Ella Raines

Ella Wallace Raines was born on August 6, 1920, in Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, the daughter of logging engineer Ernest N. Raines and his wife Bird Zachary. She studied drama at the University of Washington, and it was during a campus production that director Howard Hawks first noticed her. Hawks subsequently made Raines the sole contract star of B-H Productions, a one-million-dollar production company he co-founded in 1943 with actor Charles Boyer. Her film debut came that same year in Corvette K-225, which Hawks produced and in which she appeared opposite Randolph Scott.

Her rise in Hollywood was rapid. In 1943 she also appeared in the all-female war film Cry "Havoc," and throughout 1944 she accumulated a string of notable credits: the film noir Phantom Lady with Franchot Tone, the Preston Sturges comedy Hail the Conquering Hero, the John Wayne western Tall in the Saddle, and the Edwardian noir The Suspect opposite Charles Laughton. Her work in Phantom Lady earned her a cover appearance on Life magazine in 1944. She appeared as a pin-up in the June 2 and June 16, 1944, issues of the military publication Yank. A second Life cover followed in 1947 in connection with the prison drama Brute Force, in which she starred alongside Burt Lancaster. That same year she appeared in the thriller The Web with Edmond O'Brien and the comedy The Senator Was Indiscreet with William Powell. Earlier credits also included the romantic suspense film The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) with Geraldine Fitzgerald and George Sanders.

In 1949 Raines starred opposite Brian Donlevy in Impact, and she subsequently took the female lead in A Dangerous Profession, a role originally intended for Jean Wallace. As her film career declined in the early 1950s, she transitioned to television, starring in the series Janet Dean, Registered Nurse in 1954 and 1955. She also made appearances on Robert Montgomery Presents, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Presents, Lights Out, Pulitzer Prize Playhouse, and The Christophers. Her final film role was in the British-made thriller The Man in the Road in 1956, and she largely retired from acting the following year. Nearly three decades later, she made a single guest appearance in the crime drama series Matt Houston in 1984.

Raines brought her career to the stage as well, appearing on Broadway in 1955 in The Wisteria Trees. She holds two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for her contributions to motion pictures at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard and one for television at 6600 Hollywood Boulevard.

In her personal life, Raines married her high school sweetheart, U.S. Army Air Forces Major Kenneth William Trout, on August 11, 1942, shortly after her graduation from the University of Washington. The marriage ended in divorce on December 18, 1945. On February 6, 1947, she married Robin Olds, a World War II fighter pilot who later became a triple-ace during the Vietnam War, attained the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force, and served as commandant of the United States Air Force Academy from 1967 to 1971. The couple had two daughters, Christina and Susan. Raines and Olds separated in 1975 and divorced in 1976.

Ella Raines died of throat cancer in Sherman Oaks, California, on May 30, 1988, at the age of 67.