Evelyn Ankers

Evelyn Felisa Ankers was a British-American actress born on August 17, 1918, in Valparaíso, Chile, to British parents. She received her education at The Latymer School, the Godolphin School, the Tacchomo School of Music and Dramatic Art, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She became an American citizen in August 1946 and died on August 29, 1985, in Maui, Hawaii, at the age of 67, from ovarian cancer.

Ankers began performing at an early age, making her stage debut in Colombia at age ten in the title role of The Daughter of Dolores. She later appeared on the London stage in Bats in the Belfry before making her Broadway debut in 1940. Her Broadway credit was Ladies in Retirement, in which she played the role of Lucy Gilham.

Her film career spanned from 1936 to 1950 and encompassed more than fifty pictures. She became particularly associated with American horror films of the 1940s, earning the nickname "the Queen of the Bs." Among her most notable films were The Wolf Man (1941), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Captive Wild Woman (1943), Son of Dracula (1943), The Mad Ghoul (1943), Jungle Woman (1944), Weird Woman (1944), The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944), and The Frozen Ghost (1945). Lon Chaney Jr. was a frequent screen partner, most prominently in The Wolf Man. Ankers also appeared in Hold That Ghost (1941), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), His Butler's Sister (1943), The Pearl of Death (1944), Pardon My Rhythm (1944), and Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949), and she played Calamity Jane in The Texan Meets Calamity Jane (1950), one of several films for which she received top billing.

At the age of 32, Ankers retired from film to work as a housewife, though she occasionally took on television roles, including that of saloon owner Robbie James in the 1958 Cheyenne episode "Gambler," an ABC/Warner Brothers western series starring Clint Walker. A decade after her retirement, she appeared in her final film, No Greater Love (1960), alongside her husband, actor Richard Denning, whom she had married on September 6, 1942. The couple had one daughter, Diana Denning, later known as Diana Dwyer. Ankers relocated to Hawaii after Denning accepted the role of the governor on Hawaii Five-O. She and Denning are buried at Makawao Veterans' Cemetery in Makawao, Hawaii.