Grace Bradley

A petite and extremely lovely blonde "B" film actress who eventually deserted her career in favor of standing by her man (cowboy icon William Boyd, aka, "Hopalong Cassidy"), Grace Bradley spent the rest of her life in his shadow and devoting herself to her husband's career. Bill's Hoppy was the longest span of any fictional character played by the same actor. Following his death in 1972, she spent a good deal of her time keeping his good name and image in tact.

Grace initially studied to be a concert pianist, playing Carngie Hall at age 15. She also took advantage of her budding loveliness by modeling full time and taking singing/dancing lessons on the sly. She went on to act, sing, and dance on the Broadway stage in the musicals "Strike Me Pink" and "The Little Show". While performing at the Paradise nightclub in Manhattan in 1933, the dancer was "discovered" and signed by a Paramount Pictures director.

Heading west, she often came off as an assertive "bad girl" or femme-fatale at Paramount with such fun, party-girl names as Goldie, Trixie, Flossie, Lily and Sadie. Her first full-length movie was as a second lead in the Bing Crosby/Jack Oakie musical comedy Too Much Harmony (1933), in which she sang and danced to the feisty tune "Cradle Me With a Hotcha Lullaby". She subsequently appeared in the W.C. Fields classic Six of a Kind (1934); the Richard Arlen pictures Come On, Marines! (1934) and She Made Her Bed (1934); the Claudette Colbert/Fred MacMurray comedy The Gilded Li…