Pauline Moore

Pauline Moore, actress: born Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 14 June 1914; married 1934 Jefferson Machamer (died 1960; one son, two daughters), 1962 Dodd Watkins (died 1972); died Sequim, Washington 7 December 2001.

A dark-haired beauty with a passing resemblance to Vivien Leigh, Pauline Moore never attained the heights of true stardom but was a popular actress in the late Thirties and early Forties. She played the sweetheart of Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) in John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln, was a spirited Lady Constance in The Three Musketeers, and had prominent roles in three Charlie Chan movies. Western fans will remember her for the five films she made as leading lady to Roy Rogers. She made 25 films in total before retiring from films to raise a family.

Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1914, she first became interested in acting when she won a place in the finals of the National Constitution Oratorical Contest in Washington. After working with a touring repertory company and spending a brief, generally unproductive, spell as a contract player at Universal, she played small roles on the Broadway stage in Florenz Ziegfeld's last production Hot-Cha! (1932), which opened just four months before the great showman's death, and the musical Murder at the Vanities (1933).

She was then given a leading role in Dance With Your Gods (1934), a short-lived melodrama about voodoo rites in New Orleans remembered now for featuring the stage début of Lena Horne in a small role. Moore's beauty also made her a leading cover girl of the time, her face appearing on the front of such magazines as Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan and McCall's. One of the advertisements for which she posed, the "Hostess Girl" painting on a metal Coca-Cola tray in 1934, has become a highly collectable item.

Moore made her screen début as a bridesmaid in the classic Frankenstein (1931) during her inconsequential early period with Universal, but she returned to Hollywood in 1937 when signed to a contract by 20th Century-Fox. She had married the artist and cartoonist Jefferson Machamer and was pregnant at the time, but neglected to tell the studio either fact during the filming of Heidi (1937). "I kept it a secret at first," she said. "In Heidi, with Shirley Temple, I played a schoolteacher. I almost didn't make it. When I got married at the end, I was afraid it was going to look like a shotgun wedding."

The three Charlie Chan films in which Moore featured were among the best in the series. Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) neatly integrated footage of the real Berlin Olympics into the film, in which Moore played the girlfriend of a test pilot involved with a new remote- controlled plane to be used in warfare and coveted by spies. In Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) she was a socialite, seeking a divorce in Reno, who becomes the chief suspect when the rival for her husband's affections is murdered. Moore had the top-billed female role in Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939), appearing in a Cleopatra-style wig as exotic mind-reader Eve Cairo. At the film's climax, Eve helps Chan stage a mind-reading act that forces the killer's hand.

The actress had two more of her finest roles in 1939. In Allan Dwan's lively musical version of The Three Musketeers she was a vivacious Lady Constance, who in this version survives rather than perishing at the hands of the wicked Lady de Winter as in the original novel. In John Ford's splendid piece of Americana, Young Mr Lincoln, Moore was a touching Ann Rutledge, sharing a tender scene with Lincoln (Henry Fonda) as in a long tracking shot they walk along the riverside and discuss their future. The scene ends with a dissolve to the same spot in bleak winter with Lincoln at Ann's graveside deciding to follow her advice to study law.

Moore later confessed that she thought this film would be her major break until she discovered the brevity of her role. "I thought I'd have conversations with Mr Ford," she said. "He came up to me one day and asked, 'Do you know your lines?' Another time he said I should take off my lipstick. That was it." When Fox let her go, Moore moved to Republic, where she was leading lady to the popular western star Roy Rogers in five of his films, including Days of Jesse James (1939), Colorado and Young Buffalo Bill (both 1940). She was also featured in the Republic serial King of the Texas Rangers (1941), which starred the All-American football champion "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh.

In 1941 Moore left Hollywood to raise her three children in Santa Monica, returning to acting in 1956 with occasional television appearances in such shows as Studio 57, Death Valley Days and Four-Star Playhouse. Machamer died in 1960 and two years later the deeply religious Moore married a minister, Dodd Watkins. In 1936 Moore had published a book of poetry, and later became noted for her devotional poems, short stories and plays. She frequently lectured before church and social groups and performed Christian-themed monologues. Her second husband died in 1972.

In 1990, when some of her work was shown at the Memphis Film Festival, Moore commented on her career. "I was the girl who was always being discovered by the press. 'Watch this girl!', a reviewer would say, and then forget to. The trouble was, if you were any good at all doing B movies, then the more B movies you did."

Tom Vallance