Gladys Johnston(1899-1989)

Gladys Lillian Johnson was born in North Dakota in 1899, and grew up in Portland, Oregon where she received musical training. During the 1920's she became one of Portland's best know cellists and a staff musician at radio station KGW. In 1920 she traveled to Alaska with her mother and younger brother Raymond. They were accompanied by George Edward Lewis, her future step-father. There, she acted in a low budget feature called "Hearts of Alaska" which was made by Lewis who had previously traveled to Alaska to film material for his lectures. Using the screen name Gladys Johnston, she appeared in the first major motion picture filmed entirely in Alaska, The Cheechakos (1923) and returned to Alaska the following year for the film North of Nome (1925). In 1928, she traveled to Utah to make another movie which was released as West of the Rockies (1931). Her brother, Raymond K Johnson, and George Edward Lewis were involved in all three productions. In the late nineteen twenties, she left Portland and continued her career as a professional cellist in Los Angeles. Gladys passed away on October 11, 1989 in Riverside, California.