Louise Stanley

Louise Stanley, born Louise Keyes on January 28, 1915, in Springfield, Illinois, was an American actress who worked in film and on Broadway. Her father, Alvin Keyes, served as assistant director of the Illinois State Department of Public Safety. When she decided to pursue an acting career, she adopted the stage name Stanley.

Stanley's film career began in the mid-1930s and encompassed roughly twenty-four pictures, the majority of them B-Westerns. In 1935 she signed a six-month contract with Paramount, which the studio did not renew. She subsequently worked for Warner Bros., where she was periodically loaned out for Western productions. By 1937 she had also begun making films for Columbia Pictures, appearing in two productions alongside Charley Chase and Andy Clyde. That same year she took the leading role in Riders of the Rockies, a Western directed by Robert N. Bradbury in which she starred opposite Tex Ritter. She appeared in additional films with Ritter as well as several alongside cowboy star Bob Steele. In 1939 she starred in The Oregon Trail, opposite Johnny Mack Brown. Her filmography includes such titles as Lawless Land, Gun Packer, Durango Valley Raiders, Thunder in the Desert, The Oregon Trail, Yukon Flight, and Sky Bandits, among others.

Stanley made her Broadway appearance in 1941, performing in The Distant City. That single credit marked her presence on the New York stage.

Her personal life included four marriages. On March 29, 1934, she married NBC stage announcer Leland "Lee" Hunt Bennett in Cook County, Illinois; the couple divorced in 1936. She then married actor, writer, and film director Dennis O'Keefe on March 10, 1937, with that marriage ending on August 12, 1938. Her third husband was Addison Randall, a singing cowboy and B-Western romantic lead. Stanley and Randall divorced, later remarried, and divorced a second time after Randall became involved in an affair with actress Louise Brooks. On August 25, 1942, Stanley married U.S. Navy pilot Charles Munn Jr., a marriage that ended in divorce amid allegations of spousal abuse.

Stanley retired from acting and died of cancer in Cocoa Beach, Florida, on December 28, 1982.