Gale Storm The Famous Actress Dies

Tags: gale storm, my little margie tv show, fred travalena, lee bonnell, gale strom

Gale Storm, the famous actress came to Hollywood as a finalist in a national talent contest, then appeared in numerous movies before starring on TV in the popular ‘My Little Margie’ and ‘The Gale Storm Show.’

Gale Storm, who attempt to the top on television as the active brilliant of two accepted 1950s bearings comedies, “My Little Margie” and “The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna,”Dale Storm was 87 when she died.

Gale Storm, who additionally had a acknowledged recording career during her TV heyday, died Saturday of accustomed causes at a ambulatory hospital in the Northern California association of Danville, according to her son Peter Bonnell.

A summer backup for “I Love Lucy,” “My Little Margie” ran from 1952 to 1955, with Storm starring as the adventurous adolescent Margie Albright and Charles Farrell as her widower father, Vern. Although critics about panned “My Little Margie” as a failing farce, the accessible fell in adulation with the arch Margie. A 1953 poll of the best accepted TV stars listed Storm at No. 2, abaft TV ball queen Lucille Ball.

After “My Little Margie” ended, Storm starred in “The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna,” in which she played amusing administrator Susanna Pomeroy aboard the affluence liner the SS Ocean Queen. The bearings comedy, featuring Zasu Pitts as the ship’s airheaded beautician Elvira “Nugey” Nugent and Roy Roberts as Capt. Huxley, ran from 1956 to 1960.

Storm was a animated and appealing 17-year-old Houston, Texas, aerial academy chief called Josephine Cottle back she accustomed in Hollywood in backward 1939 as a finalist in the civic “Gateway to Hollywood” aptitude contest.

Born on April 5, 1922, in Bloomington, Texas, the auburn-haired Storm had played the leads in abundant plays and musicals in school, but two of her agents had to advance her to access the “Gateway” competition.

The acceptable amateur and extra were promised affairs with RKO Studios and affirmed a role in a above motion picture. And, as Hollywood attitude dictated, they would be accustomed new, marquee-suitable names.

During the abolishment aeon in Hollywood, the macho and changeable finalists acted in scenes advertisement alive Sundays over CBS Radio, with the home admirers spurred to tune in the afterward anniversary to acquisition out:

“Who will be Terry Belmont?”

“Who will be Gale Storm?”

If adolescent Josephine Cottle was Cinderella, her Prince Charming was her macho co-winner, the anew christened Terry Belmont: Lee Bonnell, a handsome Indiana University ball apprentice from South Bend, Ind.

In 1941, Storm affiliated Bonnell, who became an allowance controlling afterwards a brief blur career. Their alliance lasted until Bonnell’s afterlife in 1986 and produced three sons and a daughter.

Beginning with “Tom Brown’s Academy Days” in 1940, Storm appeared in 36 movies during the abutting dozen years. Dropped by RKO afterwards six months and two pictures, she appeared in a array of B-movies at Republic, Monogram, Allied Artists and Universal.

Among her blur credits, which included agreeable comedies, blur 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 aboriginal ’50s, her cine career was in a slump and she was accommodated to devoting herself to her ancestors abounding time back she accustomed a alarm from ambassador Hal Roach Jr., who capital her for the advance in a proposed TV series, “My Little Margie.”

Her success with “My Little Margie” and a radio adaptation with aboriginal episodes led to her actuality approached to do a bistro act in Las Vegas during the summers of 1953 and 1954. Afterwards audition Storm sing on one alive TV show, Dot Records active her to a contract.

Her aboriginal record, the accent and dejection song “I Hear You Knocking,” soared to No. 2 on the Billboard blueprint 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.”

Gale Storm, who accustomed three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame acquainted her assignment in TV, radio and recordings, saw her career abatement badly afterwards her additional alternation concluded in 1960.

“My accomplished activity has been a arrangement of success,” Storm told The Times in 1981. “So abounding astonishing things that I would never alike accept dreamt of adulatory for [have] happened to me.”

But there additionally was an abrupt downside.

In 1980, she alternate to the accent as the bartering backer for Raleigh Hills Hospital, the now-defunct booze analysis alternation area she had been advised for a austere bender with alcoholism.

Alcoholism, she told The Times in 1988, “is a ache of denial. I had been the affectionate of alcoholic as so abounding women are — that I was so careful. You allocution about a abstruse drinker.”

She had been in and out of a cardinal of hospitals afore she heard of Raleigh Hills.

In 1979, she underwent detoxification at Raleigh Hills Hospital in Oxnard, followed by its abhorrence analysis and counseling program. Afterward, she said, she never craved booze again.

Through it all, she said, her bedmate offered his support. “It was actually a abundant marriage,” she said.

In 1988, two years afterwards Bonnell’s death, Storm affiliated retired ABC controlling Paul Masterson, a widower whom she met through a alternate friend. Masterson died in 1996.

In accession to her son Peter, she is survived by sons Phillip and Paul and babe Susanna Harrigan. She is additionally survived by eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Tags: gale storm, my little margie tv show, fred travalena, lee bonnell, gale strom

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