Gail Davis
Encyclopedia
Gail Davis was an American
actress, best known for her starring role as Annie Oakley
in the 1950s television
Western
series Annie Oakley
.
, she was born as Betty Jeanne Grayson in a hospital at Little Rock
, but was raised in McGehee
, Arkansas, until her family moved to Little Rock. She had been singing and dancing since childhood. After graduating from high school, she studied at the Harcum Junior College for Girls in Bryn Mawr
, Pennsylvania
, before completing her education at the University of Texas at Austin
. At Austin she met and married her first husband, Bob Davis, with whom she had a daughter, Terrie.
She and her husband moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in motion pictures. Mrs. Davis told an interviewer how she acquired her professional acting name. "I went under contract to MGM around 1946. They told me 'we can't have a Betty Davis, because of Bette Davis
, and we can't have a Betty Grayson because of Kathryn Grayson
'.... Then a guy in the casting department said 'how about Gail Davis?' So that's where it came from."
In 1947 she made her motion picture debut in a comedy film short. She then appeared in minor roles in another four films until landing a supporting role under star Roy Rogers
in a 1948 Western film, The Far Frontier
. Between 1948 and 1953, Davis appeared in more than three dozen films, all but three of which were in the Western genre, including twenty films with or for the production company of the singing cowboy star, Gene Autry
.
In 1950, she began to guest star in television Westerns, notably in The Cisco Kid
, in which she appeared six times in two roles, including that of a niece whose uncle is trying to stop her pending marriage to a gangster. She also guest starred in The Lone Ranger
and The Adventures of Kit Carson
(twice in the role of Rose Banning). She appeared more than a dozen times on The Gene Autry Show
.
Between 1954 and 1956, Davis starred in the syndicated
Annie Oakley series, later rebroadcast on ABC
. Her costars were Brad Johnson as Deputy Lofty Craig, and Jimmy Hawkins
as her younger brother, Tagg Oakley. An adroit horseback rider, Davis also toured North America
in Gene Autry
's traveling rodeo
. She went on to manage other celebrities. In 1961, she made a guest appearance on The Andy Griffith Show
as Thelma Lou
's cousin.
Davis and her second husband, Carl Edward Guerriero, retired to the San Fernando Valley
. During her retirement Davis made guest appearances at western memorabilia shows and film festival
s. Her last public appearance was in 1994, when she received the Golden Boot Award
from the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
in Los Angeles
at the age of seventy-one. She is interred there in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery
.
For her contribution to the television industry, Gail Davis has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 6385 Hollywood Blvd. In 2004, she was posthumously inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
in Fort Worth
. Davis' exhibit at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame recalls her impact of young girls through the Annie Oakley series:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actress, best known for her starring role as Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley , born Phoebe Ann Mosey, was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent and timely rise to fame led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar.Oakley's most famous trick is perhaps...
in the 1950s television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
series Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley (TV series)
Annie Oakley is an American Western television series which fictionalized the life of famous sharpshooter Annie Oakley. It ran from January 1954 to February 1957 in syndication. ABC showed reruns on Saturday and Sunday daytime from 1959–1960 and from 1964-1965...
.
Life and career
The daughter of a small town physicianPhysician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, she was born as Betty Jeanne Grayson in a hospital at Little Rock
Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...
, but was raised in McGehee
McGehee, Arkansas
McGehee is a city in Desha County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 4,219 at the 2010 census.-History:The history of the city of McGehee and the history of the railroad through McGehee are intricately interwoven...
, Arkansas, until her family moved to Little Rock. She had been singing and dancing since childhood. After graduating from high school, she studied at the Harcum Junior College for Girls in Bryn Mawr
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Bryn Mawr from Welsh for "big hill") is a census-designated place in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, just west of Philadelphia along Lancaster Avenue and the border with Delaware County...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, before completing her education at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
. At Austin she met and married her first husband, Bob Davis, with whom she had a daughter, Terrie.
She and her husband moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in motion pictures. Mrs. Davis told an interviewer how she acquired her professional acting name. "I went under contract to MGM around 1946. They told me 'we can't have a Betty Davis, because of Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
, and we can't have a Betty Grayson because of Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and operatic soprano singer.From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to MGM by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals...
'.... Then a guy in the casting department said 'how about Gail Davis?' So that's where it came from."
In 1947 she made her motion picture debut in a comedy film short. She then appeared in minor roles in another four films until landing a supporting role under star Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
in a 1948 Western film, The Far Frontier
The Far Frontier
The Far Frontier is a 1948 American film starring Roy Rogers....
. Between 1948 and 1953, Davis appeared in more than three dozen films, all but three of which were in the Western genre, including twenty films with or for the production company of the singing cowboy star, Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
.
In 1950, she began to guest star in television Westerns, notably in The Cisco Kid
The Cisco Kid (TV series)
The Cisco Kid is a half-hour American Western television series starring Duncan Renaldo in the title role, The Cisco Kid, and Leo Carrillo as the jovial sidekick, Pancho...
, in which she appeared six times in two roles, including that of a niece whose uncle is trying to stop her pending marriage to a gangster. She also guest starred in The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....
and The Adventures of Kit Carson
The Adventures of Kit Carson
The Adventures of Kit Carson is an American Western series that aired in syndication from August 1951 to November 1955, originally sponsored by Coca-Cola. It stars Bill Williams in the title role as frontier scout Christopher "Kit" Carson...
(twice in the role of Rose Banning). She appeared more than a dozen times on The Gene Autry Show
The Gene Autry Show
The Gene Autry Show is an American western/cowboy television series which aired for 91 episodes on CBS from July 23, 1950 until August 7, 1956, originally sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint chewing gum.-Overview:...
.
Between 1954 and 1956, Davis starred in the syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
Annie Oakley series, later rebroadcast on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
. Her costars were Brad Johnson as Deputy Lofty Craig, and Jimmy Hawkins
Jimmy Hawkins
James F. Hawkins , known as Jimmy Hawkins, and later, Jim Hawkins, is an American actor and film producer whose career began as a child actor to such Hollywood stars as Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, and Donna Reed...
as her younger brother, Tagg Oakley. An adroit horseback rider, Davis also toured North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
in Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
's traveling rodeo
Rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
. She went on to manage other celebrities. In 1961, she made a guest appearance on The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina...
as Thelma Lou
Thelma Lou
Thelma Lou is a character on the American television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show . The character appeared in 26 episodes. Thelma Lou is Barney Fife's girlfriend and is portrayed by Betty Lynn.-Overview:...
's cousin.
Davis and her second husband, Carl Edward Guerriero, retired to the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
. During her retirement Davis made guest appearances at western memorabilia shows and film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
s. Her last public appearance was in 1994, when she received the Golden Boot Award
Golden Boot Awards
The Golden Boot Awards honor actors, actresses, and crew members who have made significant contributions to the genre of Western television and movies. The award is sponsored and presented by the Motion Picture & Television Fund...
from the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Death
Davis, then a widow, died of cancerCancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
at the age of seventy-one. She is interred there in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery
Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery is part of the Forest Lawn chain of Southern California cemeteries. It is at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica...
.
For her contribution to the television industry, Gail Davis has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6385 Hollywood Blvd. In 2004, she was posthumously inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is a museum and association which honors women of the American West who have displayed courage or spirit and who have distinguished themselves while exemplifying the pioneer spirit...
in Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
. Davis' exhibit at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame recalls her impact of young girls through the Annie Oakley series:
"Back then I knew the show was having a positive impact, especially on little girls. It wasn't until years later that I realized just how much. Little girls had turned into influential women, thanking my portrayal of Annie for showing them the way."