Martha O’Driscoll

Dazzling Martha O’Driscoll in publicity for the 1946 film CRIMINAL COURT. The beautiful Tulsa-born blonde was born on March 4, 1922, and started off modelling as a child. Trained in singing and dancing, Martha was discovered by choreographer Hermes Pan in a local theatre production in Phoenix, AZ, which led to unbilled bits in film musical from 1935. Once she had her foot in the door, she was groomed in more visible parts and began pitching products for Max Factor makeup and Royal Crown Cola, among others, in magazine ads. RKO gave Martha her first two starring roles, as romantic interest to cowboy Tim Holt in “Wagon Train” (1940) and notably as Daisy Mae in the first screen version of Al Capp's popular comic strip “Li'l Abner” (1940). Paramount became interested in the actress and acquired her contract, casting her first as a maid in the classic comedy “The Lady Eve” (1941) and then in the Technicolor opus “Reap the Wild Wind” (1942). Martha was given the lead in the B film “Pacific Blackout” (1942), followed with a role in “Young and Willing” (1943). The studio lent her back to Universal, which cast her in Olsen and Johnson's “Crazy House” (1943), then to RKO for the stylish thriller, “The Fallen Sparrow” (1943). That same year she starred alongside William Holden and Susan Hayward in “Young and Willing” (1943). She played the pretty prairie flower to a couple of western films, and was terrorized by the Wolfman, Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster in her most notable feature, “House of Dracula” (1945). Following her last film, “Carnegie Hall” (1947) and a divorce decree from her first marriage, she married a second time to Chicago businessman Arthur Appleton, heir to an industrial empire, and retired completely (at age 25), In Chicago she became one of the city's more civic-minded leaders, an interest that would last for more than four decades. She also served as an executive for many committees, and from time to time she even appeared in nostalgia conventions. After leading a fulfilling life, Martha O’Driscoll passed away on November 3, 1998, in Miami, aged 76.

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