Lola Lane was in the cast of the first movie made about Luciano. Later she inherited the sidewalk café that some people had said he wanted.

Marked Woman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

        

Marked Woman
theatrical poster
Directed by	Lloyd Bacon Michael Curtiz (uncredited)
Written by	Robert Rossen Abem Finkel Seton I. Miller (uncredited)
Starring	Bette Davis Humphrey Bogart
Music by	Score: Bernhard Kaun Heinz Roemheld David Raksin (all uncredited) Songs: Harry Warren Al Dubin
Cinematography	George Barnes
Editing by	Jack Killifer
Studio	Warner Bros.
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	April 10, 1937 (1937-04-10)
Running time	84 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Marked Woman is a dramatic crime film released by Warner Bros. in 1937. It was directed by Lloyd Bacon, and stars Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, with featured performances by Lola Lane, Isabel Jewell, Rosalind Marquis, Mayo Methot, Jane Bryan, Eduardo Ciannelli and Allen Jenkins. Set in the underworld of Manhattan, Marked Woman tells the story of a woman who dares to stand up to one of the city's most powerful gangsters.
The film was a major success for Warner Brothers, and was one of Davis' most important early pictures. Davis had recently filed a lawsuit against Warners, with part of her protest being the inferior quality of scripts she was expected to play. Although she lost the lawsuit, she garnered considerable press coverage, and Marked Woman was the first script she filmed upon returning to Hollywood. She was reported to be very pleased with the script and the dramatic possibilities it afforded her. Jack Warner was said to be equally pleased by the huge public reaction in favour of Davis, which he rightly predicted would increase the appeal and profitability of her films.
Co-stars Humphrey Bogart and Mayo Methot met on the set of Marked Woman and were married in 1938.^[1]

 

• 1 Background
• 2 Plot
• 3 Cast
• 4 Production
• 5 Awards and honors
• 6 Notes
• 7 External links

Background

Despite the disclaimer at the beginning of the film that asserts that the story is fictitious, Marked Woman is loosely based on the real-life crimefighting exploits of Thomas E. Dewey, a District Attorney for Manhattan who became a national celebrity in the 1930s, and two-time Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1940s, due to his fight against organized crime in New York City. Dewey indicted and convicted several prominent gangsters; his greatest achievement was the conviction of Lucky Luciano, the organized crime boss of the entire city. Dewey used the testimony of numerous call girls and madames to convict Luciano of being a pimp who ran one of the largest prostitution rings in American history. Dewey's dramatic achievements led Hollywood film studios to make several films about his exploits; Marked Woman was one of the most prominent. Humphrey Bogart's character, David Graham, is based on Dewey.
Warners purchased the rights to a Liberty series on Luciano, but was forced to make alterations in the story, such as changing the women's profession from prostitutes to "nightclub hostesses", because of censorship concerns.^[1]

Plot

This section requires expansion with: section. (October 2010)

Mary Dwight Stauber (Bette Davis), a nightclub hostess who works for the notorious gangster Johnny Vanning (Eduardo Ciannelli) briefly meets and befriends a young man (Damian O'Flynn) who confides in her that he does not have the money to repay the gambling debt he has accrued during the night. He feels that it's a game, but Mary warns him that he is in real danger. She is shocked, but not surprised to learn soon after that he has been murdered, by Vanning's henchman Charlie Delaney (Ben Welden).
Questioned by prosecutor David Graham (Humphrey Bogart), Mary and the other women refuse to implicate Vanning. They fear his retribution, and while privately detesting him are powerless to free themselves from his influence. Mary's younger sister Betty (Jane Bryan) comes to visit, and unaware of the dangerous situation she has entered, behaves recklessly against the advice of her older sister. When she is killed, Mary agrees to testify against the gangster. Beaten by his thugs, scarred and disfigured, she becomes the "marked woman" of the film's title, but rather than silencing her, it strengthens her resolve to testify. Aware that they can only be free of the gangster if they find the strength to stand against him, the other women agree to testify also.

Cast

Bette Davis as Mary.

Bette Davis as Mary Dwight Strauber Humphrey Bogart as David Graham Lola Lane as Dorothy "Gabby" Marvin Isabel Jewell as Emmy Lou Eagan Mayo Methot as Estelle Porter Eduardo Ciannelli as Johnny Vanning                      Rosalind Marquis as Florrie Liggett Jane Bryan as Betty Strauber

Allen Jenkins as Louie Damian O'Flynn as Ralph Krawford John Litel as Gordon Ben Welden as Charlie Delaney Henry O'Neill as District Attorney Arthur Sheldon Raymond Hatton as Vanning's Lawyer William B. Davidson as Bob Crandall Kenneth Harlan as Eddie, a Sugar Daddy

Cast notes

• Eduardo Ciannelli bears a physical resemblance to Lucky Luciano.^[2]
• Hymie Marks, who played the bit part of a gangster named "Joe" in the film, attracted the attention of executive producer Hal B. Wallis, who felt that he didn't look menacing enough – this despite the fact that Marks was a former gangster and henchman of Lucky Luciano, who had been specifically cast by director Lloyd Bacon because of that connection.^[3][3]
• Warners had originally cast Jane Wyman as "Florrie".^[1]

Production

Marked Woman went into production on December 9, 1936^[4] at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank^[5] under the working title "The Men Behind".^[1] Director Michael Curtiz stood in for Lloyd Bacon while Bacon was on his honeymoon.^[1]
When Davis was made-up for the scene in the hospital room, she was unhappy with the minimal bandaging that had been used, so on her lunch break she drove to her personal doctor, described the injuries that the script called her character to have, and had him bandage her accordingly. When she returned to the studio, a guard at the gate saw her bandages and called executive producer Hal B. Wallis to tell him that Davis had been in an accident.^[3]
Warners re-released Marked Woman in 1947.^[1]

Awards and honors

Bette Davis won the Venice Film Festival's Volpi Cup for Best Actress in 1937. Director Lloyd Bacon was nominated for the 1937 Mussolini Cup.^[6]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} TCM Notes
2. ^ Allmovie Overview
3. ^ ^{a b c} Landazuri, Margarita "Marked Woman" (TCM article)
4. ^ TCM Overview
5. ^ IMDB Filming locations
6. ^ IMDB Awards

External links

• Marked Woman at the Internet Movie Database
• Marked Woman at the TCM Movie Database
• Marked Woman at AllRovi
• Marked Woman at Rotten Tomatoes

                                                             *                 *                  *



MARKED WOMAN was based on the Lucky Luciano story and Lola Lane was in that movie. Some people said that Thelma Todd was killed because she opposed his plan to take over the sidewalk café, but that story would be considered hearsay, because there is no proof of it.  The prostitution case, on the other hand, was considered to have been proven by the authorities and Luciano was sent to prison in 1936 as a result.

Lola Lane later married Roland West and inherited the sidewalk café after his death in 1952.  In MARKED WOMAN, she played one of the "hostesses" whose operations were taken over by the Luciano character, played by Eduardo Ciannelli.

Mayo Methot played another. She had been in CORSAIR with Thelma Todd, a Roland West production which had been her first major speaking role in a motion picture, and in MARKED WOMAN she met Humphrey Bogart, who she would later marry.

Occasionally we come across references to Mussolini in connection with the movies of this period. Here we see that the director was nominated for the 1937 Mussolini Cup, an Italian award named after their leader. Mussolini had an interest in motion pictures and wanted Hal Roach to make movies in Italy. Lucky Luciano has also been mentioned in connection with Mussolini because Mussolini had cracked down on the mafia in Italy, with the result that Luciano was supposed to have contributed to the war effort to get even.



  .

Bette Davis, Jane Bryan, Isabel Jewell, Lola Lane, Rosalind Marquis, and Mayo Methot in Marked Woman (1937)

 Eduardo Ciannelli and Bette Davis

Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart

Bette Davis, Isabel Jewell, Lola Lane, Rosalind Marquis, and Mayo Methot

Lucky Luciano

Bette Davis
http://www.bettedavis.com/

CORSAIR:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2012/11/corsair.html

Hollywood And the Underworld:
https://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2018/09/hollywood-and-underworld_9.html

Hollywood And the Axis Powers:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2013/07/hollywood-and-axis-powers.html

Lola Lane
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0485439/

http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2012/04/lola-lane-and-lois-lane.html


MARKED WOMAN
http://bogiefilmblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/marked-woman-1937/

Mayo Methot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayo_Methot

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0582551

Benito Mussolini:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
/
Roland West:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2014/02/roland-west.html




A

Harry Langdon In The Fan Magazines

Harry Langdon item


HOLLYWOOD FILMOGRAPH June 21, 1930

Harry Langdon and costar Nancy Dover are profiled on the right-hand side of this page. Henry Armetta is profiled at top right.












A

CONVICTED WOMAN Photo

Dorothy Appleby and Beatrice Blinn worked with Buster Keaton in NOTHING BUT PLEASURE during this period. Dorothy Appleby is second from the right in this photo and I think Beatrice Blinn is to the left of her. I think Lola Lane is in front on the left, and that might be Lorna Gray on the right.

Ebay Seller's remarks;

Original 8x10-inch black-and-white, glossy publicity photo / movie still was produced to promote the 1940 Columbia crime / exploitation / women's prison film, CONVICTED WOMAN, which starred Rochelle Hudson, Frieda Inescort, June Lang, Lola Lane, Glenn Ford, Iris Meredith, Lorna Gray, Esther Dale, William Farnum, Mary Field, Beatrice Blinn, June Gittelson and Dorothy Appleby. The film was directed by Nick Grinde. This is an original studio-issued still -- NOT a copy or reproduction. The photo features a great shot of a group of female convicts -- including Rochelle Hudson and Lola Lane -- trying to comfort another prisoner who is sitting in the middle. 




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Thelma Todd Table

Adam Tunney on facebook:

 Paulist Studios* was just sold and it's unknown what's going to become of the building (supposedly the new owner is going to turn it into an office building). They had three items for sale from Thelma's personal collection and I purchased her kitchen table.

 

 

 

 

 

The table appears similar to the one in this picture with Thelma Todd.

*Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café was given to the Paulists by Lola Lane, the widow of Roland West. They used it as a center for the production of religious films for years.



Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2014/01/thelma-todds-sidewalk-cafe.html

Rudy Schafer Returns To The Sidewalk Café:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2012/02/rudy-schafer-returns-to-sidewalk-cafe.html



A

Lola Lane Photo - SCREENLAND, December 1929.

An early Lola Lane photo appears in the same issue as the article about the Sister act in THE SHOW OF SHOWS.

Lola Lane was one of the Lane sisters, which can be considered another sister act as they made some movies together. Lola was the only one that was in the movies in 1929.

We've had a little about Lola Lane here before, she married Roland West and inherited Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café, eventually giving it to the Paulist fathers.



Lola Lane:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2012/04/lola-lane-and-lois-lane.html

The Lane Sisters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_Sisters




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"Never Say Dye" - PICTURE PLAY, 1932

Thelma Todd was using the stage name of  "Alison Loyd" for the movie CORSAIR. There's a reference to that, and to her association with Ronald Colman, in this article from PICTURE PLAY.

 

 

Lola Lane was one of the Lane sisters. She later married Roland West, the producer of the movie CORSAIR. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Los Angeles Time May 29, 2002

A more recent article from the Los Angeles Times.

From the Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2002:
A Mystery Revisited A building that figured in the unsolved death of actress Thelma Todd is for sale.

By ROBERT W. WELKOS,

Times Staff Writer

The main stairway and entry to the Pacific Palisades property that has been put on the market by Paulist Productions. They found actress Thelma Todd's lifeless body on the morning of Dec. 16, 1935, slumped over in the front seat of her chocolate-colored 1934 Lincoln Phaeton convertible, her car parked in a two-car garage near her married lover's brooding cliff-side mansion in Pacific Palisades.

She was dressed in a mauve and silver evening gown, expensive mink wrap and adorned with a small fortune in jewelry, after attending a party in her honor into the wee hours of the morning with her Hollywood friends at the famed Trocadero nightclub on Sunset Boulevard.

The death of the blond, wisecracking comedian dubbed "Hot Toddy" who had appeared in more than 40 films, including "Horse Feathers" and "Monkey Business" opposite the Marx Brothers, would unleash a media frenzy rivaling the O.J. Simpson case six decades later and spawn endless theories over what led to the 30-year-old starlet's untimely demise.

Now, a piece of this Raymond Chandler-like mystery is up for sale, and, from the looks of it, the public's appetite for the long-simmering Hollywood scandal has not abated.

Just down the hill from the death scene in the Castellammare section of Pacific Palisades, a sprawling, three-tiered Spanish-style building that housed Todd's swank ocean-view apartment in the 1930s went on the market this month for the first time in decades. The asking price: $4.7 million.

The salesman handling the property said he has been deluged with phone calls from prospective buyers, many of them local residents, who are entranced as much by Todd lore as they are by the rare opportunity of buying a prime piece of commercially zoned real estate on Pacific Coast Highway that goes for $300 a square foot.

"The first day my sign went up, I had 75 phone calls within six hours," recalled Rene Soto of Les Small & Co., a real estate consulting firm in Century City. "I'm averaging about 50 calls a day."

Soto noted that prospective buyers are not just asking him about the building, they want to hear the Thelma Todd saga. Like other scandals from Hollywood's early days, from "Fatty" Arbuckle to William Desmond Taylor, the strange death of Todd was a tale filled with glamour, intrigue and enough colorful characters to populate a novel.

Even today, authors, film buffs and local residents vigorously debate what happened that fateful night as they try to fill in the blanks around this dark chapter in Hollywood history. At the time, her death was a nationwide sensation. "Body of Thelma Todd Found in Death Riddle," read the front-page headline in the Los Angeles Times. Her mysterious death has been a cause for speculation ever since:

Was she murdered by her business partner and sometime lover, a fading screen director and producer named Roland West?

Was she followed home from the Trocadero that night by her abusive ex-husband, Pat De Cicco?

Did gangland boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano order his boys to rub her out after she allegedly balked at allowing casino gambling above her restaurant?

Or, was it all just a tragic accident?

The three-story, 15,000-square-foot building in which Todd once lived is only a pedestrian bridge away from the beach at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway--a familiar sight to thousands of motorists who zip along daily between Santa Monica and Malibu.

Using the actress' fame as a draw, West and Todd opened a popular restaurant on the ground floor of the building called Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café. One floor up was their private nightclub named Joya's, which played host to Hollywood's rich and famous. Given its flashy history, then, it is no small irony that today the building is owned by a religiously oriented motion picture and television production company called Paulist Productions.

Thelma Todd, in costume for a film, in an undated photo with Pat De Cicco. Wide World Photos Founded in the 1960s by a much-beloved Catholic priest, the late Father Ellwood E. "Bud" Kieser, Paulist Productions came to prominence in Hollywood for its award-winning television series "Insight."

How the production company acquired the property has a Todd connection. The owner, Lola Lane of the singing Lane sisters, had married Roland West and inherited the building after his death in 1952. She remarried and, after converting to Catholicism, she and her husband met Kieser and were so impressed that they invited him to set up shop on the ground floor of their large residence. The property was later deeded to Paulist Productions.

Today, officials at Paulist Productions say it just doesn't make sense for the production company not to utilize the money that can be realized from selling the property. "This is an asset," said Father Frank Desiderio, a Catholic priest who heads Paulist Productions, "and we've been sitting on it rather than putting it to work."

Just touring the building is nostalgic. Desiderio points to a frayed menu from Todd's eatery that is framed and mounted on his office wall. Among the menu offerings: Gin Fizz--35 cents, Thelma Todd Knockout--$1, Thelma Todd Milk Punch (gin base)--45 cents, and a Thelma Todd Rickey--45 cents. "A hot weather suggestion."

The current lobby of Paulist Productions is reached by ascending a grand staircase, and up a small, winding stairway is a hexagon-shaped, third-floor ballroom that in Todd's heyday had a dance floor and bandstand but now serves as living quarters.

Because the building has such a rich history, Father Desiderio has become well-versed in the Todd mystery, although he does not hold himself out as an expert on the case.

"She was a magnet," he said. "She would bring people in. She was a huge star. But because she also liked to go out, there were some nights she wasn't here, which would drive Roland West up the wall. He would say, 'You're my moneymaker, and if you're not here, I'm not making money.'"

Desiderio then leads a visitor along a dirt path behind the property to the old West mansion, still as stately and ominous-looking as ever. The garage in which Todd died is still here too. On the night before her death, Todd had gone to the Trocadero, where a party in her honor was thrown by British actor Stanley Lupino, the father of then-ingénue Ida Lupino, who was one of Todd's close friends. Along with the Lupinos, other guests that night included theater mogul Sid Grauman, movie choreographer Arthur Prince and theatrical agent Al Kaufman.

Todd left the Trocadero about 3 a.m. in a car driven by a chauffeur, arriving at the cafe about 3:45 a.m. Police theorized that after the chauffeur left, she discovered the door to the cafe locked and walked up a long flight of steps to West's house. But some of those familiar with the case challenge the notion that Todd, who had recently been diagnosed with a heart ailment, would have walked up the steep flight of steps to West's garage.

She could have gone into the garage, located at 17531 Posetano Road, climbed into her car, and turned on the ignition to warm herself from the cold wind that blew over the Palisades that night, authorities speculated. But critics of the police version note that she was a bright, former schoolteacher and would have been well aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide.

Her maid, Mae Whitehead, discovered the body. Todd's skin was crimson, a telltale sign of carbon monoxide poisoning. The coroner believed that coagulated blood found around her face, on her dress and inside the car had been caused when her head struck the steering wheel. There was no sign of a struggle.

Randy Young, a local historian who interviewed Castellammare residents who were around in the mid-'30s, said he believes the actress was murdered by her sometime lover, West, who then covered up the crime.

"We knew the gentleman who was a service station operator and jack-of-all-trades in the Palisades," Young said. "He was the first one on the scene before the police came. He saw she was hit in the head. He said there was a lot of blood on her. She had not fallen on the steering wheel and hit her head. She was in the passenger seat and was kind of leaning over."

Film historian Marc Wanamaker, who knew the late Hollywood producer Hal Roach, a close friend of Todd's in the early days of Hollywood, posits the theory that Todd wasn't murdered, but that West was responsible for her death.

"I believe, and Roach confirmed, that she went out to this party on Saturday night," Wanamaker said. "Upon leaving the house to go to the party, there was an argument between her and Roland West [that she be back by 2 a.m.]. ... When she came back around 4 in the morning, he wouldn't let her into the house. "I believe West ran after her down there, she turned on the ignition, and he shut the door to the garage so she wouldn't leave," Wanamaker added. "I don't believe he knew what carbon monoxide was. It wasn't suicide or murder. It was manslaughter on his part."

No arrests were ever made.

Because of the tantalizing story behind the building, locals don't want to see the stylish building on Pacific Coast Highway where Todd lived and played fall victim to the bulldozer once it is sold. "If somebody buys it and wants to tear it down, we would fight and have it 'landmarked,'" said Lorraine Oshins, president of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society. As for the Todd case, the mystery shows no sign of evaporating.

Young noted that mystery writer Raymond Chandler had lived in the Palisades and knew the Todd story and the terrain well. "He took a lot of what was out here," Young said, "and wrote them into his novels."

                                                          *                    *                     *


Although the Paulist fathers tried putting the Sidewalk Cafe up for sale, it did not sell, so they are still in posession of it and are still using it as a center for the production of religious television programs.

Hal Roach is said to have told people that he thought Roland West accidently caused the death of Thelma Todd. He is also said to have complained about the article in LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE by Marvin Nader and Katherine Wolf that quoted him as having said that. Evidently he didn't entirely agree with everything that they said in that article.

Roland West was not a fading director and producer at the time of the death of Thelma Todd. He was a retired movie director and producer, whom I occasionally refer to as a has-been. He did not like having studio bosses telling him what to do and would freely say so in interviews conducted while he was still employed by the movie industry. This is the man who always worked at night because there weren't so many people around then to bother him.

Roland West is frequently mentioned in connection with the death of Thelma Todd, as is Lucky Luciano. Quite often they say that they think Roland West is the more likely choice. This is a matter of opinion, and anyone who wants to can have whatever opinion he wants on the subject, as nothing has ever really been settled.

Certainly not by people who like to argue about it.

 A

Lola Lane and Lois Lane

Lola Lane was one of the famous Lane sisters. She played a girl reporter named "Torchy Blane" in the movies and it is thought that the character of "Lois Lane" is named after her. The name "Lola Lane" was even used for a daughter of Lois Lane and Superman in an "imaginary story" that was not part of the usual continuity.

Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page

TORCHY BLANE

Torchy Blane was a girl reporter in a 1930's movie series. Jerry Siegel, who created Lois Lane and Superman with illustrator Joe Shuster, was so smitten with Torchy’s feisty charms that she became a model for Lois’ rough-and-tumble, no-nonsense attitude. He said as much in a letter to Time magazine that was meant to give credit where credit was due.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Torchy Blane is a fictional female reporter who appeared in a series of light "B" films during the late 1930s, which were mixtures of mystery, action, adventure and fun.
During the pre-war period, the job of newspaper reporter was one of the few movie role models that portrayed intelligent, career-oriented women. Of these role models, Torchy Blane was perhaps the best known. The typical plot has the resilient, very-fast-talking Torchy solving the crime before her less-than-perceptive beau, the loud mouthed police detective Steve McBride.
Torchy was loosely based on the male character Kennedy in the MacBride and Kennedy stories by Louis Frederick Nebel, although Torchy was more compatible with the Hays code than the drunkard Kennedy.
In all but two of the films, Torchy Blane was played by Glenda Farrell, and Steve McBride by Barton MacLane.
Lola Lane played Torchy in Torchy Blane in Panama with Paul Kelly as McBride. Torchy Blane was Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel's inspiration for the personality of the character of Lois Lane.^[1] Siegel based Lois Lane's name on Torchy actress Lola Lane.
In the final film of the series, Torchy Plays with Dynamite, Jane Wyman was Torchy, and Allen Jenkins Lt. Steve McBride.
The character of Torchy Blane appeared in the following Warner Brothers and First National films:

Released	Film title	Run time	Starring as
			Torchy Blane	Steve McBride
1937	Smart Blonde	59 min	Glenda Farrell	Barton MacLane
	Fly-Away Baby	60 min
	The Adventurous Blonde	61 min
1938	Blondes At Work	63 min
	Torchy Blane in Panama	59 min	Lola Lane	Paul Kelly
	Torchy Gets Her Man	63 min	Glenda Farrell	Barton MacLane
1939	Torchy Blane in Chinatown	58 min
	Torchy Runs for Mayor	60 min
	Torchy Blane ... Playing with Dynamite	59 min	Jane Wyman	Allen Jenkins

 References

1. ^ Letters to the Editor, Time magazine (May 30, 1988), pp. 6-7.

 External links

• Smart Blonde (1937) at the Internet Movie Database
• Fly-Away Baby (1937) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Adventurous Blonde (1937) at the Internet Movie Database
• Blondes at Work (1938) at the Internet Movie Database
• Torchy Blane in Panama (1938) at the Internet Movie Database
• Torchy Gets Her Man (1938) at the Internet Movie Database
• Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939) at the Internet Movie Database
• Torchy Runs for Mayor (1939) at the Internet Movie Database
• Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite (1939) at the Internet Movie Database
• Thrilling detective

As of 2009, Turner Classic Movies have made a number of original trailers freely available online at their web site.

Also on wikipedia, under "Cultural References" on the "Lane Sisters" entry:

Lois Lane, Superman's girlfriend, was named after Lola Lane, who played "Torchy Blane" a fictional reporter who inspired Lois' character, in one of the 1930s films ( Footnote: Letters to the Editor, Time magazine (May 30, 1988), pp. 6-7. )  This presumably is the letter by Jerry Siegel that is mentioned above.

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 Glenda Farrell had actually played about the same girl reporter character in the movie MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM in 1933, some time before the Torchy Blane series began.

Fay Wray at left, Glenda Farrell center, Lionel Atwill at right.

Lola Lane as Torchy Blane

Lola Lane in the 1930's.

Autographed picture of Lola Lane at the Brown Derby.

Lola Lane later married Roland West, who had been the partner of Thelma Todd in her sidewalk cafe and continued to operate it after her death. After his death in 1952, Lola Lane became the owner of the sidewalk cafe.

Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe

Thelma Todd at the Sidewalk Cafe.

Interior of Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe.

LOIS LANE

The original Lois Lane by the original artist, Joe Shuster.

My brother Dale has said they used to draw Lois Lane to look like Judy Garland.

After Noel Neill started playing Lois Lane, they drew the character to look like her.

MAD parody of Superman with art by Wally Wood.

Here we see Noel Neill in the same costume Wally Wood drew Lois Lane in.

Bill Ward's blonde bombshell was named "Torchy", too. And her last name was "Todd". But she was really like another version of the "Irma" character that Marie Wilson played. Still, I wonder who she was named after.

 

 

 

 

 Trailer for TORCHY BLANE IN PANAMA, with Lola Lane as Torchy Blane:

 

 

 

Before Lois Lane, Torchy Blane Got The Scoop:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2010/05/05/lois-lane-torchy-blane/


Discussion of origins of Lois Lane:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315107


MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_of_the_Wax_Museum

Lane Sisters at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_Sisters


Priscilla Lane fan club:
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/Priscilla_Lane_Fan_Club/

My fan club for Noel Neill:
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Adventures_Of_Noel_Neill/