Kathryn Crawford

Kathryn Crawford, born Kathryn Moran on October 5, 1908, in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, was an American actress and singer active in film and theatre during the 1920s and 1930s. She was also known professionally as Katherine Crawford and Kitty Moran. Her father, Michael Moran, worked in a glass factory, and her mother was Ann (Scott) Moran. Her parents divorced when Crawford was five years old, after which she lost contact with her mother for nearly four decades. Following her mother's illness, her father relocated the family to Los Angeles. At fifteen, Crawford eloped with her sister's boyfriend to escape an unhappy home situation, though the marriage lasted only a year and a half before the couple separated. Her mother, who had remarried and was working as a hotel maid, spent twelve years searching for her daughters before spotting Crawford in a movie magazine in 1929 and locating her.

Crawford's introduction to singing came through the choir at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church of Huntington Park, which she joined while still a high school student. The choir director provided her with vocal lessons. After a period working as a shop assistant, she pursued a career in musical comedy. Her first acting opportunity came through Lillian Albertson's production of The Love Call, and she subsequently took summer stock engagements along the Pacific Coast. A role as the ingenue in Hit the Deck brought her to wider attention and led to a screen test arranged by director Wesley Ruggles, which secured her a contract with Universal Pictures.

Her film career began in 1929 when she appeared opposite Hoot Gibson in King of the Rodeo. Crawford appeared in seven films that year and six more in 1930, among them Safety in Numbers, which also featured Carole Lombard and Josephine Dunn, a WAMPAS Baby Star. Her film output declined sharply after 1930, with only one film in 1931 and three between 1932 and 1933, of which only one was a lead role. Her final screen credit came in 1941, when she appeared as Katherine Crawford in City of Missing Girls, starring H. B. Warner and John Archer, after which she retired from acting and settled in Pasadena, California.

Crawford's sole Broadway credit was the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers, in which she appeared in 1930. She originated the role of the singer performing "Love for Sale," a number that generated controversy because its lyrics were written from the perspective of a Prohibition-era prostitute. According to Ted Gioia's book The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, audience objections led the production to relocate the song's setting to Harlem, in front of the Cotton Club, and reassign it to African-American vocalist Elisabeth Welch in place of Crawford.

Crawford married three times. Her first marriage, the elopement at fifteen, was to Max Rogers, a UCLA student; the ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace in Riverside, and both continued their educations afterward. Crawford later described the relationship as one of mutual distrust and had the marriage annulled at eighteen. On November 10, 1934, she married James Edgar, Jr., in Detroit, Michigan, but the couple divorced on June 16, 1936, in a separation that received considerable press coverage. She subsequently married Ralph M. Parson and remained with him until his death in 1974.

Following her retirement from acting, Crawford worked as an interior decorator for forty years. Her clients included Barron Hilton, Douglas MacArthur, Herbert Hoover, and the Pickfair estate of Mary Pickford. She was also active in a number of civic organizations, including the Friends of Harvey Mudd College, the Los Angeles Music Center, the Blue Ribbon 400, the Society for Preservation of Variety Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Society of American Interior Designers. Crawford died of cancer on December 7, 1980, at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena, California, at the age of seventy-two.