Kay Griffith

Katherine Margaret Griffith was born on September 10, 1915, in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest of two daughters of Florence Brown and Lawrence Griffith. After completing her education at the University of Chicago, she relocated to San Francisco, where she worked as a model. A singing engagement at a hotel supper room marked her entry into entertainment, and she later attracted the attention of a film scout while performing with an orchestra in Los Angeles.

Griffith's film career began in 1936, when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge approved a contract for her to work at Paramount. She subsequently signed with 20th Century Fox in 1938. Over the course of her screen career, which ran from 1936 to 1940, she appeared in fourteen films, primarily Westerns and serials. Her final film, Covered Wagon Days (1940), cast her as the female lead opposite The Three Mesquiteers. Her screen credits include Easy to Take (1936) and College Holiday (1936), both in uncredited roles.

On November 21, 1940, Griffith married actor Broderick Crawford in Hollywood, California. At the time of their marriage license application, she stated her intention to stop acting in order to preserve the marriage. The couple had two sons, the elder of whom was adopted. On November 2, 1941, Griffith gave birth prematurely to a daughter, Kathleen Crawford, who died six days later despite a blood transfusion from Crawford. The marriage ended in divorce on July 8, 1957.

Following her departure from film, Griffith transitioned to the stage and appeared on Broadway in 1945 in the musical Up in Central Park. Her parents had both died in 1932, after which she assumed responsibility for her younger sister, Rita. In 1940 she petitioned a Los Angeles court to become Rita's legal guardian, a petition that was granted when Rita was fifteen years old. Griffith died on December 10, 2002.