Heroine of the Month: Jinx Falken
If you want to blame or praise someone for the proliferation of talk shows that pack the airwaves you have to look at a former model turned actress from Barcelona, we would not have Oprah if not for Jinx Falkenburg.
Falkenburg came to Hollywood after making several successful films in her native Spain, but wasn’t really noticed until her 1937 cover of American Magazine, where she was quickly snapped up and began appearing in B-Westerns like Song of the Buckaroo (1939). At this time she made her only serial, Republic’s The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939). Billed as Jinx Falken, she played a rancher’s niece who sides with The Lone Ranger helping a group of homesteaders trying to establish farms against the wishes of her cattle baron uncle and a group of outlaw renagades.
Her career took off with the musical Two Latins From Manhattan (1941). She worked steadily into the midforties with films like Lucky Legs (1942), Two Senoritas From Chicago (1943), Tahiti Nights (1945), and Meet Me On Broadway (1946).
She then met her husband Tex McCray while interviewing for a Broadway play. They started a popular radio show Meet Tex and Jinx, where they interviewed celebrities while they checking into the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. When television came along, the popular duo began the hit TV show At Home, where they would interview celebrities in their own homes.
Always interested in politics, Falkenburg was one of the key people in convincing General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president, and began head of the Republican Party’s women’s division in the mid-fifties.
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