Gladys Blake

Gladys Blake was an American character actress whose screen career ran from the 1930s into the 1950s. Born in Luray, Virginia, she entered the theater at fourteen with a stock company and moved on to vaudeville before producer Edward Small spotted her performing in Los Angeles and she began working in films. Her movie debut came in a small part in I Have Lived (1933), and she had her first featured role the same year in Rainbow over Broadway. Over roughly twenty years she appeared in more than a hundred films, often as talkative supporting characters, with occasional bigger parts such as Flo Peters in Woman of the Year (1942) and the recurring role of Maisie in the Dr. Kildare films. Her other credits included Phantom of the Opera (1943), The Naughty Nineties (1945), On the Town (1949) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). She died in 1983.