Irene Rich

Irene Rich was an American actress whose career spanned silent movies, sound films, and radio. Born in Buffalo, New York, she went to Hollywood in 1918 and first found work as an extra. Will Rogers used her in eight pictures. She often played society women, a type she took on in the 1925 film version of Lady Windermere's Fan and in Queen of the Yukon (1940). In her later films she was cast as a pioneer wife and mother, in Angel and the Badman (1947) and Fort Apache (1948). During the 1930s she worked extensively in radio, hosting the anthology Dear John from 1933 to 1944, with Gale Gordon as her leading man. In the early 1940s she starred in Glorious One on NBC Blue. Her stage credits included Seven Keys to Baldpate (1935) and As the Girls Go in 1948.