Heroine of the Month: Amelita Ward
Amelita Ward was an attractive contract player for RKO, usually apearing in their B series films like The Falcon in Danger (1943), The Falcon and the Co-eds (1943) and Gildersleeve’s Ghost (1944). The studio also loaned her out to other companies where she made Clancy Street Boys (1943) with The East Side Kids and the last of Universal’s Ape Woman horror films Jungle Captive (1945).
Her only serial was helping hero Robert Kent track down the mysterious killer targeting her family in Sam Katzman’s inaugural serial for Columbia, Who’s Guilty? (1945). After RKO she would go on to appear in the acclaimed Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and several Leon Errol comedies like Oh Professor, Behave (1946) and Secretary Trouble (1947).
Then came the movie that would change her life. Returning to Monogram, she made Smuggler’s Cove with The Bowery Boys and fell in love with star Leo Gorcey (one wonders if there had been attraction on their initial meeting back in the earlier East Side Kids movie). They were married a year later. Sadly the marriage, like Gorcey’s others, didn’t last.
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