Gertrude Michael
Actor
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.
Filmography
Caged
as Georgia Harrison 1950
Flamingo Road
as Millie 1949
I'm No Angel
as Alicia Hatton 1933
Night of Terror
as Sarah Rinehart 1933
Women's Prison
as Chief Matron Sturgess 1955
Bugles in the Afternoon
as May 1952
No Escape
as Olga Valerie Lewis 1953
Ann Vickers
as Mona Dolphin 1933
Murder at the Vanities
as Rita Ross 1934
Search for Beauty
as Jean Strange 1934
Bolero
as Lady D'Argon 1934
The Last Outpost
as Rosemary Haydon 1935
Murder on the Blackboard
as Jane Davis 1934
Mr. Dodd Takes the Air
as Jessica Stafford 1937
George White's Scandals
as Miss Lee 1934
Club Havana
as Hetty - Powder Room Attendant 1945