Heroine of the Month: Lona Andre
As the former Governor of California recently proved, the things actors do off camera can overshadow even the best of careers. Lona Andre did not have a very distinguished career, a highlight being one of the runner ups to get the role of Panter Girl in Island of Lost Souls (1933), but what film work she did do is less remembered than her lovelife. Then again it is hard to make any film role more interesting than her leaving James Dunn at the altar, and divorcing Edward Norris after four days (surely a record even in Hollywood), claiming it was marital hell.
But I’ll give it a shot anyway. A lot of her film roles were either small supportiing roles in A Pictures like International House (1933) and The Merry Widow (1934), and supporting roles in B Pictures like Murder at the Vanities (1934) and Border Brigands (1935).
Her biggest role was in the Weiss Brothers’ final independant serial, Custer’s Last Stand (1936) playing a saloon bartender who loves George Chesebro’s disgraced solider and tries to convince him to leave the outlaw gang he has fallen in with, only to lose him at Little Big Horn when he attempts to redeem himself for her.
Other films included Sunset Murder Case (1938), Ghost Valley Raiders (1940) and Pardon My Sarong (1943). Seeing that her career was not really going anywhere by the mid to late forties, Andre left acting to work in real estate where she became very sucessful.
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