Gale Storm

At 87 years old, Gale Storm has this physical status:

Josephine Owaissa Cottle (April 5, 1922 – June 27, 2009), also known as Gale Storm, was an American actress and singer who appeared in two famous television shows of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show.

Six of her songs were among the top ten hits on record.

Storm's most popular item was a cover version of "I Hear You Knockin," which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1955.

Early life

In Bloomington, Texas, United States, a storm was born. She had two brothers and two sisters as the youngest of five children. William Walter Cottle's father died after a year-long illness when she was just 17 months old, and Minnie Corina Cottle's mother, Minnie Corina Cottle, was unable to care for the children alone.

Lois, the Storm's elder sister, gave her baby sister the middle name "Owaissa," a Norridgewock Native American word meaning "bluebird" in the Nava name. Her mother worked in sewing, opened a millinery store in McDade, Texas, which closed, and then moved her family to Houston. Storm discovered to be a natural dancer and trained to be an excellent ice skater at Houston's Polar Palace.

Storm attended Holy Rosary School in what is now Midtown, Houston. She appeared in both Albert Sidney Johnston Junior High School and San Jacinto High School, as a drama student.

As Storm was 17, two of her teachers recommended that she enter a competition on Gateway to Hollywood, which was broadcast from the CBS Radio studios in Hollywood. The first award was a one-year deal with a film company. Gale Storm appeared on the stage and was given the stage name Gale Storm right away. Terry Belmont, her dance partner and future husband, Lee Bonnell of South Bend, Indiana, became Terry Belmont.

Personal life

Storm was both a married and widowed twice. In 1941, she married Lee Bonnell (1918-1986), became an actress, then a businessman, and later a businesswoman. They had four children: Peter, Phillip, Paul, and Susanna. She married Paul Masterson (1917–1996), whom also predeceased her in 1988, two years after she was widowed.

She later said:

She later became a regular attender of the South Shores Baptist Church. "I have been blessed and I thank God for his many blessings and the joyful life He has given to me." Storm was a registered Republican and ran for president of the United States. Senator Barry M. Goldwater of the 1960s.

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Career

Storm appeared in the radio version of Big Town. Storm made several films for the RKO Radio Pictures studio after winning the competition in 1940. Tom Brown's School Days was her first playback, competing with Jimmy Lydon and Freddie Bartholomew. During this time, she appeared in low-budget films. She appeared in several soundies and three-minute musicals produced for "movie jukeboxes" in 1941.

She appeared and performed in Monogram Pictures' Frankie Darro collection, as well as in other Monogram films starring Edgar Kennedy, George Kennedy, and the Three Stooges, most notably in 1946's film Swing Parade. Monogram had always relied on established celebrities for fame, but in Gale Storm, the studio had a new talent. She was the lead in the studio's most intricate creations, both musical and dramatic. In Monogram's The Crime Smasher (1943), she appeared alongside Edgar Kennedy, Richard Cromwell, and Frank Graham in the role of Jones, a character derived from network radio.

Storm appeared in a number of films, including the romantic comedies G.I. Honeymoon (1945) and It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), the Western Stampede (1949), and the 1950 film-noir dramas The Underworld Story and Between Midnight and Dawn (2326). When her fan mail increased, she went to Storm, and Americans became more vocal. She appeared in more than three dozen motion pictures for Monogram, a film that might have made her a success in other media.

She appeared on television variety shows as The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom in the 1950s.

Storm made her television debut in the Hollywood Premiere Theatre on ABC in 1950. She appeared in My Little Margie from 1952 to 1955, with former silent film actor Charles Farrell as her father. On CBS, the series began as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy, but it became a 126-year-old series on NBC and then CBS. The same actors appeared on CBS Radio from December 1952 to August 1955. When she appeared as hostess of the NBC Comedy Hour in the winter of 1956, her fame was capitalized. She appeared in another situation comedy, The Gale Storm Show, earlier this year (Oh! Susanna (Suitsu Pitts) stars Zasu Pitts, another silent film actor. Between 1956 and 1960, the show on CBS and ABC had 143 episodes. Storm appeared on other television shows in the 1950s and 1960s. On CBS' What's My Line, she served as both a panelist and a "mystery guest."

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