Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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STORM, Gale

(b Josephine Owaissa Cottle, 5 April 1922, Bloomington TX; d 27 June 2009, Danville CA) Actress, singer. Her middle name was an Indian word for bluebird. The family moved to Houston; she won a Gateway to Hollywood contest in 1939 and went to Hollywood, where she won the national event  in 1940. She married the contest's male winner, Lee Bonnell, who soon retired from acting; they were married until he died in 1986.

She appeared in Roy Rogers movies, etc; her favorites among her films were comedies, It Happened on Fifth Avenue '47, with Don DeFore, and The Dude Goes West '48, with Eddie Albert. Her hit TV sitcom My Little Margie '52-5 was a summer replacement for I Love Lucy, with venerable actor Charles Farrell as her father, and helped record sales on Dot '55-7: her hit covers of 'I Hear You Knocking' (Smiley Lewis), 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' (Frankie Lymon) etc were not very good compared to the originals, but successful until blacks broke through to the pop chart and washed away the cover merchants. Her last top five was a cover of Bonnie Guitar's country-pop 'Dark Moon' '57, and her hits in turn had helped her get her own Gale Storm Show '56-62, co-starring sidekick Zazu Pitts, where her contract allowed her to burst into song on every third show.

She turned to Las Vegas and regional theatre, fought alcoholism in the 1970s and published an autobiography called I Ain’t Down Yet in 1981, describing herself as 'the star of my own cornball B movie.' She had a few TV parts, the last one on Murder, She Wrote in 1989. She was a trouper who deserved her run of good luck.