Dona Drake

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Dona Drake , also Rita Rio , (born November 15, 1914 as Eunice Westmoreland in Miami , Florida , † June 20, 1989 in Los Angeles ) was an American film actress of the 1940s and 1950s as well as a singer, dancer and band leader.

Life

In the 1930s she led a women's orchestra and a women's singing group ("The Girl Friends") as Rita Rio. She toured the United States with her All Girl Orchestra in 1940. In 1938 she responded firmly, albeit in a moderate tone, in Down Beat to a misogynistic article by an anonymous critic ( Why woman musicians are inferior ).

Active as an actress since the mid-1930s, she used various stage names, initially z. B. Rita Rio, Una Velon and Rita Shaw, from the early 1940s the name Dona Drake. In films she mostly played South Sea Islanders, Arabs, Indians or Latina roles and spread in her film biographies that she was of Mexican origin (birth name Rita Novello, where Novello was her mother's maiden name).

As Rita Rio she had a bigger role in the film Strike me pink (1936) directed by Norman Taurog with Eddie Cantor , in which she has a snake dance number.

For example, she played an Arab girl in The Road to Morocco with Bob Hope (1942) and the Indian servant of Bette Davis in The Sting of Evil (1949).

By 1955 she played in more than 30 film and television productions. Most recently, she made appearances in various television series.

She had been married to William Travilla since 1944 and had one child.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Dona Drake  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted in Linda Dahl: Stormy Weather , Limelight 1996, pp. 51f