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Another Day, Another Legend Dies
Today (or, rather, she died on Saturday, but I just saw the notice today), it’s Gale Storm, sitcom pioneer and, arguably most famously, the star of the long-running 1950s show, My Little Margie (which I remember watching, so there you go).
From CNN:
Gale Storm, whose acting and singing talents earned her three stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, died Saturday, according to a Danville, California nursing facility where she was a patient.
Storm was 87.
Storm got her first movie contract, a stage name and a husband when she won a radio talent show in Hollywood at the age of 17.
Her first TV show — “My Little Margie” — set the sitcom stage with Lucille Ball and other female stars in the 1950s, said Skip E. Lowe, a longtime friend who acted in some of Storm’s first movies in the early 1940s.
“She was a wonderful singer,” said Lowe. “She started as a singer and became known as an actress and singer.”
Born Josephine Owaissa Cottle in Bloomington, Texas, in 1922, she entered and won a CBS Radio talent show that offered a grand prize of a one-year movie contract with RKO Studio, according to her personal biography.
She teamed up with the male winner, Lee Bonnell, whom she married and had four children with. The couple remained married for 45 years until his death in 1986.
“We fell deeply in love and were married two years later, just as soon as my mother would allow it!” she wrote.
The new name Gale Storm was also part of the prize, she said.
3 Responses to “Another Day, Another Legend Dies”
She also had a show in the late 50s/early 60s that was highly successful and run ad naseum: Oh Suzannah. Storm was of an era where people felt they had to have stage names, an era that extended into the 60s. Rock Hudson…Rip Torn…She was of that WWII greatest generation. As a student of comedy, I never felt she was in the same comedic category in that era as a Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, or Lucy but she was a highly popular and well liked sitcom actress. Also, thoughout her time on TMV she would record for Dot Records. I don't think she had big hits but she did a lot of recordings.
Throughout her time on TMV??
LOL..must have missed that one.
I remember watching her show back in the day, along with I Married Joan, & others of the era.
R.I.P Ms. Storm.