Rosemary Lane

Rosemary Lane, born Rosemary Mullican on April 4, 1913, in Indianola, Iowa, was an American actress and singer who built a career spanning stage, film, and orchestral performance. She was the daughter of Lorenzo Mullican, a dentist, and his wife Cora Bell Hicks, and grew up alongside four sisters, three of whom — Leota, Lola, and Priscilla — pursued careers in entertainment. As a child, Lane traveled with her sister Priscilla each weekend to Des Moines to study dance under Rose Lorenz. The two made their first professional appearance together on September 30, 1930, at the Paramount Theater in Des Moines. That same year, Lane performed on stage as part of the promotional entertainment surrounding her sister Lola's Hollywood film Good News. A member of the National Honor Society, Lane graduated from Indianola High School in 1931 and briefly attended Simpson College, where she played on the freshman basketball team.

In 1932, Lane relocated to New York with her mother, following older sisters Leota and Lola, who had already appeared on Broadway. Orchestra leader Fred Waring heard Lane and Priscilla singing and signed both to his band, the Pennsylvanians. The sisters remained with Waring for nearly five years, becoming known collectively as the Lane Sisters through their work with the ensemble.

Lane's film career began in earnest in 1937, when Warner Bros. engaged Waring and his full band for the musical Varsity Show, starring Dick Powell. Both Lane and Priscilla took featured roles in the production. Lane subsequently co-starred with her sister Lola and Powell in Hollywood Hotel, then appeared opposite Rudy Vallee in Gold Diggers in Paris. In 1938, Priscilla, Rosemary, and Lola joined Gale Page to portray four sisters in Four Daughters, a role configuration they reprised in Daughters Courageous in 1939 and in the sequels Four Wives in 1939 and Four Mothers in 1941. Lane also starred in The Oklahoma Kid in 1939, playing a frontier woman who falls in love with James Cagney's character while Humphrey Bogart portrayed the film's villain. In 1940, she earned favorable notices for her performance in The Boys from Syracuse, adapted from the Rodgers and Hart Broadway production of 1938. Lane concluded her film work in 1945 with Sing Me a Song of Texas, in which she played Laurie Lang, a nightclub singer and niece of a wealthy Texas rancher.

In 1941, Lane made a notable transition to the Broadway stage, appearing in the musical Best Foot Forward as Gale Joy. The production opened on October 1, 1941, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and ran for 326 performances before closing on July 4, 1942. The same year the show opened, a street in Burbank, California, was named Rosemary Lane in her honor.

On December 28, 1941, Lane married Hollywood makeup artist George H. "Bud" Westmore. The marriage lasted thirteen years and produced a daughter, Bridget Westmore, before the couple divorced in 1954. Like her sisters Lola and Priscilla, Lane converted to Roman Catholicism. Following the end of her film career, she established a real estate practice with an office in Pacific Palisades.

Lane died on November 25, 1974, at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, from diabetes and pulmonary obstruction, at the age of 61. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, in a grave that remained unmarked until a marker was placed in 2012.