Ellen Hall

Ellen Hall, born Ellen Joanna Johnson on April 19, 1923, in Los Angeles, was an American actress who worked across film, television, and Broadway from the early 1930s through the early 1950s. Her mother was actress Ella Hall and her father was actor-turned-director Emory Johnson, who married in 1917 and settled in Los Angeles. Hall was the third of their children, preceded by Emory Waldemar Johnson Jr., born January 27, 1919, and Alfred Bernard Johnson, born September 26, 1920. A younger sister, Diana Marie, was born October 27, 1929. The family experienced significant hardship during Hall's childhood: her brother Alfred was killed at age five in March 1926 when a truck struck him while the children were crossing a street in Hollywood, and her parents ultimately divorced in 1930. Following the divorce, Ella Hall moved with her three remaining children to North Hollywood, where she found work at the department store I. Magnin. In 1932, Emory Johnson declared bankruptcy, reducing his financial obligations to his former wife and children.

Hall's introduction to performing came early. At age seven, her mother secured roles for her and her brother Waldemar in the 1930 Universal production All Quiet on the Western Front. Her mother also appeared in that production in an uncredited cameo as a nurse. Hall's next recorded screen appearance came at age nine, in an uncredited role in Mary Pickford's 1933 film Secrets. At eighteen, she was chosen as a background performer in the 1941 musical comedy The Chocolate Soldier. Her Broadway career ran from 1931 to 1946 and included productions such as the drama Jason, The Night Before Christmas, The Unconquered, Escape This Night, and Born Yesterday.

Hall's film career gained momentum in the early 1940s. In 1943, at age twenty, she received her first female lead in the Monogram Pictures Western Outlaws of Stampede Pass. That same year she joined the Goldwyn Girls, a company of thirty-four female dancers assembled by producer Samuel Goldwyn, which led to her appearance in the 1944 musical Up in Arms. Her promotional materials from that production noted she stood five feet six inches tall, weighed 123 pounds, and had brown hair and blue eyes. In late 1944, producer William Perlberg of 20th Century Fox selected her to join the fourteen Diamond Horseshoe Girls. Westerns formed a substantial portion of her output: in 1944 alone she appeared in Raiders of the Border, Lumberjack, Range Law, Call of the Rockies, and Brand of the Devil. Additional film credits from the period include the 1944 horror film Voodoo Man, in which she played the long-dead wife of Bela Lugosi, and the musicals Here Come the Waves (1944), Wonder Man (1945), and Cinderella Jones (1946). Later Western credits included Thunder Town (1946) and Lawless Code (1949). In 1951, she appeared in three episodes of the television series The Cisco Kid, and her final recorded screen appearance was in the 1952 production The Congregation, at which point she was twenty-eight years old.

Hall met Lee Langer, a Marine fighter pilot who had seen action in the Guadalcanal campaign, in February 1944 while she was working on the Warner Bros. production Shine On, Harvest Moon. Actress Ann Sheridan introduced the two on set, and they announced their engagement on March 13, 1944. The couple married on December 3, 1944, in North Hollywood. Mary Pickford, a friend of Hall's mother, arranged for the wedding reception to be held at the Hollywood home of Frances Marion, and Pickford stood in the receiving line alongside Ella Hall. Following the wedding, Langer remained on active military duty until his discharge on February 21, 1946. A son was born to the couple on March 4, 1949. After his military service, Langer became a restaurateur and managed the Encore restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard, and in 1951 he was commissioned as a major in the Marine Reserves.

Hall retired from acting by 1952 and later became active in the Motion Picture and Television Fund volunteer group, serving as its volunteer president from 1969 to 1970. She and Langer eventually retired to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, and remained married until his death from natural causes in San Ysidro, San Diego, in 1995, after fifty years together. Following his death, Hall moved to Bellevue, Nebraska, to live with their son. She died on March 24, 1999, at Hillcrest Care and Rehabilitation Center in Bellevue, of complications from a stroke, at age seventy-five. Her ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, alongside her mother, Ella Hall, and her younger sister, Diana Marie Moxley.