Frances Dade

Frances Dade was an American actress who worked in film and on the stage in the late 1920s and 1930s. Born in Philadelphia, she spent 1928 and 1929 at the Empire Theater in Toronto, where she performed in a different play each week, and she also acted in stock companies in Alabama, Michigan, and New York before moving to Hollywood. Samuel Goldwyn noticed her as Lorelei Lee in a touring production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and signed her to a contract, though she later worked freelance. Her first screen part came in 1928 in The Constant Nymph, and she went on to appear in Raffles (1930) and to take a leading role in Grumpy (1930). Her largest part was Lucy Weston in Dracula (1931), opposite Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler, and she was chosen as one of that year's WAMPAS Baby Stars. Offers dwindled afterward; she appeared in Big Town in 1932 and on Broadway in Collision.