Gertrude Michael

Acting

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 Movies

Acting

MOVIE

Women's Prison

5.8(0.0K)

A crusading psychiatrist battles a sadistic female warden to improve conditions at a women's prison.

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Women's Prison

Chief Matron Sturgess

MOVIE

Flamingo Road

7.1(0.1K)

A stranded carnival dancer takes on a corrupt political boss when she marries into small-town society.

I'm No Angel

6.4(0.1K)

Bold performer Tira works as dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. Out of an urgent financial need, she agrees to a risky new number: she'll put her head into the lion's mouth! With this attraction, the circus makes it to New York and Tira can pursue her dearest occupation — flirting with rich men and accepting expensive presents.

Hidden Power

10.0(0.0K)

Dr. Garfield gets so involved in his research for an antitoxin for severe burns that he completely neglects his wife, Virginian, and their young son, Steve. Virginia divorces him and takes the son with her. Their paths cross again in a life-or-death situation.

Caged

7.1(0.1K)

A single mistake puts a 19-year old girl behind bars, where she experiences the terrors and torments of women in prison.

Second Wife

7.0(0.0K)

Kenneth discovers that his son by his first wife is ill in a remote Swiss village, and is forced to leave Wife Number Two alone during childbirth.

Allotment Wives

6.7(0.0K)

Unscrupulous women marry servicemen for their pay.

Ann Vickers

5.8(0.0K)

After a love affair ending in an abortion, a young prison reformer submerges herself in her work. She then falls for a controversial and married judge and scandal looms again.

Cleopatra

6.1(0.1K)

The queen of Egypt barges the Nile and flirts with Mark Antony and Julius Caesar.

No Escape

4.7(0.0K)

When the available evidence in a murder case points to a young woman as the main suspect, her boyfriend, a police detective, arranges for a struggling songwriter who is playing piano in a bar to be blamed for the crime. The girl, knowing that neither she nor the piano player committed the murder, helps him to escape from the police dragnet and try to find the real killer.

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No Escape

Olga Valerie Lewis