Betty Grable
Would anyone insure a part of your body for one million dollars? Betty Grable's legs were insured by Lloyds of London for that much during the 1940s. This accomplished actress of the Technicolor musical is as often known for her WWII pinup poster as for her many movies. Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1916, Grable's mother orchestrated her career from the beginning. Her mother moved Betty, at age twelve, to Hollywood where Betty obtained chorus girl roles by lying about her age. Grable sometimes succeeded in landing bigger roles, such as 1932's Hold 'Em Jail and supplemented her income with big band singing work. In 1937 she married former child star Jackie Coogan and thus gained some distance from her mother. A successful run on Broadway with Cole Porter's 1939 musical DuBarry Was a Lady led to a contract with 20th Century Fox through the mid-1950s. Grable was a master of the musical comedy and she made another breakthrough with Down Argentine Way (1940), a film that was intended to be a vehicle for Carmen Miranda but ended up showcasing Grable's singing and dancing talent. During the war years, studios were churning out upbeat fare for the America public: Tin Pan Alley, Moon Over Miami, Coney Island all fit the bill and Grable excelled at the genre. In 1943, she did a photo shoot for the studio that resulted in the iconic bathing suit pinup poster that 1 in 5 GIs owned. By the end of the 1940s, she was the highest paid female star in Hollywood. In the 1950s her visibility was reduced, since other stars such as Marylyn Monroe garnered the roles Grable sought and the studios were making fewer musicals. She returned to Broadway in 1967, replacing Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly. Betty Grable died of lung cancer in 1973.
