Betty Jaynes (actress)
Betty Jayne Schultz[1] (born February 12, 1921) was an operatic singer and B-movie actress from the late 1930s to mid-1940s.
She was born in Greeneville, Tennessee but attended high school in Chicago. At the age of 15 she made a "sensational debut" with the Chicago City Opera Company in La boheme. In a Life magazine article, she said she would "quit school and consider movies."[2] She signed a contract with MGM and began working in Hollywood on April 1, 1937.[3] She appeared as Molly Moran in Babes in Arms in 1939, then in a series of minor parts in seven MGM movies through 1944 including Meet the People, starring Lucille Ball. Her last major acting role was in 1952, in an I Love Lucy episode, "The Operetta".
Jaynes married actor and budding baritone Douglas McPhail in June 1938. They had a daughter, and were divorced in 1941; McPhail committed suicide in 1944.[4] She married a second time in 1943, to Bill Roberts, who had been a singer for Tommy Dorsey.[5]
References
- ↑
- ↑ "Their Music Makes News", Life (Time Inc.), December 21, 1936
- ↑ Sheilagh Graham, Hollywood Today, February 6, 1937
- ↑ David K. Frasier (2005). Suicide in the Entertainment Industry: An Encyclopedia of 840 Twentieth Century Cases. McFarland. p. 208. ISBN 978-1-4766-0807-5.
- ↑ "Betty Jaynes, Actress, Weds a Serviceman", Associated Press in The Milwaukee Journal, March 26, 1943.