Paula Stone

Paula Stone (January 20, 1912 – December 23, 1997) was an American actress, producer, and radio personality born in New York City. She worked across theater, film, radio, and television over a career spanning several decades.

Stone came from a theatrical family. Her father, Fred Stone, was a stage actor, dancing comedian, and owner of the Fred Stone theatrical stock company. Her mother, Allene Crater Stone, was a singer who also performed alongside her husband. The family maintained a ranch near Lyme, Connecticut, and a home in Forest Hills, Queens. Stone's sisters Dorothy and Carol also pursued careers in theater. Dorothy made her stage debut at 16, appearing with Fred Stone at the Globe Theater in Manhattan in Criss-Cross in December 1926.

Stone's own stage debut came in May 1925 at the Illinois Theater in Chicago, when she was 13 years old, in the production Stepping Stones. Her first Broadway credits came in 1930, when she appeared alongside her father and sister Dorothy in Ripples, a musical that opened in New Haven, Connecticut, in January 1930 before moving to the New Amsterdam Theater in New York the following month. In 1931, Stone and her father appeared together in Smiling Faces, a Shubert-produced musical with music and lyrics by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, which had its opening night in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her Broadway work also included the play A Church Mouse, with her credited stage appearances on Broadway running from 1930 to 1933. She later toured in productions of You Can't Take It With You and Idiot's Delight, among other plays. In November 1940, she was cast alongside Marcy Wescott in a musical show featuring Dennis King, which debuted at the Forrest Theater in Philadelphia.

Stone's film career began in 1935 when she signed with RKO Radio Pictures for a singing and dancing role. That same year, her first motion picture paired her with William Boyd in Hop-Along Cassidy. Her second film role placed her opposite Dick Foran in the Warner Bros. release Treachery Rides the Range (1936), a western addressing injustices committed by buffalo traders against Cheyenne Indians, in which Stone and Foran provided the romantic storyline. In 1937, she appeared in The Girl Said No, directed by Andrew L. Stone, playing Mabel, the best friend of the leading character Pearl. The film received an Academy Award nomination. Her final film was Laugh It Off (1939), a musical released by Universal Pictures.

In radio, Stone was hired by WNEW in New York City to broadcast Broadway news and gossip to servicemen, writing the scripts herself. She subsequently secured her own program on the Mutual Radio Network, Leave It to the Girls, a panel show in which women discussed listener-submitted problems and issues. Stone served as moderator, and the program ran for four years on the Mutual network, concluding in 1949. In 1950 she hosted Hollywood USA, a celebrity interview and entertainment news program. On June 9, 1952, she launched the Paula Stone Show on the Mutual Broadcasting System, interviewing celebrities including Dennis Morgan, Johnnie Ray, Joan Crawford, Carlton Carpenter, and Debbie Reynolds.

Stone transitioned into producing, staging Broadway productions including Sweethearts, Carnival in Flanders, Rumple, The Rain Prince, and The Red Mill. In 1951, she and Michael Sloane co-produced the Broadway musical Top Banana. In 1954, she worked for Broadway Angels, Inc., in New York City, serving as master of ceremonies for Angel Auditions, a television program that evaluated prospective Broadway productions tried out in summer stock.

Stone married orchestra leader Duke Daly, whose legal name was Linwood A. Dingley, on July 16, 1939, at the Wilshire Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Daly joined the Canadian RAF in January 1942 and was killed in action on May 13, 1943, on the return leg of a nighttime bombing raid over Duisburg, Germany. During the war, after her husband was reported missing, Stone performed camp and canteen shows with her father. She later married Michael Sloane in 1946 and had a son and a daughter. Stone died on December 23, 1997, at Sherman Oaks Medical Center in Sherman Oaks, California, at the age of 85.