Adrienne Ames

Striking Adrienne Ames in an elegant studio sitting from 1934. Born in Fort Worth, TX, on August 3, 1907, Ames hit Hollywood in the late 1920s. Although her career only lasted about ten years, she crammed a lot of living into it--high-profile marriages (and divorces) and her reputation as a clothes horse and glamour queen par excellence far outshone her reputation as an actress. She began her film career in 1927 as a stand-in for Pola Negri and was soon cast in small film roles in silent films. With the advent of talking pictures, her popularity grew and she was usually cast as society women, or in musicals. She made thirty films during the 1930s with her biggest success in “George White's Scandals” (1934). She appeared with the three leading men from the 1931 version of “Dracula” (Bela Lugosi, David Manners, and Edward Van Sloan) in “The Death Kiss” (1932). Perhaps the best-known of her films would be “You're Telling Me!” (1934) with W.C. Fields. By the end of the decade, Ames' popularity had diminished and, discouraged, she left Hollywood for New York. In 1941, she was host of two talk shows on station WHN in New York City. Her schedule included broadcasts at noon and 3:30 p.m. six days a week and 7:30 p.m. broadcasts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Ames was married three times. In 1920, while still a teenager, she married Derward Dumont Truax, who was the son of an oil man. They had a daughter, and they divorced in 1924. A later marriage to broker Stephen Ames ended in divorce on October 30, 1933. Her last marriage, on October 31, 1933, was to fellow actor Bruce Cabot; they divorced on July 24, 1935. Ames passed away of cancer on May 31, 1947, in New York City, aged only 39.

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