Dona Drake
Dona Drake, also Rita Rio, (* November 15, 1914 as Eunice Westmoreland in Miami, Florida, † June 20, 1989 in Los Angeles ) was an American film actress of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as singer, dancer and bandleader.
Life
It launched in the 1930s as Rita Rio a women's orchestra and a women's singing group ( "The Girl Friends" ). With her All Girl Orchestra, she toured in 1940 in the United States. In 1938, she replied, determined, albeit at a moderate tone in Down Beat to a misogynistic article by an anonymous critic ( Why woman musicians are inferior).
As an actress, active since the mid-1930s they used different artist names, initially, for example, Rita Rio Una Velon and Rita Shaw, from the early 1940s, the name Dona Drake. In films, she played mostly South Sea islanders, Arabs, Indians or Latina roles and widespread in their film biographies, that she was of Mexican origin (birth name Rita Novello, where Novello was the maiden name of her mother ).
When Rita Rio, she had a larger role in the film Strike Me Pink ( 1936) by Norman Taurog with Eddie Cantor, in which it has a snake dance number.
She played as an Arab girl in The Road to Morocco Bob Hope ( 1942) and the Indian servant of Bette Davis in The sting of Evil ( 1949).
Until 1955, she starred in more than 30 film and television productions. Recently she completed appearances in several television series.
She was married to William Travilla since 1944 and had a child.