Biography

Lois January

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Overview

Born
October 5, 1912 · McAllen, Texas, USA
Died
August 7, 2006 · Los Angeles, California, USA (Alzheimer's disease)
Birth name
Laura Lois January
Height
5′ 4″ (1.63 m)

Mini bio

Born in McAllen, Texas, Lois January trained as a dancer almost from infancy. Her mother believed that Lois and her younger brother were talented enough as dancers to make it in the movies, and she took the two children to Los Angeles for a short period to check out employment opportunities for child dancers and performers. Though she returned to Texas, the family eventually moved to California, settling in Los Angeles, and Lois not only continued her dancing but began taking acting lessons in school. After graduating high school Lois joined a touring dance troupe, and when the group broke up in 1931, she focused most of her efforts toward acting rather than dancing. She began appearing in plays at the famed Pasadena Playhouse, where she was spotted by a Universal Pictures executive, who offered her a contract. She got some small parts in several Universal "B" pictures, then the studio loaned her out to Columbia Pictures, where she made several appearances in that studio's comedy shorts, and she also made a string of ultra-cheap "B" westerns for such independent producers as Willis Kent and Sam Katzman. After her contract at Universal was up, she signed with Republic Pictures and made more westerns, appearing with such staples of the genre as Johnny Mack Brown and Bob Steele. She had a small part in the classic The Wizard of Oz (1939) as a manicurist doing Dorothy's nails in the city of Oz. After completing that film she journeyed to New York and appeared on Broadway in "Yokel Boy". When that play's run was completed, she got an engagement singing at the world-famous Rainbow Room. Throughout the 1940s she alternated between nightclub engagements and stage work. Eventually she was offered her own radio show, and took it. She appeared in her last film in 1961, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s she made a spate of TV guest-starring roles. She died in Los Angeles in August of 2006 of Alzheimer's Disease.
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Family

Spouses

Trivia

During WWII she had her own radio program as the voice of "The Revelry Girl" who woke the GI's up with up-to-date news.
Resourceful, redheaded, Texas-born "B" western heroine trained in dance from age 2 and discovered by Universal. She appeared in about a dozen 1930s oaters starring such established cowboy heroes as Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele and Tim McCoy.
According to "Variety", she is survived by a daughter.
After her film career was for the most part over, she played the unbilled part of the Emerald City manicurist in "The Merry Old Land of Oz" segment of The Wizard of Oz (1939).
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Lois was working in nightclubs and such Broadway musicals as "Yokel Boy" (1939) and "High Kickers" (1941).

Quotes

[Texas is] near the border. A few feet south and I would have been a Mexican! It was a one-horse town then - but a resort town now! My mother wanted to be out here in California. We went for a visit, returned to Texas, then the family moved to California.
Noel Madison was in the now-cult film The Pace That Kills (1935) with me. The working title, 'The Pace That Kills,' was a better name. Of course, at Universal, Junior Laemmle [Carl Laemmle Jr.] chased me. He was a little skunk. I hated him. You just take it in stride. Lucille Lund also had trouble with him - she asked me how I handled it, and I told her about joking with them.
[on her contract with Universal] That's how I got the role in the Reb Russell western, Arizona Bad Man (1935). Universal farmed me out. They did those westerns on the backlot, way up in the hills of Canoga Park. I worked with the same cowboys over and over. They'd keep calling me back to do another picture.
Being from Texas, I knew horses. I loved them and I was not afraid of them. However, in one of the movies - either with Fred Scott or Johnny Mack Brown - I was not able to handle a great white horse. I rode fast in front of a posse. I was supposed to pull the horse up at the door and get off. I couldn't make that horse stop! Because of time and budgets, you could only do one or two takes. I halfway slid off - it could have been a bad accident, but luckily I never had one.
Universal taught you everything - I was in a lot of their big movies, but only in small parts. I never looked at showbiz as a career. I never thought of it as a business. I had fun, fun, fun; otherwise, I could have gone further. But I enjoyed what I was doing. I didn't drink, smoke or fool around. I lived with my family - they were supportive of me in every way.