Kay Aldridge
| Kay Aldridge | |
|---|---|
Kay Aldridge, c. 1940s
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| Born |
Katharine Gratten Aldridge July 9, 1917 Tallahassee, Florida, USA |
| Died | January 12, 1995 (aged 77) Rockport, Maine, USA |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Occupation | Actress, model |
| Years active | 1937–45 |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 4 |
Kay Aldridge (July 9, 1917 – January 12, 1995) was an American actress and model, best known for playing feisty and imperiled heroines in black-and-white serials during the 1940s. A notable role was as Nyoka Gordon in Perils of Nyoka.
Katharine Gratten Aldridge was born on July 9, 1917 in Tallahassee, Florida. Her father was a surveyor and her mother was an artist and writer. Following her father's death when she was two years old, her mother moved the family to Lyells, Virginia, where she and her four siblings were raised with the help of her great aunts who were schoolteachers. After attending her first year of high school in Westminster, Maryland, she enrolled in St. Mary's Female Seminary (now St. Mary's College of Maryland) in St. Mary's City, Maryland. While at St. Mary's, she acted in plays, played basketball, and was a member of the Delta Phi Epsilon sorority.
Following her high school graduation in 1934, Aldridge found work with the John Powers modeling agency in New York. She appeared on the covers of magazines such as Life, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, and Look. Contemporary artist Anne Taintor used advertisements featuring Aldridge as the base for a number of her pieces. In 1937, Aldridge was chosen as one of the ten most photographed girls in the world, and was selected to go to Hollywood to appear in the United Artists film Vogues of 1938.
In 1939 she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, and in the next few years landed a number of minor and largely decorative roles, credited as Katherine Aldridge. The films she made during this period include Shooting High (1940) playing Evelyn Trent, Sailor's Lady (1940) playing Georgine, Down Argentine Way (1940) playing Helen Carson, and Dead Men Tell (1941) playing Laura Thursday. She was among the actresses screen tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.
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