Three Times a Star

This trade-paper ad gives us a good sense just how important Gale Storm was to the success of Monogram Pictures in the mid-1940s. There were supposedly "eight good reasons" why the Poverty Row studio expected to reap healthy profits in 1945; Gale starred in three of them.

That year in particular demonstrated what a versatile player Gale had become after only five years as a professional actress. In short order, she would be presented to moviegoers as the star of three markedly different films -- a drama (They Shall Have Faith, ultimately released as Forever Yours), a Gay 90s musical revue (Sunbonnet Sue), and a fast-paced contemporary comedy (G.I. Honeymoon).

My favorite of the three is Honeymoon, a clear precursor to the kind of comedy she would do as TV's My Little Margie. But they're all well worth a look, and deserve to be better-known than they are today. Let's change that.