Billie Seward

Billie Seward, born Rita Ann Seward on October 23, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a performer whose career spanned Broadway and Hollywood film. She died on March 20, 1982, in Sherman Oaks, California, and was survived by four brothers and two sisters. Her Funeral Mass was held at St. Cyril of Jerusalem Roman Catholic Church in Encino, California, and she was interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery.

Seward's Broadway career ran from 1931 to 1933 and included four productions. She appeared in Simple Simon and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, followed by Of Thee I Sing and Pardon My English.

Her transition to film began with a three-month stay in Hollywood, after which she secured a contract with Columbia Pictures. In 1934 she starred opposite Richard Cromwell in the Columbia production Among the Missing. Cromwell and Wallace Ford both appeared alongside Seward in a subsequent production originally titled Hot News, released in 1935 as Men of the Hour. That same year she appeared in three western films written by Ford Beebe: Law Beyond the Range, The Revenge Rider, and Justice of the Range, with Colonel Tim McCoy, Ward Bond, and Ed LeSaint among her co-stars. In 1940 she appeared in the RKO film One Crowded Night, playing a character named Gladys. Prior to her film work, in December 1933, Seward performed with Lou Holtz at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel Gold Room.

In 1934 Seward was romantically linked to actor Lyle Talbot. On September 30, 1935, she married William Wilkerson, owner of the Trocadero and Ciro's in Los Angeles and owner and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. The couple separated in February 1937 but later reconciled. In March 1938, using her legal name Rita Ann Wilkerson, Seward renewed a divorce suit against Wilkerson.