Gloria Dickson

Gloria Dickson, born Thais Alalia Dickerson on August 13, 1917, in Pocatello, Idaho, was an American stage and screen actress whose career spanned the 1930s and 1940s. Her father worked as a banker, and following his death in 1929, the family relocated to California. Dickson completed her secondary education at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where she first became involved in amateur theatrical productions.

Her professional opportunities expanded in April 1936 when she was performing in a Federal Theatre Project production and was noticed by Warner Bros. talent scout Max Arnow, who subsequently signed her to a studio contract. Her screen debut came the following year in the 1937 film They Won't Forget. That same year, she appeared on Broadway in Wise Tomorrow, marking her credited stage work in New York.

Dickson married makeup artist Perc Westmore on June 20, 1938, in Santa Barbara, California. She filed for divorce on May 17, 1940, and the uncontested dissolution was granted on June 22, 1941, in Los Angeles. Later in 1941 she wed film director Ralph Murphy, from whom she divorced in 1944. She then married William Fitzgerald, a former boxer, later that same year and remained married to him until her death.

Dickson died on April 10, 1945, at age 27, in a fire at a Los Angeles home she was renting from actor Sidney Toler. An unextinguished cigarette ignited an overstuffed chair on the main floor while she slept upstairs. Her body, along with that of her pet dog, was discovered in the bathroom, suggesting she had attempted to escape through the bathroom window. The cause of death was asphyxiation; her lungs had been seared by flames, and her body sustained first- and second-degree burns.