Muriel Angelus

The memories are vague when it comes to recalling this London-born  leading lady, but Muriel Angelus did have her moments. She managed to  appear in a few classic Broadway musical shows and Hollywood films  before her early retirement in the mid-1940s. Of Scottish parentage, the  former Muriel Findlay developed a sweet-voiced soprano at an early age.  She made her singing debut at 12, eventually changing her name and  becoming a popular music hall performer. She entered films toward the  end of the silent era with The Ringer (1928), the first of three movie  versions of the Edgar Wallace play. Her second film Sailor Don't Care  (1928) was important only in that she met her first husband, Scots-born  actor John Stuart. Her part was excised from the film. Though in her  first sound picture Night Birds (1930), she got to sing a number, most  of her films did not usurp her musical talents. The sweet-natured  actress who played both ingenues and 'other woman' roles co-starred with  husband Stuart in No Exit (1930), Eve's Fall (1930) and Hindle Wakes  (1931), and appeared with British star Monty Banks in some of his  farcical comedies, including My Wife's Family (1932) and So You Won't  Talk (1935). Muriel received a career lift with the glossy musical  London hit "Balalaika" and a chain of events happened with its success.  It led to her securing the pivotal role of Adriana in "The Boys From  Syracuse" and, in turn, a contract with Paramount Pictures. Divorced  from Stuart by this time, Muriel settled in Hollywood and made her best  films while there. She was touching as girlfriend to blind painter Ronald Colman in The Light That Failed (1939), a second remake of the Rudyard Kipling novel, and appeared to great advantage in Preston Sturges' classic satire The Great McGinty  (1940) as _Brian Donlevy_'s secretary. After scoring another  long-running Broadway hit with "Early To Bed" in 1943, Muriel met Radio  City Music Hall orchestra conductor Paul Lavalle while appearing on  radio in New York and married him in 1946. She retired to raise a family  in New England. They had a daughter, Suzanne, who later worked for NBC.  Muriel pretty much stayed out of the limelight for the remainder of her  life. She died at 95 in a Virginia nursing home in 2004, some seven  years after her husband's death.