Gilda Gray
Gilda Gray was born in Kraków, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland on October 24th, 1901 and is the Movie Actress. At the age of 58, Gilda Gray biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
At 58 years old, Gilda Gray has this physical status:
Her desire to continue her burgeoning career (she used the professional name Mary Gray for a while) and her faltering relationship with her husband prompted her to relocate to Chicago, where she was noticed by a talent agent, Frank Westphal, who took her to New York and introduced her to his wife, singer Sophie Tucker. It was Tucker who prompted her to change her first name to Gilda. By 1919, she was appearing in a J.J. Shubert show, The Gaieties of 1919. By 1920, Gray found a new manager, Gaillard T. "Gil" Boag. She was subsequently hired by Florenz Ziegfeld to perform in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies, and her shimmy became a national craze.
After her divorce from her first husband, she married Gil Boag in 1923 and took her successful vaudeville act to Hollywood, California; they divorced four years later. She quickly abandoned vaudeville to become a film star, and between 1919 and 1936, Gray made several movies, in all of which she performed her famous shimmy. Her second role was a small part in Girl with the Jazz Heart.
Jesse Lasky signed her to a contract with Famous Players-Lasky, which released films through Paramount Pictures. With him she made Aloma of the South Seas (1926), which grossed $3 million in its first three months. The success of this Paramount film was enhanced by Gray's personal appearances doing the shimmy as a promotion. In 1927, she made two more films, The Devil Dancer and Cabaret.
By January 1929, she had sued Gil Boag for divorce on grounds of cruel treatment. He, in turn, accused her of an affair with C.D. Krepps, her tour manager.
In 1928, she went to England to star in Piccadilly, a 1929 silent film written for her by Arnold Bennett that appeared in the United States with added sound and effects. In his July 15, 1929, review, The New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall praised her performance, adding: "Miss Gray seems to have been rediscovered as an actress. For a long time she has been docketed as an exponent of 'shimmy,' but in Piccadilly she appears to show that acting is not above her. A prophet apparently is without honor; Miss Gray found it necessary to flee to English studios to have a chance."