Pamela Blake

Pamela Blake was an American film actress who spent about 20 years in Hollywood and became best known for Westerns and serials. Born in Oakland, California, she went there at 17 after winning a beauty contest. Her first screen work was an uncredited bit part in Eight Girls on a Boat (1934), and in 1938 she starred opposite Tex Ritter in the Western The Utah Trail. Appearing with John Wayne in Wyoming Outlaw (1939) helped her secure more Western leads, often as the heroine. She gained wider notice when she took a prominent female part in This Gun for Hire (1942). Her output was largely B movies, and she took a starring role in Chick Carter, Detective (1946). Later credits were mostly Western movies and TV episodes, including The Range Rider. Waco (1952) was her final feature, and she acted in the 1954 television pilot The Adventures of the Texas Kid: Border Ambush, later issued as a film.