Bonita Granville

 Bonita Granville (February 2, 1923 – October 11, 1988)

She made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage (1933), and appeared that same year in a credited but nearly wordless supporting role as the young dancer Fanny Bridges in Cavalcade, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Over the next few years, she played uncredited supporting roles in such films as Little Women (1933) and Anne of Green Gables (1934). She next played the role of Mary Tilford in the 1936 film adaptation of Lillian Hellman's 1934 stage play The Children's Hour, renamed These Three. It was for this role that she was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1938, she starred as the saucy, mischievous daughter in the multiple Academy Award-nominated hit comedy film Merrily We Live and as girl detective Nancy Drew in the hit film Nancy Drew... Detective. The Nancy Drew film success led to Granville reprising the role in three sequels from 1938 to 1939, including Nancy Drew... Reporter (1939). As a young adult, she was once again cast in supporting roles, often in prestigious films such as Now, Voyager (1942), as well as two Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney, Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble (1944) and Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946). She is also remembered for her starring role in the World War II anti-Nazism film Hitler's Children (1943). Her career began to fade by the mid-1940s. She was the heroine of the novel Bonita Granville and the Mystery of Star Island written by Kathryn Heisenfelt, published by Whitman Publishing Company in 1942. The novel's subtitle is "An original story featuring BONITA GRANVILLE famous motion-picture player as the heroine". The story was probably written for a young teenage audience and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941-1947 that featured a film actress as heroine.

She appeared in the film version of The Lone Ranger in 1956, and made her final screen appearance in a cameo role in The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981). Granville died on October 11, 1988 of lung cancer at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 65. She is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA.