Ellanora Needles(1918-2002)
- Actress
American actress, primarily on the stage, who played a few small roles
in films. Born Ellanora Robinson Needles Jr. into a renowned circus family, she
attended the Pasadena Community Playhouse as an acting student. While
there, she married actor
George Reeves in 1940. One of her
classmates, Teddi Sherman, was the
daughter of producer
Harry Sherman, and like many
Playhouse students she was given a small role, under the name Shelley
Spencer, in one of Sherman's films,
Leather Burners (1943), in which
her husband also appeared. Like many of the wives of stars in the Army
Air Force's Broadway play "Winged Victory," she was given a bit role.
She acted in many other plays, primarily in California, usually as
Ellanora Needles or as Ellanora Reeves or simply
Ella-Nora. She did not make another film until 1950, by which time she
had divorced Reeves and had married Beverly Hills attorney
Edward M. Rose. She made a few, mostly uncredited, bit part appearances
using the name Sarah Spencer and then retired from acting. In her later
years, she served as a religious minister. Widowed, she died at 83,
survived by two daughters from her marriage to Rose.
