Ramsay Ames

Ramsay Ames was a leading 1940s B movie actress, model, dancer, pin-up girl and television host. Of Spanish/English descent, Ames was born on Long Island, NY on March 30, 1919. She had attended the Walter Hillhouse School of Dance, specializing in Latin-style dance. She later became part of a dance team under the name Ramsay D'el Rico and appeared as a model at the Eastman Kodak-sponsored fashion show at the 1939 New York World's Fair. An injury forced her to alter her dance career plans. She took up singing and became the vocalist with a top rhumba band. During a trip to California to visit her mother, Ames had a chance meeting at the airport with Columbia Pictures President Harry Cohn. The meeting resulted in a screen test and then her movie debut in “Two Senoritas from Chicago” (1943). From there, she moved to Universal Pictures, where she was featured in such films as “Calling Dr. Death” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (both 1943). She later appeared in a Monogram Pictures drama, “Below the Deadline” (1946), and in Republic serials including “The Black Widow” (1947) and “G-Men Never Forget” (1948). After her career subsided in the 1940s, Ames and her husband lived in Spain, where she had her own television interview show and occasionally took on support roles in films produced in Europe. She was wed to "Man of La Mancha" playwright Dale Wasserman, and the couple later lived in a villa called "La Mancha" on the Costa del Sol. According to director William Witney, some of Republic Pictures' stuntmen suffered more injuries running on rooftops to get a better look at Ramsay Ames walking across the backlot than were hurt performing dangerous action sequences in the studio's westerns. The lovely starlet passed away of lung cancer in 1998 on her 79th birthday.

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