Paula Winslowe Collection

Paula Winslowe
(1910 – 1996)

The directive to "find something you're good at and do it as well as you can" earned the unassuming Paula Winslowe a place in radio--and, indeed, show-biz--history. She was a small town girl from a North Dakota town probably out of the pages of Willa Cather or Laura Ingalls Wilder who found a niche in Hollywood that she patiently turned into a long career that touched the hearts and minds of millions.

Winslowe was born in 1910 and left North Dakota after marrying her high school sweetheart, John Sutherland. Sutherland was in the know concerning the new art form of cinema and dragged his new teenage bride out to the coast with him so he could become an auteur.

Instead, he found work directing educational shorts, while his wife found her own particular path to the silver screen. Working under her maiden name of Winslowe, Paula began overdubbing voices on talkies featuring silent movie stars. D.W. Griffiths is quoted as having said, "we do not want now and we shall never want the human voice with our films." But that's exactly what we got, and it constituted a significant sea-change in Hollywood.

In the process of opening the modern film era, the switch to talking pictures also wreaked havoc on the careers of some erstwhile silent-era stars. These thespians now had to operate in a capacity quite different from emoting and wildly gesticulating: they had to deliver their lines. And sometimes actors and actresses were brought in to do this for them while the silent film star was the one shown on the screen. Thus began the career of a noted voice actress, Paula Winslowe.

She would later become a professional team-player, a mainstay in many a radio series playing many a supporting role.

Her radio debut came on Dec. 30, 1936 when she appeared on a variety program identified as "Mutual-Don Lee Dedicatory Program." The show included, in addition to Winslowe's work, Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians and David Broekman and His Orchestra.

From there, it was on to one-off appearances of Big Town and Texaco Town, and then numerous appearances on The Lux Radio Theatre. On Lux, she got the chore of selling soap to the listeners in the ads between parts of the main episode. But she also acted in the episodes proper, appearing in well over a dozen episodes, mostly in 1943 and 1944. On one episode, the cast adapted "The Letter," with Winslowe playing a supporting role alongside Vincent Price and Bette Davis.

In 1945, she landed a starring role on The Life of Riley, alongside William Bendix. She played Chester Riley's wife, Peg, a no-nonsense foil that was by then and would continue to be a well-known paradigm on both radio and TV.

During the late 40's, she became an industry mainstay, tapped on a regular basis for occasional roles in such series as Suspense, The Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Fibber McGee and Molly, while still working on Riley.

During this time, she also took the mic for film and TV. Most famously, she played the role of the title deer's mother in the 1942 film Bambi.

But she was just getting started. Another recurring role was that of Mrs. Martha Conklin on Our Miss Brooks, both the radio and TV iterations. Martha was the spouse of Mr. Conklin, the irascible school principal, played by Gale Gordon. She made a few appearances on the radio version and several on TV, from 1953-56.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar gambled that Americans would be interested in following the exploits of a "fabulous insurance investigator," and history tells us it largely won. The series ran in various iterations from 1955-62, contributed to the hard-boiled gumshoe genre, and leaves a legacy as a great example of the drama workshop. Roughly 700 episodes are still in existence. Johnny Dollar was played by, in succession, Charles Russell, Edmond O'Brien and John Lund, Gerald Mohr, Bob Bailey, and Mandel Kramer. Winslowe lent her voice to various characters in dozens of appearances early in the show's run. Her work on this series was her last in radio until a return on Sears Radio Theatre in the 70's.

In the end, it isn't stardom, glitz, an image, that matter. It's the work, the well-timed jokes, the deadpan straight lines, even something as simple as a groan or a sigh. These are the things that ultimately comprise the entertainments that people remember. And while they may remember the leading actors, those who played minor roles contribute as well, living on in the dustiest recesses of our conscious and subconscious minds.