Gale Storm
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Gale Storm

Josephine Owaissa Cottle (April 5, 1922 – June 27, 2009), known professionally as Gale Storm, was an American actress and singer. After a film career from 1940 to 1952, she starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show. Six of her songs were top ten hits. Storm's greatest recording success was a cover version of "I Hear You Knockin'," which hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1955.

Storm was born in Bloomington, Texas, United States. Her middle name Owaissa means "Bluebird" in a Native American language[which?]. The youngest of five children, she had two brothers and two sisters. Her father, William Walter Cottle, died after a year-long illness when she was only 17 months old, and her mother, Minnie Corina Cottle, struggled to raise the children alone.[citation needed]

Storm attended Holy Rosary School in what is now Midtown, Houston. She performed in the drama club at both Albert Sidney Johnston Junior High School and San Jacinto High School.[citation needed]

When Storm was 17, two of her teachers urged her to enter a contest on Gateway to Hollywood, broadcast from the CBS Radio studios in Hollywood. First prize was a one-year contract with a movie studio, which she won, and was immediately given the stage name Gale Storm. Her performing partner (and future husband), Lee Bonnell from South Bend, Indiana, became known as Terry Belmont.[citation needed]

Storm had a role in the radio version of Big Town. After winning the contest in 1940, Storm made several films for the RKO Radio Pictures studio. Her first was Tom Brown's School Days, playing opposite Jimmy Lydon and Freddie Bartholomew. She worked steadily in low-budget films released during this period. In 1941, she sang in several soundies, three-minute musicals produced for "movie jukeboxes".

She acted and sang in Monogram Pictures' Frankie Darro series, and played ingénue roles in other Monogram features with the East Side Kids, Edgar Kennedy, and the Three Stooges, most notably in the film Swing Parade of 1946. Monogram had always relied on established actors with reputations, but in Gale Storm, the studio finally had a star of its own. She played the lead in the studio's most elaborate productions, both musical and dramatic. She shared top billing in Monogram's The Crime Smasher (1943), opposite Edgar Kennedy, Richard Cromwell, and Frank Graham in the role of Jones, a character derived from network radio.

Storm starred in a number of films, including the romantic comedies G.I. Honeymoon (1945) and It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), the Western Stampede (1949), and the 1950 film-noir dramas The Underworld Story and Between Midnight and Dawn. U.S. audiences warmed to Storm and her fan mail increased. She performed in more than three dozen motion pictures for Monogram, experience which made possible her success in other media.

In 1950, Storm made her television debut in Hollywood Premiere Theatre on ABC. She also made singing appearances on such television variety programs as The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom.

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