Luana Walters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Luana Walters (July 22, 1912 - May 19, 1963) was a motion picture actress from Los Angeles, California.
Walters was an expert horsewoman which led to her discovery as an actress at a rodeo in Palm Springs, California. She won a woman's bucking contest which was being watched by a movie scout, who noticed her.
Her film career began when she visited a friend on a United Artists lot. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was excited about her screen possibilities and arranged for a film test. However, only three days later Fairbanks went to Europe, and the test was never completed. Not long afterwards Joe Schenck saw Walters on the dance floor at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, California. After viewing the abbreviated test made by Fairbanks, Schenck offered her a contract with United Artists. The studio did not make a movie in the next six months so Walters' option was not taken up.
Walters' screen credits start with an uncredited role in Reaching For The Moon (film) (1930). Her skill as an equestrian helped her in parts in westerns like Ride 'Em Cowboy (1936), Where The West Begins (1938), Mexicali Rose (1939), and Law Of The Wolf (1939).
On many occasions Walters made films in which her role was cut out. This began when she made Reaching for the Moon (film) with Fairbanks. Her parts were also deleted from Spawn of the North (1938) and Souls At Sea (1937). The former was a Carole Lombard feature and the latter paired Walters with Robert Cummings.
Walters was the first actress to portray Superman's biological mother Lara in a live-action format. She appeared in "Superman Comes to Earth", the first chapter of the 1948 Superman movie serial. Portions of this depiction appear in flashback in "At the Mercy of Atom Man!", the seventh chapter of the 1950 serial Atom Man vs. Superman.
In the latter portion of her career Walters was in a number of B-Movie films, most of them of the sci-fi and horror genres. She plays a female reporter on the trail of a fiend's story in The Corpse Vanishes (1942), with Bela Lugosi. She appears as a cellblock guard in Girls In Prison (1956). Her final role came in The She Creature (1956).
Luana Walters died of liver failure due to alcoholism in Los Angeles in 1963.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Luana Walters, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 2.821 |
Birthday | 1912-07-22 |
Place of Birth | Los Angeles, California, USA |
Also Known As |
1943
Drums of Fu Manchu
3.8/2
Feature version of the 1940 Republic serial, about Fu Manchu's attempt to conquer Asia.
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Drums of Fu Manchu
1940
Drums of Fu Manchu
6.1/5
The nefarious Dr. Fu Manchu searches for the keys to the tomb of Genghis Khan, in order to fulfill a prophecy that will enable him to conquer the worl...
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Drums of Fu Manchu
1940
Blondie Plays Cupid
6.7/6
The Bumstead family is off to see relatives in the country when Blondie runs into Charlie and Millie, an eloping couple needing her help.
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Blondie Plays Cupid
1942
The Corpse Vanishes
4.2/66
A scientist keeps his wife young by killing, stealing the bodies of, and taking the gland fluid from virgin brides.
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The Corpse Vanishes
1947
Shoot to Kill
4.6/19
A gritty crime story involving a newspaper man and crooked politicians.
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Shoot to Kill
1986
Horrible Horror
7/5
A collection of trailers and previews from various low-budget horror films of the '50s and '60s.
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Horrible Horror
1938
Assassin of Youth
2.9/14
A high-school girl gets involved with a ring of teenage marijuana smokers and starts down the road to ruin. A reporter poses as a soda jerk to infiltr...
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Assassin of Youth
1937
Youth on Parole
2.7/3
Two strangers, a man and a woman, are framed for a jewel robbery and thrown in jail. After they get out, they join forces to track down the real thiev...
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Youth on Parole
1936
Aces and Eights
6/3
A card sharp steps in when a Mexican family's ranch is threatened by swindlers and cheats.
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Aces and Eights
1956
Girls in Prison
4.3/6
An inmate is persuaded to take part in a breakout by cellmates anxious to cash in on loot they believe she has hidden.
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Girls in Prison
1936
Shadow of Chinatown
4.6/5
A madman sets out to destroy a group of Chinatown merchants.
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Shadow of Chinatown
1941
The Kid's Last Ride
5/2
The fifth film in the 24-film Range Busters series finds "Crash", "Dusty" and Alibi, on their way to Gopher City to become the town's peace officers....
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The Kid's Last Ride
1940
The Range Busters
5.2/4
A phantom-like gunman is murdering the hands at the Circle T Ranch and the Range Busters are recruited by its owner to stop the "phantom". Only, the r...
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The Range Busters
1941
Arizona Bound
4.3/3
The Rough Riders are called in to help save Master's stage line. Taggart has his gang robbing the stages and shooting the drivers. When Buck drives th...
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Arizona Bound
1942
Down Texas Way
0/1
"The Rough Riders", has U. S. Marshals Buck Roberts (Buck Jones) and Tim McCall (Tim McCoy) coming to a Texas town to visit their friend, U. S. Marsha...
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Down Texas Way
1936
The Speed Reporter
5/2
Spectacular stunt work by Richard Talmadge, circus acrobat and stunt man for Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., highlights this expose of a big city criminal mas...
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The Speed Reporter
1942
Inside the Law
5/2
A gang of crooks wrestles with the temptation to rob the bank that they now manage.
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Inside the Law
1939
Paris Honeymoon
3/1
A Texas millionaire travels to Europe to meet his girlfriend, a European countess. He stops in a rustic mountain village and meets a beautiful peasant...
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Paris Honeymoon
1941
No Greater Sin
3.5/2
The dangers of the dread venereal disease syphilis are depicted in this earnest drama from the 1940s. The story centers upon an intrepid health commis...
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No Greater Sin
1938
Thanks for the Memory
5.7/6
Steve Merrick is an out of work writer who stays home and plays house husband while his wife goes to work for her former fiancé and Merrick's publishe...
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Thanks for the Memory
1938
Where the West Begins
5/1
Lynne Reed, Jack Manning's fiancée, is stagestruck and wants to go to New York for a career. She is encouraged in this delusion that she is a great ac...
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Where the West Begins
1942
Captain Midnight
5/2
Secret Service Major Steel is one of the few men in America aware of the fact that Captain Albright is also Captain Midnight, daring masked aviator de...
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Captain Midnight
1940
The Return of Wild Bill
0/0
When Matt Kilgore and his men frame and then hang an innocent man, Lige Saunders sends for his son Wild Bill Saunders who arrives to find his father s...
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The Return of Wild Bill
1936
Ride 'Em Cowboy
0/0
A cowboy turns auto racer, beats his rival and wins a girl.
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Ride 'Em Cowboy
1939
Law of the Wolf
5.7/3
When a man is wrongly accused of murder, a dog helps clear his name.
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Law of the Wolf
1939
Mutiny on the Blackhawk
0/0
Story deals with slave-running between Hawaii and California in 1840, featuring a wild mutiny aboard a slave ship on the high seas, the bartering of n...
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Mutiny on the Blackhawk
1939
Fangs of the Wild
5.6/5
Foxes are disappearing from fox farms.
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Fangs of the Wild
1939
Honeymoon in Bali
6.2/2
Bill Burnett, a resident of Bali, visits New York City, meets and falls in love with Gail Allen, the successful manager of a Fifth Avenue shop, who is...
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Honeymoon in Bali
1939
Eternally Yours
5.6/16
Anita, engaged to solid Don Barnes, is swept off her feet by magician Arturo. Before you can say presto, she's his wife and stage assistant on a lengt...
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Eternally Yours
1939
Mexicali Rose
6/1
Gene Autry and his sidekick Frog look into a phony oil scam being perpetrated on a mission orphanage.
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Mexicali Rose
1941
Across the Sierras
2.2/2
Elliott is hunted by Curtis who has spent six years behind bars because of his testimony. After knocking out several baddies and putting up with the z...
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Across the Sierras
1936
Shadow of Chinatown
3/3
Feature version of the 1936 serial starring Bela Lugosi. A European importing firm resorts to devious extremes to run its Chinese competition out of...
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Shadow of Chinatown
1940
Millionaire Playboy
2.7/3
A young millionaire gets hiccups whenever he kisses a pretty woman.
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Millionaire Playboy
1942
Thundering Hoofs
3.2/2
Bill Underwood falls out with his father and chooses the life of a cowhand rather than take charge of his father's stage line.
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Thundering Hoofs
1937
Under Strange Flags
0/0
Not quite a western, not quite a historical drama, Under Strange Flags is a little bit of both, and a lot of former RKO Radio cowboy hero Tom Keene. T...
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Under Strange Flags
1934
The Third Sex
1/1
An exploitation film about homosexuality. The film is believed to be lost. Elinor Gordon, who was frightened sexually by a man while an infant, confid...
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The Third Sex
1940
The Durango Kid
6/1
The Durango Kid is a sort of Robin Hood of the West who helps the lovely Walters (who replaced Starrett's usual love-interest, Iris Meredith), the dau...
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The Durango Kid
1940
Misbehaving Husbands
5.2/5
Marital comedy in which a department store mannequin is mistaken for "the other woman".
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Misbehaving Husbands
1932
Two Seconds
6.1/20
A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flash...
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Two Seconds
1932
Miss Pinkerton
5.7/10
Scion of the once-rich Mitchell family, Herbert Wynn is found shot to death. Nurse Adams, bored by hospital routine, is recruited by the police to fer...
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Miss Pinkerton
1939
Hotel Imperial
6/2
It is the fate of a small frontier town, adjoining the no-man's-land where the Russians and Austrians are fighting out one of the final campaigns of W...
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Hotel Imperial
1939
Cafe Society
6/1
A pampered heiress (Madeleine Carroll) elopes with a shipboard reporter (Fred MacMurray) just to get her name in a society column.
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Cafe Society
1940
The Tulsa Kid
6/1
A protegee of notorious outlaw Montana (Beery), young Tom Benton decides to stay on the good side of the Law upon reaching maturity. Montana, however,...
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The Tulsa Kid
1942
The Lone Star Vigilantes
0/0
It's Wild Bill Elliot as Wild Bill Hickok in the Columbia B-western Lone Star Vigilantes. Returning from Civil War duty, Hickok, Tex Martin and Cannon...
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The Lone Star Vigilantes
1942
Bad Men of the Hills
0/0
U.S. Marshal Dave Upjohn arrives in Sundown to investigate reports of lawlessness.
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Bad Men of the Hills
1942
Lawless Plainsmen
0/0
In this western, a ranch foreman and the bosses son go to a saloon to slake their thirst and find themselves in the midst of a battle started by the f...
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Lawless Plainsmen
1938
Say It in French
0/0
An American golf pro falls in love with a woman while visiting France; before long they are married and in the US. Upon their arrival, they are dismay...
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Say It in French
1938
The Buccaneer
6.5/8
French pirate Jean Lafitte rescues a girl and joins the War of 1812.
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The Buccaneer
1948
Arthur Takes Over
2/1
A young woman must find a way to break the news to her parents and a stuffy suitor that she is now married to a sailor.
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Arthur Takes Over
1932
End of the Trail
0/0
Framed by Major Jenkins, Capt. Travers is kicked out of the Army. When Travers, now living with the Indians, is captured by Jenkins, the Indians attac...
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End of the Trail
1938
Marie Antoinette
6.288/26
The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, in a politically advantageous marriage for the riv...
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Marie Antoinette
1933
Fighting Texans
0/0
Randolph Graves, a high-pressure haberdashery salesman, is fired for arguing with a customer and gets job selling oil stock in a nearby town; there he...
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