Topic: Gale Storm, SWING PARADE costar, 87

[BeAStooge]

1950s sitcom star (MY LITTLE MARGIE), and 1940s Monogram B-musical star (SWING PARADE OF 1946 with The Three Stooges), has died at age 87 in Danville, CA.

From the Los Angeles Times...

Gale Storm dies at 87; star of '50s sitcoms
by Dennis McLellan
June 28, 2009

Gale Storm, a Texas native who landed in Hollywood after winning a national talent search and later shot to the top on television as the vivacious star of two popular 1950s situation comedies, "My Little Margie" and "The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna," has died. She was 87.

Storm, who also had a successful recording career during her TV heyday, died Saturday of natural causes at a convalescent hospital in the Northern California community of Danville, according to her son Peter Bonnell.

A summer replacement for "I Love Lucy," "My Little Margie" ran from 1952 to 1955, with Storm starring as the plucky young Margie Albright and Charles Farrell as her handsome widower father, Vern, who shared his Fifth Avenue apartment with her. Although critics generally panned "My Little Margie" as a lightweight farce, the public fell in love with the mischievous Margie. A 1953 poll of the most popular TV stars listed Storm at No. 2, behind TV comedy queen Lucille Ball.

After "My Little Margie" ended, Storm starred in "The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna," in which she played social director Susanna Pomeroy aboard the luxury liner the SS Ocean Queen. The situation comedy, featuring Zasu Pitts as the ship's flighty beautician Elvira "Nugey" Nugent and Roy Roberts as Capt. Huxley, ran from 1956 to 1960.

Storm was a pert and pretty 17-year-old Houston, Texas, high school senior named Josephine Cottle when she arrived in Hollywood in late 1939 as a finalist in the nationwide "Gateway to Hollywood" talent contest.

Born on April 5, 1922, in Bloomington, Texas, the auburn-haired Storm was the youngest of five children whose father died when she was a year old. She had played the leads in numerous plays and musicals in school, but two of her teachers had to push her to enter the "Gateway" competition. The winning actor and actress were promised contracts with RKO Studios and guaranteed a role in a major motion picture. And, as Hollywood tradition dictated, they would be given new, marquee-suitable names.
 
During the elimination period in Hollywood, the male and female finalists acted in scenes broadcast live on Sundays over CBS Radio, with the home audience spurred to tune in again the following week to find out: "Who will be Terry Belmont?" "Who will be Gale Storm?" Recalling her win in a Los Angeles Times interview nearly 50 years later, Storm flashed her trademark dazzling smile and said, "At the time, I was so impressed, I didn't even see the humor in the name Gale Storm. It was so exciting and so thrilling. It's like a Cinderella story."

If young Josephine Cottle was Cinderella, her Prince Charming was her male co-winner, the newly christened Terry Belmont: Lee Bonnell, a handsome Indiana University drama student from South Bend, Ind. In 1941, Storm married Bonnell, who became an insurance executive after a short-lived film career. Their marriage lasted until Bonnell's death in 1986 and produced three sons and a daughter: Phillip, Peter, Paul and Susie.

Beginning with "Tom Brown's School Days" in 1940, Storm appeared in 36 movies over the next dozen years. Dropped by RKO after six months and two pictures, she appeared in a variety of B-movies at Republic, Monogram, Allied Artists and Universal. Among her film credits, which included musical comedies, film noir dramas and westerns (three with Roy Rogers), are starring roles in films such as "Freckles Comes Home," "Where Are Your Children?," "Campus Rhythm," "G.I. Honeymoon," "Sunbonnet Sue," "Swing Parade of 1946," and "It Happened on 5th Avenue."

But by the early '50s, her movie career was in a slump and she was resigned to devoting full time to her family when she received a call from producer Hal Roach Jr., who wanted her for the lead in a proposed TV series, "My Little Margie." "Without television, I would still be Gale Storm, housewife and sometimes bit player," Storm told The Times in 1953.

Her success with "My Little Margie" on television -- and a radio version with original episodes -- led to her being approached to do a nightclub act in Las Vegas during the summers of 1953 and 1954. Storm, who had spent five years studying voice, also sang on numerous TV variety shows.

After hearing Storm sing on one live TV show, Dot Records president Randy Wood immediately signed her to his label. Her first record, the rhythm and blues song "I Hear You Knocking," soared to No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1955. Other Top 20 hits followed, including "Teenage Prayer," "Memories Are Made of This," "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?," "Ivory Tower" and "Dark Moon."

Storm, who received three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing her work in TV, radio and recording, saw her career decline dramatically after her second series ended in 1960. She kept busy with summer stock and dinner theater, starring in productions such as "Forty Carats," "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," "South Pacific," "Finian's Rainbow," "Cactus Flower" and "Plaza Suite."

"My whole life has been a pattern of success," Storm told The Times in 1981. "So many marvelous things that I would never even have dreamt of wishing for [have] happened to me." But there also was an unexpectedly dramatic downside. In 1980, she returned to the limelight as the commercial spokeswoman for Raleigh Hills Hospital, the now-defunct alcohol treatment chain where she had been treated for a serious bout with alcoholism. Alcoholism, she told The Times in 1988, "is a disease of denial. I had been the kind of alcoholic -- as so many women are -- that I was so careful. You talk about a secret drinker." Professionally, she said, she never took a drink before a performance, and even socially, if everyone had only a drink or two, so would she. She could do that, she said, because "I'd fortify myself before I went out and I'd compensate afterward, as well. "With me, once it [alcohol] got hold of me, I could go just so many hours without my body craving and demanding."

She had been in and out of a number of hospitals before she heard of Raleigh Hills. In 1979, she underwent detoxification at the Raleigh Hills Hospital in Oxnard, followed by its aversion therapy and counseling program. Afterward, she said, she never craved alcohol again. "It was just like God turned it off. That was it! And it was heaven," said Storm, who chronicled her struggle with alcoholism in her 1981 autobiography, "I Ain't Down Yet."

Storm also credited her faith in God for helping her achieve sobriety. "The spiritual part of my life is the most important," she said. "That's the source of my strength." Through it all, she said, her husband offered his support. "It was absolutely a great marriage," she said.

In 1988, two years after Bonnell's death, Storm married retired ABC executive Paul Masterson, a widower whom she met through a mutual friend. They were wed in South Shores Baptist Church in Laguna Niguel, where Storm sang in the choir. Masterson died in 1996.

In addition to her son Peter, she is survived by sons Phillip and Paul and a daughter, Susanna Harrigan. She is also survived by eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Services are pending.

[chad2411]

Well she lived through 2 husbands, not bad.  LOL, just kidding.  I don't remember her specifically, but gives me a reason to watch Swing Parade again.

[curlysdame]

Oh no!  I just saw that article while I was reading Yahoo news tonight.  I definitely remember her from 'Swing Parade.'  ...R.I.P Gale

Say Brent, just out of curiosity, how many co-stars are still with us, who worked with the Stooges during the Curly era (besides Joan, and Adrian Booth)?

[curlysdame]

Oh no!  I just saw that article while I was reading Yahoo news tonight.  I definitely remember her from 'Swing Parade.'  ...R.I.P Gale.

Say Brent, just out of curiosity, how many co-stars are still with us, who worked with the Stooges during the Curly era (besides Joan, and Adrian Booth)?

[BeAStooge]

... how many co-stars are still with us, who worked with the Stooges during the Curly era (besides Joan, and Adrian Booth)?

Between Frank Reighter's research and correspondence, and the actors met at Fan Club events and/or trips to California...

Beverly Warren (THREE LOAN WOLVES), Nita Bieber & Gloria Patrice (RHYTHM AND WEEP), Julie Gibson (THREE SMART SAPS, SOCK-A-BYE BABY), Maury Dexter (UNCIVIL WAR BIRDS), Joyce Gardner (SOCK-A-BYE BABY), LaVerne Thompson & Betty Phares (GENTS WITHOUT CENTS), Adele Mara (I CAN HARDLY WAIT), Sethma Williams (DIZZY PILOTS, scene deleted), Rebel Randall (BOOBY DUPES). Also, Edith Fellows, who appeared in the print ads for the 1938 Pillsbury toy projector; she wasn't in a film with Moe, Larry & Curly.

[chad2411]

Between Frank Reighter's research and correspondence, and the actors met at Fan Club events and/or trips to California...

Beverly Warren (THREE LOAN WOLVES), Nita Bieber & Gloria Patrice (RHYTHM AND WEEP), Julie Gibson (THREE SMART SAPS, SOCK-A-BYE BABY), Maury Dexter (UNCIVIL WAR BIRDS), Joyce Gardner (SOCK-A-BYE BABY), LaVerne Thompson & Betty Phares (GENTS WITHOUT CENTS), Adele Mara (I CAN HARDLY WAIT), Sethma Williams (DIZZY PILOTS, scene deleted), Rebel Randall (BOOBY DUPES). Also, Edith Fellows, who appeared in the print ads for the 1938 Pillsbury toy projector; she wasn't in a film with Moe, Larry & Curly.

Most all women in their late 80's and 90's, interesting, wasn't one a child in production?  Meaning she would be a little younger.

[archiezappa]

You know, I loved her in "Swing Parade."  I have the Legend Films DVD of it.  That is an excellent DVD of that movie. 

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie so much that I had to comment about it on her website.  And she actually emailed me back!  That really made my day.  It was the first time that I actually got an email from a leading lady in a motion picture!  I still have that one saved.  It's a good thing.  Wow!  I'm really sorry to hear about this.