The heroine of a host of westerns, crimes and serial adventures during
the 1940s, this attractive, full-faced "B" movie item was born Adele
Pearce on August 6, 1915 (several movie resources list 1918). Born in
Oakland, California, Pamela Blake won a beauty contest at age 17 and
decided to try her luck in Hollywood soon after. The lovely brunette
began with an unbilled part in
8 Girls in a Boat (1934)
but then took some time off and returned to her hometown of Oakland to
study acting. She eventually relocated back to the Los Angeles area and
continued to apprentice in a succession of uncredited bit roles until
earning her first lead opposite cowboy star
Tex Ritter in
Utah Trail (1938).
Billed as Adele Pearce, this breakthrough sparked a series of featured
and co-starring roles. RKO director
John Farrow guided her briefly in
such programmers as
Sorority House (1939) and
Full Confession (1939), the
latter starring Victor McLaglen and
Barry Fitzgerald. The petite
actress then appeared opposite a towering young
John Wayne in
Der Bandit von Wyoming (1939). This film,
along with
Full Confession (1939), also
featured actor/stuntman 'Malcolm "Bud' McTaggart', who would become
Pamela's first husband. The couple went on to appear as husband and
wife in the exploitive and unsubtle programmer
No Greater Sin (1941), which posed
the dangers of venereal disease and the importance of hygiene. Their
career struggles eventually damaged the marriage and the couple
divorced within a few years. McTaggart tragically drowned in a Beverly
Hills swimming pool in 1949 at the age of 39.
Following a small role in the
Alfred Hitchcock hit comedy
romance Mr. und Mrs. Smith (1941)
with Carole Lombard and
Robert Montgomery, Pamela's
best opportunity came at Paramount with the secondary femme role as a
cleaning lady Annie in the film noir classic
Die Narbenhand (1942)
wherein she shares a notable face-slapping, dress-ripping scene with
Alan Ladd's lethal hit man Philip
Raven. At this point the actress's marquee name had been changed from
Adele Pearce to Pamela Blake.
Pamela was subsequently signed by Metro and featured in the studio's
comedy series' entries
Maisie Gets Her Man (1942)
and Swing Shift Maisie (1943)
both starring Ann Sothern as the breezy
title character. She was also romanced by co-star
James Craig in the standard western
The Omaha Trail (1942), and
appeared here and there in other MGM pictures such as
Slightly Dangerous (1943)
starring Lana Turner and
Kay Kyser's
Swing Fever (1943). The actress
failed, however, to rise above the studio's lower tier of stars, and
was eventually dropped.
Elsewhere, Pamela was given the top-billed "Poverty Row" lead in the
Republic crime mystery
Three's a Crowd (1945); played
the heroine in the dramatic
Why Girls Leave Home (1945);
and appeared in
Captain Tugboat Annie (1945)
with Jane Darwell taking over the vinegary
title role. Moreover, she worked with
Leo Gorcey and
Huntz Hall when they were The East Side Kids
in Kid Dynamite (1943), and rejoined
them when they became The Bowery Boys in their first venture
Live Wires (1946).
The actress received extended visibility co-starring in a number of
multi-chaptered cliffhangers, including
Chick Carter, Detective (1946),
The Sea Hound (1947),
The Mysterious Mr. M (1946)
and Zorro im Wilden Westen (1949). She
finished up the decade co-starring with
Tom Neal in two crimes --
The Hat Box Mystery (1947)
and
The Case of the Baby Sitter (1947)
-- and also played opposite Monte Hale in the
western
Son of God's Country (1948);
Robert Lowery in the "B" noir
Highway 13 (1948); and
Richard Travis in the espionage
tale Sky Liner (1949).
Into the next decade Pamela essayed the role of wife Anne Palooka
opposite Joe Kirkwood Jr.'s Joe Palooka
in
Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey (1950)
and played one of
Gauner, Gangster, schöne Mädchen (1950) in
the "B" western. She wound up her film career with the "Wild"
Bill Elliott western
Waco (1952). She broken into TV in the early
1950s and had already graced such westerns as "The Cisco Kid" and "The
Range Rider" by the time she decided to retire in 1953.
Pamela and her family moved to Las Vegas and she retired completely
from the limelight and never returned. Instead, she went on to raise
her two children by second husband, writer/actor/producer
Mike Stokey, who created the popular
1960s TV game show "Pantomime Quiz" (aka "Stump the Stars"). That union
also ended up in the divorce courts. A third marriage in 1983 to John
Canavan, an Air Force master sergeant, lasted until his death. One of
her children, Mike Stokey Jr., was
a Vietnam War combat veteran and demolition expert who became a
technician and military advisor for such war films/epics as
Geboren am 4. Juli (1989),
Der schmale Grat (1998),
Alexander (2004) and
Tropic Thunder (2008). Pamela
passed away peacefully on October 6, 2009, at the ripe old age of 94,
at a Las Vegas care facility.
