elizabeth Harrower appeared in Becky Sharp (1935), the first feature-length color film in 1935. She would continue to appear in hundreds of radio, television, film and stage productions over the next decades, most notably True Grit (1969). In 1942, Harrower married Harry Seabold, an Air Force cadet she had met in fifth grade. Their daughter, actress Susan Seaforth Hayes, was born in 1943. Her husband was called into war even before that and the marriage subsequently did not last. By the 1970s Elizabeth Harrower had met soap opera scribe William J. Bell and she would eventually start her writing career and became head writer of Days of Our Lives (1965) from 1979-1980. She went on to write for Bell's The Young and the Restless (1973) in the 1980s. Her last writing stint was on the short-lived soap opera Generations (1989) in 1991. In 2003, already while taking chemotherapy she had a prominent limited run as Charlotte Ramsey on The Young and the Restless (1973). She died shortly thereafter at age 85.- Maudie Prickett was born on 25 October 1914 in Portland, Oregon, USA. She was an actress, known for Hazel (1961), The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955) and The Jack Benny Program (1950). She was married to Cyril Bernard Cooper, Eakle W. Cartwright and Charles Fillmore Prickett II. She died on 14 April 1976 in Pasadena, California, USA.
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Born Madelyn Earle Jones in South Carolina in 1919, this future actress' childhood dream was to be a missionary in China, but a taste of acting in school plays soon changed her mind and she decided on a career on stage. Her mother was supportive of her decision and, while Madelyn was attending college in South Carolina, entered her picture in a contest sponsored by CBS Radio for a part in a radio play in Hollywood. Madelyn won the part and took the name of the character she played, Lois Collier, as her professional name.
Collier landed more radio work, and soon began playing small parts in local stage productions and getting some work in a few films for Republic Pictures. It was on stage, however, where she was spotted by a scout for Universal Pictures and given a seven-year contract. Although Lois possessed a beautiful singing voice, Universal seldom gave her a chance to show it off, and she was stuck in a succession of B pictures and serials. When her contract expired, she freelanced and did a few comedies and westerns for Monogram and some serials for Republic. In 1951 she got a role on the Boston Blackie (1951) TV series, and stayed on the show until it was canceled in 1954, after which she retired from the business.- Actress
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Dubbed "The World's Most Beautiful Showgirl" on Broadway and "Hollywood's blonde menace" on film, brassy "B" singer-actress Marion Martin was a minor predecessor to Marilyn Monroe's peroxide bombshell, yet her brazen persona was closer to the seductive leanings of Mae West. Born Marion Suplee on June 7, 1909, she was the daughter of a well-to-do Philadelphia executive of Bethlehem Steel and reared in Main Line society. She attended exclusive schools, including a finishing school in Switzerland, and once intended on becoming a physician. She instead went an entirely different direction.
With her knockout looks, a career in entertainment seemed logical. She made her Broadway debut in 1927 with a part in the play "Lombardi, Ltd.," Marion earned a part in the musical revue "George White Scandals" a year later before scoring another bit part in the Kern/Hammerstein musical "Sweet Adeline" starring Helen Morgan. Following the Wall Street crash of 1929, she was forced to find more work, finding employment as a chorine in one of Earl Carroll's New York stage revues. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. got a gander at the dazzling beauty and signed her to replace Gypsy Rose Lee in his Follies of 1931 wearing little but "a feather and some beads." She would once be dubbed "the most beautiful blond on Broadway."
Marion broke insignificantly but tantalizingly into short films in 1934, appearing in such outings as She's My Lilly, I'm Her Willie (1934), Moon Over Manhattan (1935) and as a sexy foil to Bert Lahr in Boy, Oh Boy (1936). Adopting the stage name of Marion (or sometimes Marian) Martin, she was signed by Universal in 1938 and quickly received a break in Sinners in Paradise (1938), a downed-plane-on-a-desert-island adventure which truly emphasized her physical attributes.
Quickly pigeonholed as a blowzy, burlesque queen, chorus girl, gun moll or brazen, gold-digger type in light-hearted fare or crime dramas, her foxy feline roles actually belied her off-camera personality as a shy, intelligent and chic lady. Although many of her parts were too often small, sexy, atmospheric bits, she got to play more substantial characters as time went on. She played "Gypsy McCoy" in His Exciting Night (1938), "Kitty" in Pirates of the Skies (1939) and "Lola Snow" in Invitation to Happiness (1939). Other dame roles had similar well-heeled names such as "Rose Allure," "Bubbles," "Pepper," "Daisy Davenport" and "Alice Angel." She played Mmlle. de la Valliere in the opulent period adventure The Man in the Iron Mask (1939).
Marion kept busy throughout the 1940's with flashy major and minor parts in Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940), Boom Town (1940), Tall, Dark and Handsome (1941), Lady Scarface (1941), The Mexican Spitfire's Baby (1941), Mexican Spitfire at Sea (1942), Mexican Spitfire's Elephant (1942), The Big Street (1942), They Got Me Covered (1943), The Woman of the Town (1943), the serial Mystery of the River Boat (1944), The Great Mike (1944), Eadie Was a Lady (1945), Gangs of the Waterfront (1945), Deadline for Murder (1946), Queen of Burlesque (1946), Angel on My Shoulder (1946), Lighthouse (1947), Key to the City (1950) and Journey Into Light (1951). Marion also played sexy foils to the likes of The Marx Brothers in The Big Store (1941) and The Three Stooges in the short feature Merry Mavericks (1951). She received her best billing (second) as the primary bombshell opposite Harold Peary in the comedy adventure Gildersleeve's Ghost (1944).
Marion ended her career with the unbilled part of "La Belle La Tour" in the cornball Judy Canova comedy western Oklahoma Annie (1952). She found great stability in her marriage to a Singer sewing machine repairman, and donated much of her time to charitable causes and committed to hospital volunteer work. Awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Marion died at age 77 of cardiac arrest on August 13, 1985, in Santa Monica, California. She was survived by her husband (they had no children) and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles.- Shapely film brunette Luana Walters was one of film western's more sensual prairie flowers during the late 30s and early 40s. She was certainly one of the more decorative distractions in between all those cowboy heroics displayed by her co-stars: Gene Autry, Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, Charles Starrett and Bill Elliott.
Born July 22, 1912, in the Los Angeles area, she was the second child of a signal operator for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Educated at Ramona Convent in Alhambra, California, her incredible beauty was picked up on early and, by age 18, she had been scouted out and signed by United Artists. She had just appeared unbilled in a single 1930 film and in a San Francisco stage production of "The Shyster" when illness forced her off the screen for a couple of years. When she finally returned, she began working for other independent studios. A spirited, hot-blooded gal with a lovely, exotic allure, she apprenticed and more-than-paid her dues in film bits as a chorus girl, spitfire or floozie type.
Her lowbudget career was quite erratic and, for the most part, quite frustrating for her. Other than a handful of westerns and cliffhangers, she remained stuck in the bottom ranks, with numerous unbilled sexy roles in "A" pictures. Campy leads in a couple of exploitive morality mellers came her way that at least brought her a desirous bit of attention. She played a high school teen lured down the road to "reefer madness" in Assassin of Youth (1938), and then headed up the cast that warned of syphilis among WWII soldiers in No Greater Sin (1941). She also co-starred in The Corpse Vanishes (1942) as an intended victim of 'Bela Lugosi (I)''s mad doctor who kills virtuous brides in order to secure an eternal youth potion for his aging wife. As usual, Luana shows her strong side and turns the tables on him.
By 1942, Luana's career had all but dissipated and the abrupt death of her actor/husband Max Hoffman Jr. in 1945 at age 42 proved too much for her. She subsequently turned to drink and despair. A "comeback" in the "B" film noir Shoot to Kill (1947) plus a minor part as "Lara", Kirk Alyn's intergalactic mother, in the Superman (1948) serial failed to encourage other work. Other than a few obscure parts here and there in the 50s, she was little seen although she remained in the Los Angeles area for the remainder of her life. On May 19, 1963, at the age of 50, she became another tragic, barely-reported Hollywood statistic when she died from the effects of her alcoholism. - Babe was originally a stock player with Vitagraph then joined the Christie Company as a featured player and leading comedienne Later she played leads in Jack White's Educational Comedies and with Charlie Chaplin in 'A Day's Pleasure. Later she appeared in live and filmed television shows such as Merv Griffin, Mr Adam & Eve, The Best of Post, Day in Court and Face the Facts and guested on numerous interview and panel shows.In the late 1960's she enrolled for a class in oil painting at Hollywood High School under the Adult Education programme despite having flunked art when she was in high school.10 months later she had her first one woman show which was a public and critical success. Since then she has exhibited at the Motion Picture and TV Celebrity Shows in a number of venues winning the sobriquet 'Hollywood's Grandma Moses'. She then worked on what she called 'The Vanishing Era' doing portraits of the silent slapstick comedians, the veteran producers, the old comedy studios and Hollywood landmarks. On completion and after being exhibited she presented them to the Hollywood Museum. She donated all her personal possessions and 75 of her paintings to the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center
- The multi-faceted Polish-born performer Lili Valenty appeared in a dozen or so Broadway plays in the 30s, 40s and 50s, then went on to enliven a number of routine on-camera projects in her twilight years. Born at the turn of the century, she received her start on the German stage where she became a star. In the early 1930s she emigrated to America and tried to parlay her European success into stardom here. Although she fell quite short, she did launch a moderately successful career on both radio and the Broadway stage. Some of her NY theater productions included "Bitter Stream" (her debut) 1936, "Cue for Passion" (1940), "The Land Is Bright" (1941), "Sky Drift" (1945), and "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" (1950). In 1955 she was a replacement in the role of Baroness Livenbaum in the successful Broadway production of "Anastasia" starring Viveca Lindfors and Eugenie Leontovich, which later went on tour. Lili later transitioned into the film and TV mediums, predominantly in decorative fluff unworthy of her talents. Although she made her film debut in support of Anna Magnani in the melodrama Wild Is the Wind (1957), she continued rather inauspiciously from there with a minor dowager role in Can-Can (1960), and typical ethnic parts in The Story of Ruth (1960), the Troy Donahue / Suzanne Pleshette romantic excursion Rome Adventure (1962), one of Elvis Presley's weaker vehicles Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), and the Jayne Mansfield "comedy" It Happened in Athens (1962). Sometimes billed as "Lili Valenti", she appeared sparingly after this as various mamas, madames, gypsies, nuns, ballet teachers, and the like on episodic TV. She died in Los Angeles in 1987 at age 86 and left no survivors.
- Nellie Burt was born on 4 January 1900 in Aberdeen, Washington, USA. She was an actress, known for Ben Casey (1961), Bound and Gagged (1919) and The Outer Limits (1963). She was married to William Henry McMullen and Paul Edward Martin . She died on 3 November 1986 in East Rockaway, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
Adele Buffington was born on 12 February 1900 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She was a writer, known for The Duke Comes Back (1937), West of Singapore (1933) and Jiggs and Maggie Out West (1950). She was married to Edward Vore. She died on 23 November 1973 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Ruth Warren was born on 27 March 1901 in Louisiana, USA. She was an actress, known for The Guilty Generation (1931), Men on Call (1930) and Canon City (1948). She died on 9 July 1986 in Asheville, North Carolina, USA.
- Helen Mayon was born on 31 August 1902 in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for Hilda Crane (1956), The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950) and Four Star Playhouse (1952). She was married to Robert Lynn. She died on 24 December 2001 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Natalie Joyce was born Natalie Marie Johnson in Virginia. She was one of eight children and her family moved to Pennsylvania when she was young. At the age of eighteen Natalie moved to New York to be an actress. She danced in the Ziegfeld Follies and was offered a movie contract at Christie Studios. Natalie was cast a vamp in comedies like Savage Love and Take Your Choice. Meanwhile her cousin Olive Borden had become a successful actress. Natalie and Olive were both chosen to be WAMPAS "Baby Stars" in 1925 and they worked together in the melodrama Dance Hall. Natalie was signed by 20th Century Fox and given the lead role in the Western Whispering Sage. She costarred with Tom Mix in The Circus Ace and with Marie Prevost in A Girl In Every Port. By 1930 her career has stalled and she was appearing in low budget films. Natalie claimed that she never got any good roles because she would not sleep with the producers. She married William Morris Pryce and retired from acting. The couple moved to Hawaii where they opened a successful beauty salon. The had one son named Michael. After Natalie left Hollywood she lost touch with her cousin Olive who died 1947. When asked about Olive many years later Natalie said "She was really something there for a while." Natalie and her husband William later relocated to San Diego. She died on November 9, 1992 at the age of ninety. Her husband died four months later.
- Hilda Moreno was born on 1 July 1902 in Havana, Cuba. She was an actress, known for La traviesa molinera (1934), The Invader (1936) and My Outlaw Brother (1951). She died on 29 October 1992 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.Tan bueno el giro como el colorado (1959). 1959.
-One's the Same as the Other.
1902 - 1992, 90. Cuba. New Jersey. - Charlotte Stevens was born Margaret Charlotte Stevens on August 25, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Frederic H. Stevens, worked in the Philippines and she only saw him once a year. When she was a child she took dancing and singing lessons. At the age of twelve Charlotte appeared in the movie Your Girl And Mine which was filmed in Chicago. She won a beauty contest in the Spring of 1921 held by the Chicago Journal. Her prize was a contract at Christie Studios in Hollywood. Charlotte was cast opposite Bobby Vernon in the 1922 comedy A Hickory Hick. Over the next year she and Bobby made six more films together including Take Your Choice, Second Childhood, and Choose Your Weapons. After leaving Christie she worked at Universal studios. She had supporting roles in the dramas The Tornado and The Mirage with Florence Vidor. Her performances got good reviews and she was called "the next Norma Talmadge." The petite actress was five feet three inches tall, weighed 105 pounds, and had dark brown hair and eyes.
Charlotte reunited with Bobby Vernon in 1925 to star in the comedy Air Tight. Unfortunately she never became a major star and her career stalled. Her final role was in the 1928 western Thunder Riders. On December 6, 1928 she married salesman Paul F. Madden. For several years she continued to act on the stage. She appeared in the plays That Ferguson Family and The Butter And Egg Man in Los Angeles. Charlotte divorced Paul in April of 1931 claiming he drank too much. Sadly she had also developed a serious drinking problem. Eventually she quit acting and started working as a dietitian. She married Fred Brown, a salesman, and they moved into a house on Flower Street in Los Angeles. Charlotte was heartbroken when her only brother, Lee, was killed during World War 2. Tragically on October 28, 1946 she died at the young age of forty-four. According to her death certificate she may have died from cirrhosis of the liver or from an esophageal hemorrhage. They are both caused by chronic alcoholism. She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. - Leonor Gómez was born in 1905 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. She was an actress, known for Una piedra en el zapato (1956), Viento salvaje (1974) and Huracán Ramírez (1953). She died on 28 October 1974 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.
- Katherine Warren was born on 12 July 1905 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She was an actress, known for The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Prowler (1951) and The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955). She was married to Clark Chesney. She died on 17 July 1965 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sarah Selby was born on 30 August 1905 in Middletown, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Tower of London (1962), Beyond the Forest (1949) and The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Ghost Farm (1957). She was married to Holger Yngvar Harthern-Jakobsen and Stanley Robert Wuliger. She died on 7 January 1980 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Joyzelle Joyner was born on 27 August 1905 in Alabama, USA. She was an actress, known for Just Imagine (1930), The Sea Beast (1926) and Close Harmony (1929). She was married to Phil Rosen. She died on 30 November 1980 in California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ula Love was born on 20 September 1905 in Erwin, Tennessee, USA. She was an actress, known for Springtime in the Rockies (1937) and Youth on Parole (1937). She died on 10 March 2000 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.- Audrey Betz was born on 1 June 1908 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for Monsieur Verdoux (1947), I Love Lucy (1951) and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952). She was married to Manuel Fouce. She died on 21 May 1974 in Glendale, Los Angeles County, California, USA.
- Gertrude Flynn was born on 14 January 1909 in New York, USA. She was an actress, known for I Want to Live! (1958), The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and Funny Girl (1968). She was married to Asa Cyril Bordages Jr.. She died on 16 October 1996 in Columbia, South Carolina, USA.
- Juney Ellis was born on 23 January 1909 in Pasadena, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Corrina, Corrina (1994), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977) and I Love Lucy (1951). She died on 27 July 1997 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Jeane Wood was born on 22 November 1909 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Ten Commandments (1956), A Life at Stake (1955) and The Rifleman (1958). She was married to John Hiestand and Joe Sawyer. She died on 26 July 1997 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Renata Vanni was born on 12 October 1909 in Naples, Campania, Italy. She was an actress, known for Lady in White (1988), Fatso (1980) and That Girl (1966). She died on 19 February 2004 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Rosa Amontillo, The Uncourageous (1961). 1961.
12 westerns, 49-70.
1909 - 2004, 94. Italy. California. - Vivian Bay was born in 1911 in Michigan, USA. She is an actress, known for No More Children (1929), The White Outlaw (1929) and The Parting of the Trails (1930).
- Actress
- Casting Director
- Casting Department
Marta Flores was born on 18 January 1913 in Madrid, Spain. She was an actress and casting director, known for That Man in Istanbul (1965), The House by the Edge of the Lake (1979) and La mentira tiene cabellos rojos (1962). She died on 18 February 2005 in Barcelona, Spain.- Genee Boutell was born on 5 October 1913 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Fighting Cowboy (1933), The Whirlwind Rider (1934) and Rawhide Romance (1934). She was married to Jay Wilsey and Bob Anthony. She died on 23 May 2006 in Washougal, Washington, USA.
- Virginia Carroll, who married Ralph Byrd, appeared in one of her husband's films, Dick Tracy Returns (1938). She was widowed in 1952. She acted in films mostly under the name of Virginia Carroll. She continued to act in films and some television programs after her husband had passed away and made her last appearance before the cameras in 1966.
- Natalie Masters was born on 23 November 1915 in San Francisco, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Hart to Hart (1979), The Hugga Bunch (1985) and The Night Runner (1957). She was married to Monte Masters. She died on 9 February 1986 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.16 westerns.
1915 -1986, 70. - Actress
Helen Brown was born on 16 August 1901 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, USA. She was an actress, known for Shane (1953), Medic (1954) and Out West with the Peppers (1940). She died on 24 December 1997 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
Helen Brown was born on 16 August 1901 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, USA. She was an actress, known for Shane (1953), Medic (1954) and Out West with the Peppers (1940). She died on 24 December 1997 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Fay Baker was born on 31 January 1917 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Notorious (1946), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) and Deadline - U.S.A. (1952). She was married to Arthur Weiss. She died on 8 December 1987 in Sleepy Hollow, New York, USA.
- Character actress Lorna Thayer will probably remain in good standing in the Hollywood cult movie annals for decades to come, due to one scene and one scene, alone. In the critically-acclaimed "generation gap" film, Five Easy Pieces (1970), Jack Nicholson plays a rebellious, disgruntled musician-cum-oil rigger with "loose cannon" tendencies who takes his frustrations out on an uncooperative roadside hash-slinger, played by Lorna, who refuses to allow him food substitutes while ordering a meal. This memorable movie vignette, now referred to as the "chicken salad sandwich-scene," has tended to overshadow all of Lorna's other productive work on stage, TV and film.
Born Lorna Patricia Casey in Boston on March 10, 1919, her mother, actress Louise Gibney, brought the family to California in 1923 to escape the cold winters and settled in Venice Beach, eventually securing a permanent residence in Hollywood.
From 1952, Lorna could be glimpsed here and there in a handful of humorless working-class bits in such films as The Lusty Men (1952), Women's Prison (1955), The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), I Want to Live! (1958) and Freckles (1960). She appeared on both the New York and Los Angeles stages and made her Broadway debut in "Comes a Day" in 1958, returning six years later with a role in "Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory".
A fairly steady TV fixture throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she experienced a slump for a time until her celebrated bit with Nicholson triggered a host of character film work, including Cisco Pike (1971), The Dion Brothers (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981) and Nothing in Common (1986), along with assorted TV mini-movies.
Although it did not improve her standing all that much, she made do and had a bit part in the Al Pacino/Michelle Pfeiffer starrer, Frankie and Johnny (1991), before retiring.
Lorna was married twice--to actor George N. Neise (divorced) and Arthur Dowling (widowed). She had two daughters, Adrienne and Nikki. Lorna was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease five years before her death in 2005 at age 85. At the time, she was living at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement establishment in Woodland Hills, California.41 westerns, 6 features, 52-75.
1919 - 2005, 86. - Actress
- Additional Crew
Kay Stewart was born on 17 April 1919 in Cleburne, Texas, USA. She was an actress, known for Front Row Center (1955), The Best of the Post (1960) and Life with Henry (1940). She was married to William Russell Dickens, James Russell Halford and Langdon William Proctor. She died on 5 March 2002 in San Ramon, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Amzie Strickland was born on 10 January 1919 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress, known for Doc Hollywood (1991), Pretty Woman (1990) and Matinee Theatre (1955). She was married to Frank Behrens. She died on 5 July 2006 in Spokane, Washington, USA.Mrs. Brant, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0594122]. 1956.
54 westerns, 39-97.
1919 - 2006, 87.- Mary Gregory was born on 10 September 1927 in Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA. She was an actress, known for Sleeper (1973), Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) and My Name Is Khan (2010). She was married to Alva L. Gregory. She died on 8 January 2018 in the USA.
- Elaine Edwards was born on 4 February 1928 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. She was an actress, known for The Bat (1959), Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (1963) and Old Oklahoma Plains (1952). She was married to Ed Kemmer and Wilbur Louis Paul. She died on 26 April 2004.Ella Russell, The Sheriff's Wife (1955). 1955.