Who is Evelyn Ankers?
Evelyn Ankers was a beautiful movie actress who was a staple of Universal's horror films in the 1940s. She developed a desire to become an actress in England.
She began appearing in small roles in English movies in the mid 1930s while she was still in school. She appeared in Fire Over England (1937) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and in Bells of St. Mary's (1937). A beauty with talent, she soon won starring roles in the low-budget The Villiers Diamond (1938) and The Claydon Treasure Mystery (1938).
With war clouds darkening the skies over Europe, Ankers emigrated to the United States and was signed to a contract by Universal in 1940. She made her Universal debut in the Abbott and Costello comedy-horror picture Hold That Ghost (1941) before appearing in the horror film classic The Wolf Man (1941) opposite Lon Chaney Jr.. Ankers found herself cast into the horror picture ghetto, appearing in three more Chaney fright films, The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Son of Dracula (1943) and The Frozen Ghost (1945), during a period in which she was cast ashore with a sarong-less Jon Hall in The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944). She also appeared in support of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) and The Pearl of Death (1944).
Horror flicks were popular during World War II, but after the cessation of hostilities in 1945, they went out of favor with audiences. Ankers' career, mated to the genre at Universal, suffered.
She quit Universal in 1945 and freelanced at Columbia and Poverty Row's Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) and Republic Pictures in dramas and mysteries. Evelyn co-starred in the major release Black Beauty (1946) for 20th Century Fox. For PRC, she headlined Queen of Burlesque (1946) and later co-starred with Lex Barker in Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949).
As the 1950s dawned, a decade of conformity and family values, Ankers quit the movies after making The Texan Meets Calamity Jane (1950), in which she was first-billed. A decade later, Ankers came out of retirement to make one final screen appearance, in No Greater Love (1960).
Evelyn Ankers died of ovarian cancer on August 29, 1985.
Trivia
- Despite the numerous times she worked with Lon Chaney Jr., the two reportedly had a strong disliking for each other. Often Chaney would scare Ankers and because of this, she referred to him as "a brute with bad breath".
- She was the only actress to appear in a Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein film. She played Gwen Conliffe in The Wolf Man (1941), in Son of Dracula (1943) she played Claire Caldwell and she appeared in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) as Elsa Frankenstein. Each of these roles was opposite Lon Chaney Jr. who played the monsters which terrorized Ankers.
- She remembered that many of the B movies she made were rush jobs. Arriving for a love scene on The Great Impersonation (1942), director John Rawlins called "Action!" before the actors were even given any blocking. When she and actor Ralph Bellamy remained frozen, she stuttered to the director, "I would like to meet my leading man, as I have never kissed a man before first being introduced to him.".
- She was called "Queen of the Screamers" on account of her bloodcurdling vocal outbursts in "B" suspense thrillers of the 1940s.
- Had appeared with Lon Chaney Jr. in five films: The Wolf Man (1941), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Son of Dracula (1943), Weird Woman (1944) and The Frozen Ghost (1945).