Heroine of the Month: Wanda McKay
Sometimes a Hollywood studio doesn’t know what it has and lets a promising performer slip away, but what is a big studio’s loss can be a poverty row studio’s gain. Take Wanda McKay. As Dorothy Quakenbush, she was named Miss American Aviation in 1938 which led to a Hollywood contract with Paramount in 1939, where after a name change, she languished in bit parts in The Farmer’s Daughter (1940), The Mad Doctor (1941) and The Lady Eve (1941).
Dropping down to poverty row, McKay found her footing, staring in The Lone Rider in Texas Justice (1942), The Deerslayer (1943) and Belle of the Yukon (1944). While becoming a staple of B-Westerns, Mckay also became poverty row’s answer to Universal’s Evelyn Ankers, staring in such horror films as Bowery at Midnight (1942) and Voodoo Man (1944) with Bela Lugosi, as well as old dark house mystery The Black Raven (1942) with George Zucco and the Mad Love inspired shocker The Monster Maker (1944).
Being that she was making a name for herself in westerns it didn’t take long for McKay to make a western serial, Universal’s Raiders of Ghost City (1944). McKay played the head of a Wells Fargo office helping Dennis Moore and Joe Sawyer track down a ruthless gang of gold thieves who turn out to be Prussian spies led by Lionel Atwill who are trying to buy Alaska in the final days of The Civil War.
McKay’s popularity in horse operas led to her working regularly on such favorite TV shows as The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, and The Range Rider in the fifties. Years later, long after her retirement from acting, McKay made news when she married famed composer Hoagie Carmichael in 1977 after what was termed a lengthy courtship.
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