Gale Storm

The Business of Perpetual Smiles

Josephine Owaissa Cottle won a radio contest in 1940 and ended up with a stage name imposed by a contract. She had no choice. Gale Storm was born as a brand under RKO's label but became the financial engine of Monogram Pictures for nearly a decade.

She was the queen of B movies.

She made three or four films a year without a break. They were cheap westerns and light romances where the budget mattered far more than the screenplay. But Gale had an energy that leapt off the screen (a mix of innocence and professional efficiency that producers exploited to the point of exhaustion).

In 1947, she starred in It Happened on 5th Avenue. It was her best moment in film before the industry decided her place was in the living rooms of American homes. Television was looking for friendly faces for the middle class, and she fit the mold of the perfect next-door neighbor who never broke a dish.

The premiere of My Little Margie in 1952 was a logistical accident. The series arrived as a summer filler to fill a gap in CBS's schedule. No one expected the project to stay on the air for 126 episodes.

She earned a thousand dollars per episode at a time when that figure was a scandal for a young woman in the industry.

Gold records and empty bottles

Gale didn't limit herself to sitcoms. In 1955 she released a version of I Hear You Knocking that sold a million copies in just a few weeks. Her voice was functional, but her image sold anything she touched because audiences trusted her.

But the pace of work and the pressure to maintain a flawless image took their toll. When The Gale Storm Show ended in 1960, the actress found herself facing a professional void she couldn't handle. Alcohol became her private refuge during nearly twenty years of half-forgotten obscurity.

It was not a public fall.

She went into hiding at her California home while the world forgot her character. It was in 1981 that she decided to publish her autobiography, titled I Ain’t Down Yet. In that book she confessed her battle with addiction and became one of the first figures of her generation to speak openly about rehab without using a pseudonym.

And her honesty earned her the industry's respect.

She spent her final years taking part in nostalgia conventions and receiving tributes for being a pillar of early television. She died in June 2009 at a nursing home in Danville. She left behind three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a healthy bank account thanks to the royalties from her music recordings.