Anne Shirley

Beguiling child and teen actress, in Hollywood from age three, who changed her name from Dawn O'Day to Anne Shirley when she played a role by that name in RKO's charming adaptation of the classic children's story, "Anne of Green Gables" (1934). The 16 year-old blonde actress subsequently enjoyed a decade of second-string stardom in such enjoyable B-films as "Chatterbox" (1936), "A Man to Remember" (1938) and "West Point Widow" (1941). Shirley's most famous performance was her touching, Oscar-nominated work as the daughter for whom Barbara Stanwyck sacrifices everything in King Vidor's memorable sound version of the archetypal mother-love weepie, "Stella Dallas" (1937). Maturing nicely into a girlish, placid leading lady, Shirley played opposite John Garfield in "Saturday's Children" (1940) and Carole Lombard in "Vigil in the Night" (1941), and essayed the female lead in William Dieterle's marvelous film version of the Stephen Vincent Benet classic, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1941). She retired after playing the "good girl" in the film noir classic, "Murder, My Sweet" (1944). Shirley's first husband was film star John Payne, her second was producer Adrian Scott (one of the "Hollywood Ten"...

Beguiling child and teen actress, in Hollywood from age three, who changed her name from Dawn O'Day to Anne Shirley when she played a role by that name in RKO's charming adaptation of the classic children's story, "Anne of Green Gables" (1934). The 16 year-old blonde actress subsequently enjoyed a decade of second-string stardom in such enjoyable B-films as "Chatterbox" (1936), "A Man to Remember" (1938) and "West Point Widow" (1941). Shirley's most famous performance was her touching, Oscar-nominated work as the daughter for whom Barbara Stanwyck sacrifices everything in King Vidor's memorable sound version of the archetypal mother-love weepie, "Stella Dallas" (1937). Maturing nicely into a girlish, placid leading lady, Shirley played opposite John Garfield in "Saturday's Children" (1940) and Carole Lombard in "Vigil in the Night" (1941), and essayed the female lead in William Dieterle's marvelous film version of the Stephen Vincent Benet classic, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1941). She retired after playing the "good girl" in the film noir classic, "Murder, My Sweet" (1944). Shirley's first husband was film star John Payne, her second was producer Adrian Scott (one of the "Hollywood Ten" blacklisted in the late 1940s by the infamous HUAC) and her third was screenwriter Charles Lederer.

CAST: (feature film)