Gladys Blake

Biography:

Blake was born on January 12, 1910, in Luray, Virginia. Her mother, Ada Timmons, died when Gladys was less than a year old.

At fourteen, she entered the theater world in a stock company, before moving on to vaudeville. In vaudeville, she met her husband, Lee Gresham, and the two formed an act together. While performing in Los Angeles, they were noticed by producer Edward Small, which led to her beginning in the film industry.

Blake made her film debut in a small role in I Have Lived (1933), directed by Richard Thorpe. She had her first featured role later that same year in Rainbow over Broadway, which Thorpe also directed.

Over her 20-year career, she appeared in over 100 films. She was noted for playing very talkative supporting roles.

Appearing mostly in supporting or bit parts, she was occasionally given a featured role, as in Lucky Night (1939), which starred Myrna Loy and Robert Taylor; or Woman of the Year (1942), which starred Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, in which she played Flo Peters, the wife of a friend of Tracy's character. Even more rarely she would be given the lead in a film, such as in Racing Blood (1936). In the early 1940s, she played the recurring role of "Maisie" in several of the Dr. Kildare films starring Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore, and Laraine Day.

Other notable films in which she appeared include: Ship Ahoy (1942), starring Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton; the Abbott and Costello film, Who Done It?; the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera, starring Claude Rains; The Naughty Nineties, again with Abbott and Costello; On the Town; The Yellow Cab Man, starring Red Skelton; and the 1952 epic, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Blake's final role was in 1952's This Woman is Dangerous, starring Joan Crawford and Dennis Morgan, in which she plays a garrulous hairdresser.

Blake died on May 21, 1983, aged 73, in Sacramento, California.