Virginia Sale

Virginia Sale (May 20, 1899 – August 23, 1992) was an American character actress born in Urbana, Illinois, to Frank Orville and Lillie Belle (Partlow) Sale. Her career as a performer spanned six decades across stage, film, radio, and television. She attended the University of Illinois for two years before transferring to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, from which she graduated.

Sale made her Broadway debut in 1922, and her stage credits included the productions Montmartre and Play, Genius, Play!, with her Broadway work continuing through 1935. Her brother, vaudeville comedian Charles "Chic" Sale, persuaded her to leave New York for Hollywood, where she launched a film career at the close of the silent era. Her first film, Legionnaires in Paris, appeared in 1927. Despite being in her twenties, Sale found consistent work playing older women, a pattern that defined much of her screen career. Early film roles included Moby Dick (1930), Oliver Twist (1933), and Madame Du Barry (1934).

She developed a one-woman stage show called Americana Sketches, drawn from her upbringing in Urbana, Illinois, which she performed more than 6,000 times across the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, including tours entertaining troops in Europe during World War II. During this same period, Sale continued appearing in films, among them Topper (1937) with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, When Tomorrow Comes (1939) with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, Raoul Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On (1942) starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Badman's Territory (1945) and Trail Street (1947) both featuring Randolph Scott, and Night and Day (1946), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Cary Grant. In 1947, she appeared in two consecutive films built around the detective character Russ Ashton, played by Tom Neal: The Hat-box Mystery and The Case of the Baby Sitter, both produced by Screen Art Pictures. She was also a regular presence on radio, including a recurring role on the serial For Those We Love in the late 1930s and 1940s.

Sale married actor and studio executive Sam Wren in 1935, and the following year she gave birth to fraternal twins, Virginia and Christopher. In 1949, Wren developed a television sitcom called Wren's Nest, in which the couple co-starred alongside their twelve-year-old twins, with the program airing three times weekly. During the 1950s, Sale stepped back from film work and concentrated on television, appearing primarily in commercials. In the 1960s she returned to episodic television, including a featured role as the first Selma Plout on Petticoat Junction from 1964 to 1965, with additional guest appearances on the series in 1966 and 1969 as Maude Blake and Myra King. Her film work in that decade included One Man's Way (1964) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967). Her final film appearance came in Slither (1973), starring James Caan, Peter Boyle, and Sally Kellerman.

Sale remained married to Sam Wren until his death in 1962. She spent her final years at the Motion Picture and Television Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, where she died on August 23, 1992, from heart failure at the age of 93. She was interred beside her husband at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, where Wren had earned a burial plot through his service in World War I.