Virginia Vale
Birthday: 1920-05-20
Place of Birth: Dallas, Texas, USA
Synopsis
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.
Acting
Crime, Inc.
as 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.
South of Panama
as 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.
Legion of the Lawless
as Ellen Ives
Residents of a small frontier town take up arms when vigilantes try to block a railroad right-of-way.
Millionaires in Prison
as 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.
Bullet Code
as 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.
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Disbarred
as 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.
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Unmarried
as Betty (as Dorothy Howe)
Pals Pat Rogers and Slag Bailey 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.
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Her Jungle Love
as 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.
