Paula Winslowe in Old Time Radio

 

The radio waves of the Golden Age were filled with starlets who dreamed of making it big on the silver screen but turned to radio acting as a way to pay the bills until they got their big break. Paula Winslowe, one of the most successful, however, hardly fits the definition of starlet.

A starlet is usually a young lady with dreams of making it big in the Hollywood Star system. The hard truth is that for every movie princess, there were hundreds, if not thousands of beautiful girls who wanted their shot. Paula would have been perfectly content to remain in the North Dakota prairie town where she was born, eventually raising a family and supporting the ambitions of her childhood sweetheart. Her sweetheart, John Sutherland, had ambitions far from the prairies, however.

Entranced with the flickering images he saw in the local movie palace, John dreamed of one day sitting in the directors chair and creating pictures of his own. Soon after they were married, the couple migrated to Hollywood. When they arrived they discovered two things. First was that there were even fewer chances for an ambitious young director to find a break than there were for pretty starlets. The other was that Hollywood was undergoing a foundational change as the movies were learning to talk.

Although now the movies could talk, not all starlets could. In the late 1920's there was a demand for voice doubles who could speak for the pretty girls on the screen who had less than dulcet tone, and Mrs. John Sutherland with her perfect diction and Midwestern work ethic found steady work. One of her most notable voice dubbing assignments came after Miss Jean Harlow passed away while filming Saratoga(1939). The film was 90% complete, but there was still a call to reshoot the picture with another actress. Fans wouldn't stand for it, so the remaining sequences were shot with Harlow's long time body double, Mary Dees.

Unfortunately, Miss Dees looked like Jean but didn't sound like her, so Paula was called in to dub the voice. In time fans would begin to begin to feel cheated if they found out that their favorite stars were speaking with someone else's voice, but when voice dubbing work began to fade another industry arose which called for talented speaking voices, namely radio.

Even though early commercial radio carried some of the glamor of the movies, it was primarily a business. Working under her maiden name (and largely uncredited, at that), Paula built a reputation working with directors and producers as a reliable actress in the dramatized commercials which paid the bills in radio. While everyone was concerned with the dramatic action of the show, Paula would take her small script, make her pitch for anything from soap to soup to floor cleaner. Soon, directors realized how hard working and dependable she was and began to put her in front of the microphone more often.

Paula found herself across the microphone from many of the screen's legends while working on Lux Radio Theater. Husband John had found work at Disney as an animator, and Paula got the call to play Bambi's mother in the 1942 film. She also voiced the frightened pheasant and John Sutherland voiced the adult Bambi at the end of the picture.

Soon afterwards, producer Milton “Gummo” Marx began developing a radio vehicle for his brother Groucho. The sponsor, however, just could not see Groucho as the head of a blue collar family. William Bendix fit the role beautifully, and The Life of Riley was born with Paula Winslowe as Riley's ever patient wife, Peg. That long suffering Peg was smarter than her ambitious if out-of-touch husband was part of the shows lasting charm, but Paula never played Peg as a nag or a shrew, let alone a “Dumb Dora”. When Riley made the transition to the large and small screens, Peg was passed on to other actresses. Paula began to find work in the new medium of television while John Sutherland became an award winning producer of educational films.