Maria Palmer

This lovely Austrian-born actress was born (in 1917) and raised in Vienna, performing as a child on stage and appearing in various productions for the renowned Max Reinhardt. Trained in dance, she was a member of the Bodenwieser Ensemble, a European troupe. Following a few high school plays and dance recitals, she went on to study drama and voice at the Vienna Conservatory.

Maria arrived in the United States at the outbreak of war in 1938 and first performed on the New York stage, notably in the 1942 production of "The Moon Is Down." Spotted for films, she was one of many foreign actresses Hollywood took in at the time to fill their quota of exotic mystery ladies in war-era intrigue and film noir. She made her debut in Mission to Moscow (1943) for Warner Bros. and continued on freelancing for other studios with Days of Glory (1944), opposite Gregory Peck, Lady on a Train (1944), The Web (1947), The Other Love (1947), Strictly Dishonorable (1941), By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), and Outcasts of the City (1958), among others.

Her film career waned in the 1950s and she turned to radio, TV and commercials. She formed her own production company, Maria Palmer Enterprises, and hosted her own local Los Angeles show "Sincerely, Maria Palmer" in the early 1960s. In later years she wrote a number of unproduced teleplays, often under the pseudonym Eliot Parker White. Dying of pulmonary failure while battling cancer in 1981, she kept extensive journals of her life and career wh…