Another gorgeous "B" movie blonde who came and went uneventfully in the 40s, the beautiful Martha O'Driscoll started off modeling as a child. Her parents were nonprofessionals. Trained in singing and dancing, she was discovered by choreographer Hermes Pan in a local theater production in Phoenix, which led to unbilled bits in musical movies from 1935. Once she had her foot in the door, she was gro ...
show all Another gorgeous "B" movie blonde who came and went uneventfully in the 40s, the beautiful Martha O'Driscoll started off modeling as a child. Her parents were nonprofessionals. Trained in singing and dancing, she was discovered by choreographer Hermes Pan in a local theater production in Phoenix, which led to unbilled bits in musical movies from 1935. Once she had her foot in the door, she was groomed in more visible parts and began pitching products for Max Factor and Royal Crown Cola, among many others, in magazine ads, while such endorsements promoted her upcoming pictures in return. She attracted film offers from both Paramount and Universal studios in her twelve Hollywood years, which included musicals, silly slapstick and horror films. She appeared as "Daisy Mae" in the first screen version of Li'l Abner (1940) and proved a sexy foil for Abbott & Costello and Olsen & Johnson in their comedy vehicles. She played the pretty prairie flower to a couple of notable western film stars including Tim Holt, and was terrorized by the Wolfman, Dracula AND the Frankenstein Monster in her most notable feature House of Dracula (1945). In 1943, she married a Lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy but they separated ten months later. Following her last film Carnegie Hall (1947) and a final divorce decree from her first marriage, she married a second time to Chicago businessman Arthur Appleton, heir to an industrial empire, and retired completely. She was only 25. In Chicago, she became one of the city's more civic-minded leaders, an interest which would last for more than four decades. She also served as an executive for many committees, including the Sarah Siddons Society, and on the Board of Directors for a few of her husband's companies. From time to time, she even appeared in nostalgia conventions. She died in 1998.
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