Ella Raines obituary in “The New York Times” in 1988.
Ella Raines was born in Washington D.C. in 1920. Her first film was “Corvette-K225” in 1943. She went on to make “Cry Havoc”, “Hail the Conquering Hero”, “Phantom Lady”, “The Suspect”, “The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry” amongst others. Ella Raines died in 1988 at the age of 67.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Hafker, pakhuntz @ runestone.n
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Her “New York Times” obituary from 1988:
Ella Raines, an actress who starred in film dramas, comedies and westerns during the 1940’s, died of throat cancer May 30 in Los Angeles. She was 67 years old.
Ms. Raines’s film career took off in 1943. That year she starred opposite Randolph Scott in the wartime thriller ”Corvette K-255” and became the only actress under contract to a new $1 million production company founded by Howard Hawks and Charles Boyer. Her best-known starring role was in the suspense film ”Phantom Lady” in 1944. More often she appeared opposite some of the leading actors of the day, including John Wayne in ”Tall in the Saddle” (1944), Charles Laughton in ”Suspect” (1945) and William Powell in the Charles MacArthur-George S. Kaufman satire ”The Senator Was Indiscreet” (1947). Worked With Preston Sturges
She also worked with the director Preston Sturges in ”Hail the Conquering Hero” (1944). She starred in a television show, ”Janet Dean, R.N.” in 1953-54. More recently, she appeared in an episode of television’s ”Matt Houston,” although she had largely been in retirement.
A two-year marriage to her high-school sweetheart, Kenneth Trout, a lieutenant in the Army Air Force, ended in divorce in 1945. In 1947 she married an Air Force major, Robin Olds. A hero in World War II and Vietnam, he later became a brigadier general and commander of the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. They had two daughters.
After her marriage, Ms. Raines appeared in films less frequently. In 1967, when her husband was serving in Vietnam, she characterized herself in a newspaper article as ”an Army wife” and paid tribute to ”service wives . . . for maintaining a home that is as normal as possible for the children while keeping their worries to themselves.”
She and her husband were divorced in 1975. She is survived by her daughters, Christina Newman and Susan Olds, and a granddaughter.
