lona Massey was born in Budapest in 1910, while it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Trained as an opera singer, she worked as a dress maker and theater singer to save money for the trip to Vienna where she joined an Opera Company. Eventually she landed a screen test in London and was offered a Hollywood contract. She appeared in a couple Nelson Eddy operettas, and was billed as "the new Dietrich ." Her acting talent was not quite strong enough, and her soprano voice too light to live up to the hype. She would be called upon to play the alluring sophisticated beauty in Thriller pictures. Notable are Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) with Lon Chaney Jr. and Love Happy (1949) with the Marx Brothers. Ilona's character in Love Happy , the spy Madame Egelichi, was the inspiration for the Steve Canyon comic character Madame Lynx. Steve Canyon artist Milton Caniff went so far as to hire Massey to model for him. Ma...
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