Name
Gertrude Michael
Known For
Acting
Birthday
1911-06-01
Deathday
1964-12-31 (53 years old)
Place of Birth
Talladega, Alabama, USA
Biography
Gertrude Michael (June 1, 1911, Talladega, Alabama – December 31, 1964, Beverly Hills, California) was an American film, stage and television actress.
Born as Lillian Gertrude Michael in Talladega, Alabama, she reportedly graduated from high school at the age of 14. She became a radio singer on the radio. She attended the University of Alabama and Converse College, Cincinnati. Her childhood home in Talladega, Alabama was destroyed by fire in 2007.
In 1929 in Cincinnati she made her stage debut in a stock company. She subsequently appeared on Broadway in Rachel Crothers' Caught Wet (1931). She entered the movies playing Richard Arlen's finaceé in Wayward (1932), but her best-remembered role is probably as Rita Ross in Murder at the Vanities (1934), one of the last pre-Code films, in which she sang an ode to marijuana (Sweet Marijuana).
She had an affair with writer Paul Cain (aka Peter Ruric).After they broke up, Cain wrote the role of the alcoholic lover (based on Michael) in his only novel published during his lifetime, Fast One.
Gertrude Michael died, aged 53, from undisclosed causes, in Beverly Hills, California.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gertrude Michael,licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For
6.358
Bold performer Tira works as dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. Out of an urgent fin...
7
A stranded carnival dancer takes on a corrupt political boss when she marries into small-t...
5.4
Old enemies stationed together at an Army post vie for the same woman....
6.273
There are plenty of guilty secrets at the school where Hildegarde Withers teaches. When sh...
5.7
Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carrol...
6.2
During WW1, the destinies of British officers Michael Andrews and John Stevenson seem inte...
5.8
A crusading psychiatrist battles a sadistic female warden to improve conditions at a women...
5.8
After a love affair ending in an abortion, a young prison reformer submerges herself in he...
- 1955 Women's Prison as Chief Matron Sturgess
- 1949 Flamingo Road as Millie
- 1933 I'm No Angel as Alicia Hatton
- 1939 Hidden Power as Virginia Garfield
- 1950 Caged as Georgia Harrison
- 1936 Second Wife as Virginia Howard
- 1945 Allotment Wives as Gladys Smith
- 1933 Ann Vickers as Mona Dolphin
- 1934 Cleopatra as Calpurnia
- 1953 No Escape as Olga Valerie Lewis
- 1961 The Continental Twist as Letitia Clunker
- 1934 Murder at the Vanities as Rita Ross
- 1935 The Last Outpost as Rosemary Haydon
- 1952 Bugles in the Afternoon as May
- 1935 Four Hours to Kill! as Mrs. Sylvia Temple
- 1945 Three's a Crowd as Sophie Whipple
- 1936 Make Way for a Lady as Miss Eleanor Emerson
- 1937 Sophie Lang Goes West as Sophie Lang
- 1933 Night of Terror as Sarah Rinehart
- 1943 Women in Bondage as District Director Schneider
- 1934 Murder on the Blackboard as Jane Davis
- 1933 Cradle Song as Marcella
- 1934 Bolero as Lady D'Argon
- 1943 Where Are Your Children? as Nell Wilson
- 1937 Mr. Dodd Takes the Air as Jessica Stafford
- 1936 Till We Meet Again as Elsa Duranyi
- 1934 The Witching Hour as Margaret Price
- 1936 The Return of Sophie Lang as Sophie Lang
- 1932 Unashamed as Marjorie
- 1934 Father Brown, Detective as Evelyn Fischer
- 1934 Search for Beauty as Jean Strange
- 1933 A Bedtime Story as Louise
- 1935 It Happened in New York as Vania Nardi
- 1940 Slightly Tempted as Duchess
- 1934 Menace as Helen Chalmers
- 1934 George White's Scandals as Miss Lee
- 1940 Parole Fixer as Collette Menthe
- 1942 Prisoner of Japan as Toni Chase
- 1940 The Farmer's Daughter as Clarice Sheldon
- 1944 Faces in the Fog as Nora Brooks
- 1940 I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby as Magda Delys
- 1936 Woman Trap as Barbara 'Buff' Andrews
- 1934 Hold That Girl as Dorothy Lamont
- 1943 Behind Prison Walls as Elinor Cantwell
- 1939 Just like a Woman as Ann Heston
- 1951 Darling, How Could You! as Mrs. Rossiter
- 1932 Wayward as Mary Morton
- 1940 Pound Foolish as Mrs. Irene Reynolds
- 1934 The Notorious Sophie Lang as Sophie Lang
- 1934 I Believed in You as Pamela Banks
- 1933 Sailor Be Good as Kay Whitney
- 1945 Club Havana as Hetty - Powder Room Attendant
- 1938 Star of the Circus as Yester
- 1936 Forgotten Faces as Cleo / Harry's wife
- 1957 Perry Mason ( 1 episode ) as Helen Rucker
- 1951 Hallmark Hall of Fame ( 1 episode )
- 1958 Sea Hunt ( 1 episode )
- 1951 Schlitz Playhouse of Stars ( 1 episode ) as The Duchess
- 1955 The 20th Century Fox Hour ( 1 episode )
- 1952 Cavalcade of America ( 1 episode ) as Major Pauline Cushman
- 1951 Schlitz Playhouse of Stars ( 1 episode )
- 1952 Four Star Playhouse ( 1 episode ) as Fanny
- 1960 The Case of the Dangerous Robin ( 1 episode ) as Kay Salisbury
