Teala Loring

A talented and personable B-movie actress, Teala Loring was born in Denver, Colorado, as Marcia Eloise Griffin, one of five siblings. Two of her sisters were actresses Debra Paget and Lisa Gaye. Her mother was a vaudeville dancer, comedienne and nightclub singer who billed herself as Marguerite "Maggie" Gibson. Marcia grew up in a show business environment and made her first foray to the stage at the age of three. At 17, her family moved permanently to California and the following year Marcia became a Paramount starlet under the name Judith Gibson. As it turned out, there already was a Judith Gibson on the lot and producer Irwin Allen's suggestion of a change of moniker to a rarely used "good Irish name" (that being 'Teala') was happily accepted. Like so many other aspiring ingénues, Teala ran the usual gamut of ornamental bit parts in films like Holiday Inn (1942), The Powers Girl (1943) and Double Indemnity (1944). She had a brief furlough, though, when Paramount dispatched her to act on Broadway for a stint in Let's Face It with Danny Kaye. By 1944, she had made the decision not to renew her contract. Thus began the uneasy transition to Poverty Row and appearances in genre films for the likes of Sam Katzman's Banner Pictures, PRC and Monogram. She was third and fifth-billed, respectively, still on loan-out from Paramount, in Delinquent Daughters (1944) and Return of the Ape Man (1944) (with Bela Lugosi). After that, Teala found a (by her own admission) comfortable niche in assorted franchises ranging from the Bowery Boys to Charlie Chan and the Cisco Kid. She joined fading star Kay Francis in Allotment Wives (1945) and appeared in the lurid Black Market Babies (1945), which publicity touted as "an exciting tale of crime and corruption". Towards the end of her career, she also made two westerns despite being wary of horses. Having retired from acting in 1950, she commenced raising a rather large family of six children, eventually added to by fifteen grandchildren. Teala died in 2007 from injuries sustained in a traffic collision at the age of 84.