- Not to be confused with Katherine Crawford, a film and TV actress of the 1960s and 70s best known for co-starring in the series Gemini Man.
Kathryn Crawford, also spelled Katherine Crawford, (October 5, 1908-December 7, 1980) was an American film actress of the 1920s and 1930s.
Born Katherine Moran in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, Crawford had a somewhat tumultuous childhood. Her parents divorced when she was four years old; she and her sister stayed with her mother. But her mother took sick soon afterward and was hospitalized. The two girls went to live with their father, and Crawford never heard from her mother again. Soon after her mother fell ill, her father moved the family to Los Angeles, California. She didn't get along with her stepmother, and at the age of 15, Crawford eloped with her sister's boyfriend to get out of the house. After a year and a half of marriage, the two separated. [1]
She worked as a shop assistant for some time but was determined to make use of her singing voice and decided to pursue musical comedy. She began performing in summer stock jobs across the Pacific Coast until she finally got her big break, as the ingenue in the play Hit the Deck. The play was successful and she attracted the attention of director Wesley Ruggles, who gave her a screen test that won her a contract with Universal Pictures. They would later marry. [2]
Crawford starred in her first film in 1929, when she appeared opposite Hoot Gibson in King of the Rodeo. She would star in seven films that year, and in 1930 she appeared in another six films, including Safety in Numbers alongside Carole Lombard and up and coming actress and "WAMPAS Baby Star" Josephine Dunn.
Her only starring role on Broadway was in the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers in which she was the original singer of "Love for Sale".
However, by 1931 her career had cooled. She would star in only one film that year, and only three between 1932 and 1933, only one of which would be a starring lead role. She married Ralph M. Parson[citation needed], with whom she would remain married until his death in 1974. She would have one more acting part, in 1941, when she was credited under the name "Katherine Crawford" in City of Missing Girls, and which starred H. B. Warner and John Archer. She retired from acting after that film, and moved to Pasadena, California, where she resided until her death in 1980, of cancer.
