If Hollywood can be interchangeable with television, I've got two women I'd like to add to this ever-growing discussion.
Joan Davis had a rather prolific career that originated in vaudeville in the mid-thirties. She was attractive, and adept in physical comedy. She starred in a host of B-movie comedies, such as MAKE MINE LAUGHS (1949) and HAREM GIRL (1952). Davis was often a supporting player in her pictures, typically lending comic relief to the headliners. Often, however, she would get her own lead vehicles, namely the musical KANSAS CITY KITTY (1944) and the Western comedy THE TRAVELING SALESWOMAN (1950), which she co-produced. She was never a major film star, but she was serviceable in the B-movie arena, appearing in many enjoyable romps.
Even so, Joan Davis is primarily remembered today for starring in I MARRIED JOAN, a sitcom for NBC. She played scatterbrained housewife Joan Stevens, whose hijinks often involves and embarrasses her mild-mannered husband Judge Bradley Stevens (played by Jim Backus). The series was inspired by the success of I LOVE LUCY, and it enjoyed a rather successful three-year run, airing ninety-eight episodes from 1952 to 1955. It often a typical brand of old school humor, although Davis serves up a healthy dose of good physical comedy. She was a funny lady and the show was popular, but her declining health caused the show's cancellation. She drifted into retirement for the most after I MARRIED JOAN ended, before passing away of a heart attack in 1961, aged fifty-three.
Another early television star was Gale Storm, a dark-haired beauty that started her career on radio in the forties. She worked in several films throughout the 1940s, such as FRECKLES COME HOME in 1942. Like Joan Davis, she never achieved major film stardom, but she was a popular leading lady in the second-rate realm of filmdom. Storm worked closely with Monogram Pictures during this time, and appeared in features with the Three Stooges, the East Side Kids, and Edgar Kennedy. Although Storm was typecast as a ingenue in these films, she emerged as Monogram's biggest star, appearing in the studio's biggest productions. She was given top billing in the 1943 film COSMO JONES, CRIME SMASHER, a character comedy that had been derived from radio. Storm starred in the romantic comedy G.I. HONEYMOON (1945), the Western STAMPEDE (1949), and was a part of an ensemble cast in IT HAPPENED ON FIFTH AVENUE (1947). Her public reception was warm, and she received substantial fan mail.
Despite this, her film career stopped in the early fifties. Her last film was WOMEN OF THE NORTH COUNTRY in 1952. Storm then made a transition to television, where she began starring in MY LITTLE MARGIE for CBS in 1952. In the show she played a young woman named Margie whose hair-brained adventures are overlooked by her father, played by Charles Farrell. The series has been initiated as a summer replacement for I LOVE LUCY, and CBS abruptly cancelled the comedy in 1953. MY LITTLE MARGIE was immediately picked up by NBC, where it aired until 1955. It produced 126 episodes before entering off-network syndication. A year after that series concluded, she emerged as the star of THE GALE STORM SHOW, where she played a cruise director named Susanna. The successful series enjoyed a four-season run before ending in 1960. She died in 2009, aged eighty-seven.
