Muriel Evans was an American film actress. She is best known for her many appearances in popular westerns

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...

 of the 1930s for which she won a 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...

.

Early life and career

Muriel Adele Evanson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

 to Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 immigrant parents. Her father died when she was only two months old, forcing her mother to move to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 to find work, where Evans' mother took a job as a maid at First National Studios. She spent her afternoons on film sets and was soon noticed by a studio executive. The executive introduced her to the director Robert Z. Leonard

Robert Z. Leonard

Robert Zigler Leonard was an American film director, actor, producer and screenwriter.He was born in Chicago, Illinois...

, who gave her a small role opposite Corinne Griffith

Corinne Griffith

Corinne Mae Griffith was an American actress. Dubbed "The Orchid Lady of the Screen", she was one of the most popular film actresses of the 1920s and widely considered the most beautiful actress of the silent screen...

 in the 1926 film, Mademoiselle Modiste. She continued attending classes at Hollywood High School

Hollywood High School

Hollywood High School is a Los Angeles Unified School District high school located at the intersection of North Highland Avenue and West Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California.-History:...

 and landing bit parts in stock theater productions and silent films.

In 1929, Evans co-starred in the silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

, comedic short films, Good Night Nurse and Joyland, starring
Lupino Lane

Lupino Lane

Lupino Lane was an English actor and theatre manager, and a member of the famous Lupino family. Lane started out as a child performer, known as 'Little Nipper', and went on to appear in a wide range of theatrical, music hall and film performances...

. Shortly after completing Joyland, Evans put her acting career on hold to finish school. Later that year, she married Michael Cudahy, the wealthy scion

Kinship

Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....

 of a meatpacking family. The couple traveled the world and settled in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. In 1931, Evans decided to pursue the film career she had given up and left her husband in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Evans returned to Hollywood, signed a contract at MGM and quickly began making films again. She and Cudahy divorced in 1932.

Later that year, Evans starred in six films, most notably, Young Ironsides with Charley Chase

Charley Chase

Charley Chase was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director, best known for his work in Hal Roach short film comedies...

 and Pack Up Your Troubles

Pack Up Your Troubles

Pack Up Your Troubles is a 1932 Laurel and Hardy film directed by George Marshall and Raymond McCarey, named after the World War I song "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and smile, smile, smile." It is the team's second feature-length picture....

 with Laurel and Hardy

Laurel and Hardy

Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...

. She would go on to star in eight more shorts with Chase before his death in 1940.

Evans' success was due in large part to her pleasant speaking voice. She made a smooth transition from silent pictures to talkies, and throughout the 1930s, Evans continued to work steadily. She appeared in Frank Capra's

Frank Capra

Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...

 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in her first featured role...

, Manhattan Melodrama

Manhattan Melodrama

Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 crime melodrama film, produced by MGM, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy...

 with Clark Gable

Clark Gable

William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...

 and William Powell

William Powell

William Horatio Powell was an American actor.A major star at MGM, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the popular Thin Man series in which Powell and Loy played Nick and Nora Charles...

, and The Prizefighter and the Lady

The Prizefighter and the Lady

The Prizefighter and the Lady is a 1933 black-and-white MGM crime romance comedy starring Myrna Loy, Max Baer, Primo Carnera, Jack Dempsey, and Walter Huston. It was the film debut for professional boxers Baer and Carnera. Carnera was the world heavyweight boxing champion at the time of the film's...

 with Myrna Loy

Myrna Loy

Myrna Loy was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. Originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles...

. By the mid 1930s, Evans also began co-starring in popular westerns alongside Tom Mix

Tom Mix

Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...

, John Wayne

John Wayne

Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...

 and Tex Ritter

Tex Ritter

Woodward Maurice Ritter , better known as Tex Ritter, was an American country music singer and movie actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter family in acting...

. She also starred in three Hopalong Cassidy

Hopalong Cassidy

Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford, who wrote a series of popular short stories and twenty-eight novels based on the character....

 films opposite William Boyd

William Boyd (actor)

William Lawrence Boyd was an American film actor best known for portraying Hopalong Cassidy.-Biography:...

, and did seven westerns with Buck Jones

Buck Jones

Buck Jones was an American motion picture star of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, best known for his work starring in many popular western movies...

.

Later years

In 1936, Evans married a theatrical agent, Marshall R. Worchester. By age 30, she retired from acting. One of her last film appearances came in 1946, in the Pete Smith

Pete Smith (film producer)

Pete Smith was a film producer and narrator of "short subject" films from 1931 to 1955....

 short, Studio Visit. Soon after retiring, Evans and her husband settled in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 Over the next decade, she starred in four radio shows and in the television show Hollywood Reporter. In 1951, the couple moved back to Hollywood, although Evans never resumed her acting career. Eventually, the couple bought property in Tarzana, California, where Evans dabbled in real estate.

After the death of her husband in 1971, Evans began work as a volunteer nurse at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills

Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California

Woodland Hills is a district in the city of Los Angeles, California.Woodland Hills is located in the southwestern area of the San Fernando Valley, east of Calabasas and west of Tarzana, with Warner Center in its northern section...

 not far from her home. After a stroke in 1994, she became a resident within the complex and often dined with fellow actors with whom she had once worked, including Anita Garvin

Anita Garvin

Anita Garvin was an American actress and comedienne who appeared in both silent and sound films. She is best known for her work with comedians Laurel and Hardy and Charley Chase....

. In 1999, Evans made her last film appearance in a 2000 documentary, I Used to Be in Pictures, in which she was one of many former actors who recalled their experiences in the film work.

Death

On October 26, 2000, Muriel Evans died of colon cancer at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. She was 90 years old.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1929	Good Night Nurse
1929	Joyland
1932	Young Ironsides	Muriel Evans
1932	Pack Up Your Troubles Pack Up Your Troubles Pack Up Your Troubles is a 1932 Laurel and Hardy film directed by George Marshall and Raymond McCarey, named after the World War I song "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and smile, smile, smile." It is the team's second feature-length picture....	Wrong Eddie's bride
1932	Hot Spot
1932	Girl Grief
1932	Now We'll Tell One	Muriel Evans
1932	Mr. Bride
1933	Fallen Arches	Muriel Gilbert
1933	Fast Workers Fast Workers Fast Workers, also known as Rivets, is a 1933 drama film starring John Gilbert and Robert Armstrong as construction workers and romantic rivals for the character played by Mae Clarke. The film was based on the unproduced play Rivets by John W... '	Nurse
1933	Nature In the Wrong	Muriel	Alternative title: Tarzan In the Wrong
1933	His Silent Racket	Muriel
1933	Arabian Tights	Miss Evans
1933	Thundering Taxis	Mrs. Blacker
1933	Broadway to Hollywood Broadway to Hollywood (1933 film) Broadway to Hollywood is a film directed by Willard Mack, produced by Harry Rapf, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film features many of MGM's stars of the time, including Frank Morgan, Alice Brady, Madge Evans, Jimmy Durante, Mickey Rooney, and Jackie Cooper...	Maid	Uncredited Alternative title: Ring Up the Curtain
1933	The Prizefighter and the Lady The Prizefighter and the Lady The Prizefighter and the Lady is a 1933 black-and-white MGM crime romance comedy starring Myrna Loy, Max Baer, Primo Carnera, Jack Dempsey, and Walter Huston. It was the film debut for professional boxers Baer and Carnera. Carnera was the world heavyweight boxing champion at the time of the film's...	Linda	Alternative title: Every Woman's Man
1933	Dancing Lady Dancing Lady Dancing Lady is a 1933 musical film starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, and featuring Franchot Tone, the fourth of eight collaborations between Crawford and Gable. It was directed by Robert Z. Leonard, produced by John W. Considine Jr. and David O. Selznick, and was based on the novel of the...	Chorus Girl	Uncredited
1933	The Women in His Life The Women in His Life -Cast:* Otto Kruger as Kent 'Barry' Barringer* Una Merkel as Miss 'Simmy' Simmons* Ben Lyon as Roger McKane* Isabel Jewell as Catherine 'Cathy' Watson* Roscoe Karns as Lester* Irene Hervey as Doris Worthing* C. Henry Gordon as Tony Perez...	Molly
1933	Queen Christina Queen Christina (film) Queen Christina is a Pre-Code Hollywood feature film loosely based on the life of 17th century Queen Christina of Sweden, produced in 1933, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, starring Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith and Lewis Stone. It was billed as Garbo's return to cinema...	Barmaid at Inn	Uncredited
1934	Heat Lightning	Blonde Cutie
1934	Manhattan Melodrama Manhattan Melodrama Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 crime melodrama film, produced by MGM, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy...	Tootsie Malone
1934	The Big Idea	Honey, Ted's Fiancee
1934	Hollywood Party	Show Girl	Uncredited
1934	Hide-Out Hide-Out Hide-Out is a 1934 comedy film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Robert Montgomery and Maureen O'Sullivan. It also features a young Mickey Rooney.- Plot :...	Baby
1934	Have a Heart	Helen, Schauber's Secretary
1935	The Roaring West	Mary Parker
1935	Nurse to You!	Muriel Chase
1935	The New Frontier The New Frontier (film) The New Frontier is a 1935 Western film starring John Wayne.-Cast:* John Wayne - John Dawson* Muriel Evans - Hanna Lewis* Warner Richmond - Ace Holmes* Al Bridge - Kit* Sam Flint - Milt Dawson* Murdock MacQuarrie - Tom Lewis...	Hanna Lewis
1936	Silver Spurs	Janet Allison	Alternative title: Silverspurs
1936	Call of the Prairie	Linda McHenry
1936	King of the Pecos King of the Pecos King of the Pecos is a 1936 American Western film starring John Wayne and Muriel Evans.-Cast:* John Wayne - John Clayborn* Muriel Evans - Belle Jackson* Cy Kendall - Alexander Stiles* Jack Clifford - Henchman Ash* Arthur Aylesworth - Hank Mathews...	Belle Jackson
1936	Mr. Deeds Goes to Town Mr. Deeds Goes to Town Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in her first featured role...	Theresa	Uncredited
1936	Three on the Trail	Mary Stevens
1936	Two-Fisted Gentleman	June Prentice
1936	Missing Girls	Dorothy Benson	Alternative title: When Girls Leave Home
1936	House of Secrets	Julie Kenmore
1936	Under Your Spell	Governess	Uncredited
1936	The Boss Rider of Gun Creek	Starr Landerson
1936	Ten Laps To Go	Norma Corbett	Alternative title: King of the Speedway
1937	Rich Relations	Trixie Lane
1937	Headline Crasher	Edith Arlen
1937	Smoke Tree Range	Nan Page
1937	Rustlers' Valley	Agnes Randall
1937	Law for Tombstone	Nellie Gray
1937	Boss of Lonely Valley	Retta Lowrey
1939	Dog-Gone	Miriam Jones
1939	Home Boner	Mrs. Errol
1939	The Rookie Cop The Rookie Cop The Rookie Cop is a 1939 film starring Tim Holt as a rookie cop who wants to prove his friend wasn't involved with a robbery. The film also stars Virginia Weidler, Janet Shaw, Frank M. Thomas, and Muriel Evans. It was directed by David Howard....	Fern, Joey's Girl	Alternative title: Swift Vengeance
1939	Westbound Stage	Joan Hale
1940	Roll, Wagons, Roll	Ruth Benson	Alternative title: Roll Covered Wagon

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