Monica Bannister

Monica Bannister (September 8, 1910 – June 17, 2002) was a Canadian-born American actress whose career spanned film, stage, and nightclub work across several decades. Born in Forward, Saskatchewan, she was raised in the Pacific Northwest as the daughter of Harry Frederick Bannister, a candy maker, and Josephine Mathilda Hagen Bannister. She completed her secondary education at Tillamook High School in Oregon, graduating in 1928.

Bannister entered the film industry after signing a contract with Warner First National studio in 1932. That same year she appeared in Hypnotized, and in 1933 she played Joan Gale in Michael Curtiz's Mystery of the Wax Museum, the role for which she became best known. Her subsequent film appearances included Jimmy the Gent (1934), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), Flowing Gold (1940), Accent on Love (1941), in which she played Maybelle, The Cowboy and the Blonde (1941), and Quiet Please, Murder (1942).

Alongside her film work, Bannister performed as a showgirl at the Hollywood Restaurant and Cabaret, a New York supper club that was popular during the 1930s. Her Broadway career included an appearance in the 1938 production of Leave It to Me!. In 1932, she was named Queen of the Los Angeles Dahlia Show, and photographs of her wearing a dress constructed entirely from dahlias were published in newspapers. Her beauty advice was also featured in newspaper columns during the 1930s, and she was reported to practice boxing for fitness.

Bannister married multiple times. Her first husband was Eugene Willbanks; that marriage ended in divorce in 1935. In 1937 she married actor and writer Eddie Cherkose. The couple divorced in 1939, reconciled, and divorced again in 1940. Her third husband was Max Nolan Lanier, from whom she was also divorced, in the 1940s. In 1952 she married machinist Johan Hendrik Van Munster. Van Munster died in 2001, and Bannister died the following year, on June 17, 2002, in San Diego, California, at the age of 91.