Pamela Blake

Biography

The heroine of a host of westerns, crimes and serial adventures during the 1940s, this attractive, full-faced "B" movie item was born Adele Pearce on August 6, 1915 (several movie resources list 1918). Born in Oakland, California, Pamela Blake won a beauty contest at age 17 and decided to try her luck in Hollywood soon after. The lovely brunette began with an unbilled part in Eight Girls in a Boat (1934) but then took some time off and returned to her hometown of Oakland to study acting. She eventually relocated back to the Los Angeles area and continued to apprentice in a succession of uncredited bit roles until earning her first lead opposite cowboy star Tex Ritter in The Utah Trail (1938). Billed as Adele Pearce, this breakthrough sparked a series of featured and co-starring roles. RKO director John Farrow guided her briefly in such programmers as Sorority House (1939) and Full Confession (1939), the latter starring Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. The petite actress then appeared opposite a towering young John Wayne in Wyoming Outlaw (1939). This film, along with Full Confession (1939), also featured actor/stuntman 'Malcolm "Bud' McTaggart', who would become Pamela's first husband. The couple went on to appear as husband and wife in the exploitive and unsubtle programmer No Greater Sin (1941), which posed the dangers of venereal disease and the importance of hygiene. Their career struggles eventually damaged the marriage and the couple divorced within a few years. McTaggart tragically drowned in a Beverly Hills swimming pool in 1949 at the age of 39. Following a small role in the Alfred Hitchcock hit comedy romance Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, Pamela's best opportunity came at Paramount with the secondary femme role as a…