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Gale Storm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Gale Storm | ||
|---|---|---|
| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Josephine Owaissa Cottle | |
| Born | April 5, 1922, Bloomington, Texas, United States | |
| Genre(s) | Traditional Pop | |
| Years active | 1950s | |
| Label(s) | Dot | |
| Website | Official Gale Storm web site The Gale Storm Appreciation Society site |
|
Josephine Owaissa Cottle (born April 5, 1922), better known as Gale Storm, is an American actress/singer. Her sister gave Josephine her middle name, an Indian word meaning "bluebird."
Contents |
Born in Bloomington, Texas; her father, William Walter Cottle died after a year-long illness when she was 13 months old, and her mother, Minnie Corina Cottle, struggled to raise five children alone. Josephine was the youngest with two brothers and two sisters.
Minnie took in sewing, then opened a millinery shop in nearby McDade, which failed, and then moved the family to Houston.
Josephine learned to be an accomplished dancer and became an excellent ice skater at Houston's Polar Palace. At the Albert Sydney Johnson Junior High and San Jacinto High School she performed in the drama club. When she was a 17-year-old senior in high school, two of her teachers (Miss Collier and Miss Oatman) urged her to enter the Gateway to Hollywood Contest held at the CBS Radio Studio in Hollywood, California where first prize was a one-year contract with a movie studio. She won and was given the name "Gale Storm," while her performing partner, Lee Bonnell from South Bend, Indiana became Terry Belmont. Josephine and Lee fell deeply in love and married two years later as soon as her mother would allow it. They had four children (Phillip, Peter, Paul, and Susie). Josephine was widowed after 45 years of marriage. She now has eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Josephine was also widowed by her second husband of eight years, Paul Masterson. She lives in Monarch, California near two of her sons and is busy with benefits and film festivals.
After winning, she went on to become an American icon of the 1950s, performing in more than thirty-five motion pictures and starring in two highly successful television shows.
From 1952 to 1955, My Little Margie, co-starring former silent film actor Charles Farrell and originally a summer replacement for I Love Lucy, ran for 126 episodes and was immediately followed by The Gale Storm Show (aka Oh! Susanna), featuring another silent movie staple, ZaSu Pitts, that ran for 143 episodes between 1956 and 1960. Both programs later became local television station staples, shown countless times in reruns.
In Gallatin, Tennessee, a 10-year-old girl, Linda Wood, was watching Gale Storm on a Sunday night television comedy show hosted by Gordon MacRae in 1954, singing one of the popular songs of the day. Linda's father, hearing the singing, asked Linda who was singing and was told it was Gale Storm from My Little Margie.
Linda's father was Randy Wood, president of Dot Records, and he liked the sound so well that he called to sign Gale Storm before the end of the television show. Her first record, "I Hear You Knockin'" (a cover version of a rhythm and blues hit by Smiley Lewis, in turn based on the old Buddy Bolden standard "The Bucket's Got A Hole In It") sold over a million copies.
It was followed in 1957 by the haunting ballad of lost love, "Dark Moon" that went to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In her career, Gale Storm had several top ten songs, headlined in Las Vegas, and appeared in numerous stage plays.
In 1981, she published her autobiography, I Ain't Down Yet, which described, among other things, her battle with alcoholism. More recently, she was interviewed by author David C. Tucker for The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms, published in 2007 by McFarland and Company.
Gale Storm has four stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Radio, Music,Television and Motion Pictures.
- 1956: I Hear You Knocking/Never Leave Me (Dot 15412) (#2)
- 1956: Memories Are Made of This/Teenage Prayer (Dot 15436)
- 1956: Why Do Fools Fall in Love/I Walk Alone (Dot 15448)
- 1956: I Ain't Gonna Worry/Ivory Tower (Dot 15458) (#6)
- 1956: Tell Me Why/Don't Be That Way (Dot 15474)
- 1956: Now Is The Hour/A Heart Without A Sweetheart (Dot 15492)
- 1956: My Heart Belongs To You/Orange Blossoms (Dot 15515)
- 1957: Lucky Lips/On Treasure Island (Dot 15539)
- 1957: Dark Moon/A Little Too Late (Dot 15558) (#4)
- 1957: On My Mind Again/Love By The Jukebox Light (Dot 15606)
- 1957: Go 'Way From My Window/Winter Warm (Dot 15666)
- 1957: I Get That Feeling/A Farewell To Arms (Dot 15691)
- 1957: You/Angry (Dot 15734)
- 1957: South Of The Border/Soon I'll Wed My Love (Dot 15783 )
- 1958: Oh Lonely Crowd/Happiness Left Yesterday (Dot 15861)
- 1958: I Need You So/On Treasure Island (Dot 16057)
- 1958: Please Help Me I'm Falling/He Is There (Dot 16111)