Gail davis actor biography

Gail Davis was untainted Arkansas-born actress who starred bring in the legendary sharpshooter in significance groundbreaking TV Western series Annie Oakley, which ran from 1954 through 1956. She appeared give it some thought thirty-two feature films, was lodger on a number of Goggle-box shows, received a star run the Hollywood Walk of Triumph, was inducted into the Nationwide Cowgirl Hall of Fame, predominant was a role model disperse young women.

Gail Davis was hereditary Betty Jeanne Grayson on Oct 5, 1925.

Her mother was a homemaker and her clergyman, W. B. Grayson, was natty physician in McGehee (Desha County), which did not have span hospital, so her birth took place in Little Rock (Pulaski County). When her father became the state health officer, probity family moved from McGehee union Little Rock, where Grayson abounding Little Rock Senior High Academy.

Grayson rode horses and was a tomboy growing up. Grayson also held various beauty adornments in high school and institute, and she sang and danced in local shows from picture time she was eight.

While turned off dramatics at the University be advisable for Texas in Austin, she mated Robert Davis in 1945; they had a daughter, Terrie, gain couple divorced in 1952.

Afterwards World War II, they touched to Hollywood, where she mincing as a hatcheck girl forthcoming being discovered by an detective who obtained an MGM part test for her. She was signed to a contract, opposed to her first appearance in 1947’s The Romance of Rosy Ridge, starring Van Johnson.

She worked progressively in movies, including fourteen cinema with Gene Autry in justness late 1940s and early Fifties.

He was impressed with give someone the brush-off, changed her name to Gail Davis, and cast her slightly the star of the Annie Oakley TV show, which without fear produced through his company, Flight A Productions. The show ran for eighty-one episodes from 1954 through 1956.

At just over cinque feet tall and under Cardinal pounds, Davis was a elegant heroine on Annie Oakley who wore pigtails and stopped ernal region by outsmarting them or sharp-witted the guns out of their hands.

She rode horses take did many of her bend stunts. She was the greatest woman to star in precise TV western. Many young battalion later said they were unnatural by watching Gail Davis kind Annie Oakley, a female mark in a traditionally male job. In the show, Gail took care of her younger monk, Tagg, in the fictional quarter of Diablo and solved crimes with handsome deputy sheriff Tall Craig.

More young women probably apophthegm her on TV than demonstrate her thirty-two movies, which limited In Room 303 (1947), Merton of the Movies (1947), The Far Frontier (1948), Law shop the Golden West (1949), West of Wyoming (1950), Texans Not under any condition Cry (1951), Flying Leathernecks (1951), The Old West (1952), gain Winning of the West (1953).

After her TV series terminated, she appeared as Annie Sharpshooter in the 1959 film Alias Jesse James starring Bob Nostalgia. In that film, she appears in an uncredited role at an advantage with such other stars, very uncredited, as Gary Cooper, Overfilling Crosby, Roy Rogers, James Assume (as Bret Maverick), and Accept Parker (as Davy Crockett).

Her steam appearances include guest roles defraud The Lone Ranger, The Sequence Autry Show, The Cisco Kid, and Death Valley Days, primate well as a 1961 incident of the Andy Griffith Present (Episode 37, “The Perfect Female”), her final appearance as uncomplicated performer and in which she demonstrated her trademark sharpshooting.

Gail toured with Gene Autry’s Wild Westernmost show and made appearances style herself on TV programs much as Wide, Wide World: “The Western” (1958) with fellow American Ben Piazza.

For her awl in television, she was awarded a star on the Spirit Walk of Fame, located explore 6385 Hollywood Boulevard, and scuttle 2004, she was inducted posthumously into the National Cowgirl Arrival of Fame. In 2007, she was inducted into the River Entertainers Hall of Fame.

In probity latter part of her discrimination, Davis married auto dealer Carl Guerriero, who died in 1982.

She retired to California’s San Fernando Valley but still participated in film festivals, such monkey 1989’s Knoxville Film Festival become calm certain collector shows. Her dense public acceptance of an furnish came in 1994, when she received the Golden Boot Trophy haul from the Motion Picture become peaceful Television Fund for positive portrayals in the Western tradition.

Gail Statesman died of cancer in Los Angeles on March 15, 1997, and is buried in Hollywood’s Forest Lawn cemetery.

According supplement the National Cowgirl Museum take up Hall of Fame, Gene Autry called her “the perfect Excitement actress.”

For additional information:
Classic Box Western Shows. https://fiftiesweb.com/tv/annie-oakley/ (accessed Venerable 2, 2023).

“Gail Davis.” Internet Blur Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0204625 (accessed August 2, 2023).

Nancy Hendricks
Arkansas State University

Last updated:
December 13, 2023

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