Virginia Vale
Birth : 1920-05-20, Dallas, Texas, USA
Death : 2006-09-14
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Virginia Vale (born Dorothy Howe, 20 May 1920 – 14 Sep 2006) was an American film actress. She starred in a number of B-movie Westerns but took a variety of other roles as well, notably in Blonde Comet (1941), in which she played a race car driver.
Vale was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Howe. Before becoming a professional actor, she was a switchboard operator in Dallas, Texas, and honed her acting skills in productions at a little theater in Dallas. After a representative of Paramount Pictures saw her in a leading role, he invited her to make a screen test, which led to a contract. (Another source says that Howe was working at the switchboard in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Dallas office, where a talent scout for Paramount found her and signed her to a contract.
Career
Several of Vale's early films were made using her birth name. The name Virginia Vale had been chosen in advance for the female winner of the 1939 Gateway to Hollywood contest, a nationwide talent search sponsored by producer Jesse Lasky -- as noted (somewhat indignantly) then by another Virginia Vale a syndicated columnist covering the film industry. Vale edged out Rhonda Fleming in the 1939 contest.
After her film career, she became an executive secretary at Lockheed and also a competition judge for the US Figure Skating Association. She was eventually honored by the USFSA for 50 years of service in that role. Before becoming a judge, she'd also briefly been a competition skater. Her life in film and skating was featured at the 2002 U.S. figure skating championships and a memorial trophy for "most outstanding performance" was given in her name at the 2007 California Championships.
Trixie Waters
A crime reporter writes book to expose names and methods of the criminal leaders. He is held on a charge after refusing to explain how he got his information, but is released and helps to expose the syndicate.
Betty Collins
This drama chronicles the extreme measures taken by a determined young crime reporter to get an interview with a notorious convict. The zealous journalist, also a star quarterback on the town college team, decides to become a convict himself. He gets into the prison, becomes president of the prisoners' union, does his interview, successfully woo's the warden's daughter, and gets out in time to publish his story before anyone else does. His career is off to a tremendous start.
Beverly Blake
A tire manufacturer's daughter becomes a champion auto racer.
Hysterical Woman (uncredited)
Having forsaken the detective business for the safer confines of personal insurance, Gay Laurence is compelled to return to his sleuthing ways. Along with sidekick Jonathan "Goldie" Locke, he agrees to look into a series of home party robberies that have victimized socialite Maxine Wood. The duo gets more than they bargained for when a murder is committed at Wood's home, but Lawrence still finds time to romance the damsel.
Mrs. Vivian Errol
Leon goes partying in Tiajuana with a friend,and his wife gets wise and makes plans to each him a lesson. She pretends to have a couple of lovers, including a large Cossack knife-handler. Leon, in order to trap her, disguises himself only to mess up things all around, plus getting fired by his boss.
Janice 'Jan' Martin, aka Dolores Esteban
Secret agent Roger Pryor is dispatched below the border to protect an important scientific formula. Believe it or don't, this mixture has the ability to render things invisible.
Alice Tremaine
Railroad agents frame a landowner who wont sell out to them.
Virginia (uncredited)
Whitley and his singing group want to make time with young ladies at a finishing school...and vice-versa. However, the old matron in charge threatens to shoot Ray and his men so they come up with a plan to trick her.
Elevator Girl
Everyone in a large department store knows that a rising star is married to the owner's daughter, except her husband.
Lorna Payson
Brad Henderson arrives in Star City just in time to witness three men rob a bank of $30,000 and kill a teller. Charged for the crime and jailed, Brad realizes he must escape and track down the real killers since the only one who can prove his innocence is his friend, Sheriff Bill Gregory, who has been shot and will not soon regain consciousness. Chasing down the robbers one by one, he eventually discovers the identity of the gang's ringleader.
Caroline McKay
To investigate a gold-shipping scam, a postal inspector goes undercover and tries to infiltrate the gang he believes is responsible.
May Thomas
A crop of millionaire inmates struggle to get accustomed to prison life, while inmate Nick Burton watches out for everyone's interests on the inside.
Priscilla Brambull
Judge Curry is selling Austin's land to nesters and his men are rustling his cattle to provide beef. When the Sheriff accuses butcher Gore of possessing stolen beef, Gore kills him. Curry then holds a quick election to change the county seat so he can preside at the trial. But Brill gets the Governor to change it back and this leads to the big shootout between Curry's men and Brill and the ranchers.
Sally
Longtime school sweethearts discover married life, thanks to a disagreeable live-in mother-in-law and pressing business obligations, is more rocky than idyllic.
Molly Matthews
Protecting himself in an attack by rustlers, Rancher Steve Holden believes he has killed one of the attackers, young Bud Mathews, who in reality has warned Holden of the rustlers' approach. Unaware that Mathews was actually killed by rustler boss Cass Barton, Holden heads out to Mathews' home town where he plans to tell the boy's family of his death but instead uncovers a plan by a local businessman to force Mathews' father out of his ranch.
Ellen Ives
Residents of a small frontier town take up arms when vigilantes try to block a railroad right-of-way.
Virginia King
A retired lawman gets back into action to fight political corruption.
Phoebe Pardway
A shop owner tries to interest his heirs in the family business.
Betty (as Dorothy Howe)
Pals Pat Rogers (Helen Twelvetrees) and Slag Bailey (Buck Jones) try to collect a debt from Slag's recently deceased boxing promoter but wind up collecting his child, instead, and raising him as their own son.
Flo
During a stick-up, a woman is excited by the criminal and joins him on his crime spree.
Airline Stewardess
The Bar Association disbars attorney Tyler Cradon when it appears he was implicated in the murder of a prominent vice crusader. Cradon, not wishing to be without an income,is impressed by the way Joan Carroll handled a small-town murder, poses as a real estate agent and offers to get her into a law firm of a friend of his. Placed in the office of Roberts, running a front for Cradon, Joan is taught every trick of the trade. With her cases all prepared for her, she goes from one courtroom victory to another, soon becoming the darling of the underworld and the despair of all law-enforcing authorities.
Dixie (as Dorothy Howe)
A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship's crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the ship's passengers.
Hazel De Vore
Band tries to get an audition for a job at a prestigious nightclub.
Eleanor Martin
While searching the South Pacific for a missing aviator, Bob Mitchell and Jimmy Wallace are caught in a typhoon and crack up on an island, escaping unharmed with the aid of Tura, a beautiful jungle girl who is the only inhabitant of the island and is believed a goddess by the natives of the adjoining islands. The three are about to leave the island on a make-shift raft when a gang of savage tribesman land, headed by Kuasa, a half-mad potentate who informs them that all whites are his mortal enemies because an Englishwoman once spurned his love and he got his revenge by stealing her daughter, who is Tura.
Joan Fielding
The Bellows family causes comic confusion on an ocean liner, with time out for radio-style musical acts.
Brunette Girl (uncredited)
A writer takes a job as a secretary because her scrupulous husband isn't bringing in the dough as an attorney. When her new employer is murdered, she can't seem to make up her mind as to whether she "dunnit" or not.
Marsh's Maid
When Dr. Ernest Tindal's wife is murdered, evidence mounts to convict her lover, Frank Marian. But Frank knows he didn't do it.....
