Kay Aldridge

Kay Aldridge (✦9 July 1917 - †12 January 1995) was an American model and actress. She is best known for playing feisty and frequently-imperiled heroines in black and white serials during the 1940s.

Life and work

She was born Katharine Gratten Aldridge in Tallahassee, Florida. As a model, she was seen on the covers of magazines such as Life, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, and Look in the 1930s. Her film career began in 1937 with an uncredited role in Vogues of 1938. In the following couple of years, she had a number of minor and largely decorative roles while credited as Katherine Aldridge. It was reported that she was among the actresses screen-tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.

The roles for which she became best known began in 1942 with the serial Perils of Nyoka, made by the company Republic Pictures, which specialized in serials of the type that had dramatic cliffhanger scenes at the end of each episode. Now credited as Kay Aldridge she played the character Nyoka Gordon who confronts a host of villains while seeking her father who was lost on an expedition in Africa. Further classic serial heroine roles followed with titles such as Daredevils of the West in 1943 and Haunted Harbor in 1944. She retired from acting in 1945.

Alrdidge was married three times: to Arthur Cameron from 1945 to 1954; to Richard Derby Tucker from 1956 until his death in 1979; and lastly to Harry Nasland until his death in 1988. In her later years, she lived in Camden, Maine. She died of a heart attack while in hospital in Rockport, Maine. She was survived by a daughter, Carey Cameron Ferrero; two sons, Scott and Arthur Cameron; a stepdaughter, Minnie Tucker Biggs, and two stepsons, Richard and Samuel Tucker.

Further reading

• Merrill T McCord, Perils of Kay Aldridge: The Life of the Serial Queen, pub. Alhambra Publishers, (1979, Washington, D.C)

See also

• Linda Stirling

External links

• Template:Amg
• Heroine of the month at Serial Experience
• Article on serials at Images journal
• Serial heroines article at Classic Images
• New York Times article featuring interview with Kay Aldridge

See also [ Republic serials ]

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