Vera Ralston
Vera Ralston ( born July 12, 1919 in Prague, Czechoslovakia as Věra Helena Hrubá; † February 9, 2003 in Santa Barbara, California ) was an American actress.
Life
Věra Hrubá was a successful figure skater and took for Czechoslovakia in part at the European Figure Skating Championships in 1936 and the Summer Olympics in 1936 in Berlin. In both events she attended rear seats. The following year she took part at the time held in her hometown of Prague European Figure Skating Championships in 1937, where she finished in seventh place.
Hrubá moved to the United States to perform there as a professional figure skater in revues. There they took the name Vera Ralston. In addition, she took acting classes with Josephine Dillon, the first wife of Clark Gable. Republic Pictures was aware of them, and tried the success of 20th Century Fox with Sonja Henie with her copy. However, Henie was not only far better skater, but also a better actress. Nevertheless, Ralston came out within 17 years in 26 movies for Republic Pictures, but of which no greater commercial success had granted, which also contributed to her relatively poor English. Reason for the long film career despite ausbleibendem success was her marriage to the almost 40 years his senior, founder and managing director of the studio, Herbert Yates. One of the leading bands of the studio was John Wayne, who called Ralston shortly before his death as "the worst actress with whom he ever had to work together." He had 1945 and 1949 two Western turned to her as the female lead actress, Dakota, and at the last second, both films were commercial failures. After Yates due to the various expensive flop by the films of his wife, only two of them were able to recoup their costs of production, in the late 1950s was pushed by means of legal proceedings by the shareholders from the studio, also ended Ralston's film career.
Ralston withdrew with Yates into private life and they both lived until his death in 1966 at the age of 92 years together on the estate. In 1973 she married a second time, the marriage lasted until her death by the consequences of a cancerous condition in 2003.
Trivia
The actress Vera Miles, who began her career at Republic Pictures, called real name is Vera Ralston. They adopted a stage name, because there should not be two actress of the same name in the same studio.