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Muriel Angelus

1909 - 2004 (age 95) • Acting

The memories are vague when it comes to recalling this London-born leading lady, but Muriel Angelus did have her moments. She managed to appear in a few classic Broadway musical shows and Hollywood films before her early retirement in the mid-1940s. Of Scottish parentage, the former Muriel Findlay developed a sweet-voiced soprano at an early age. She made her singing debut at 12, eventually changing her name and becoming a popular music hall performer. She entered films toward the end of the silent era with The Ringer (1928), the first of three movie versions of the Edgar Wallace play. Her second film Sailor Don't Care (1928) was important only in that she met her first husband, Scots-born actor John Stuart. Her part was excised from the film. Though in her first sound picture Night Birds (1930), she got to sing a number, most of her films did not usurp her musical talents. The sweet-natured actress who played both ingenues and 'other woman' roles co-starred with husband Stuart in No Exit (1930), Eve's Fall (1930) and Hindle Wakes (1931), and appeared with British star Monty Banks in some of his farcical comedies, including My Wife's Family (1932) and So You Won't Talk (1935). Muriel received a career lift with the glossy musical London hit "Balalaika" and a chain of events happened with its success. It led to her securing the pivotal role of Adriana in "The Boys From Syracuse" and, in turn, a contract with Paramount Pictures. Divorced from Stuart by this time, Muriel settled in Hollywood and made her best films while there. She was touching as girlfriend to blind painter Ronald Colman in The Light That Failed (1939), a second remake of the Rudyard Kipling novel, and appeared to great advantage in Preston Sturges' classic satire The Great McGinty (1940) as _Brian Donlevy_'s secretary. After scoring another long-running Broadway hit with "Early To Bed" in 1943, Muriel met Radio City Music Hall orchestra conductor Paul Lavalle while appearing on radio in New York and married him in 1946. She retired to raise a family in New England. They had a daughter, Suzanne, who later worked for NBC. Muriel pretty much stayed out of the limelight for the remainder of her life. She died at 95 in a Virginia nursing home in 2004, some seven years after her husband's death.

Known For

The Great McGinty

69%

Catharine McGinty

1940

The Way of All Flesh

46%

Mary Brown

1940

The Light That Failed

58%

Maisie

1939

Safari

65%

Fay Thorne

1940

So You Won't Talk

80%

Katrina

1935

Detective Lloyd

90%

Sybil Craig

1932

Hindle Wakes

100%

Beatrice Farrar

1931

My Wife's Family

70%

Peggy Gay

1931

The Great McGinty

69%

Catharine McGinty

1940

The Way of All Flesh

46%

Mary Brown

1940

Safari

65%

Fay Thorne

1940

The Light That Failed

58%

Maisie

1939

So You Won't Talk

80%

Katrina

1935

Detective Lloyd

90%

Sybil Craig

1932

Hindle Wakes

100%

Beatrice Farrar

1931

My Wife's Family

70%

Peggy Gay

1931

Let's Love and Laugh

80%

The Bride Who Was

1931

Red Aces

90%

Ena Burslem

1930

Night Birds

20%

Dolly Mooreland

1930

No Exit

80%

Ann Ansell

1930

Eve's Fall

80%

Eve Warren

1930

The Ringer

70%

Mary Lenley

1928

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