June Martel

June Martel (born Martha Irene Greif; November 19, 1909 – November 23, 1978) was a singer and a stage and movie actress from Chicago, Illinois. She was a petite brunette.

Singer and actress Her career began as a singer in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Martel was in the cast of the Broadway play Snatch as Snatch Can in May 1934. Other actors paired with her included Barton MacLane. Her first film role was in Front Page Woman (1935), followed by Going Highbrow (1935). She was the female lead in Fighting Youth (1935). The movie combined football excitement with the influence of communism on college athletics.

Martel was signed by Harry Warner of Warner Bros. in 1935. Other aspiring Warners' actresses were Olivia de Havilland, June Grabiner, Nan Grey, and Dorothy Dare. By August 1936, she had become the property of Paramount Pictures. The studio cast her as the ingenue in American Plan. The story concerned a girl who inherits a newspaper, adapted from an unpublished play by Manny Seff and Milton Lazarus. She also appeared in Sitting on the Moon in 1936.

Martel's later screen roles came in the 1930s in western films, such as Forlorn River (1937), Wild Horse Rodeo (1937) and Santa Fe Stampede (1938).

Personal life She collected odd pieces of jewelry and had amassed a small trunkload of items by 1937. In February 1941 Martel married screenwriter Frank Fenton. Fenton was also a scenarist and magazine writer. Her first husband was Walter J. Klavun, whom she divorced in Mexico in 1938.

June Martel died in 1978 in Los Angeles County, California.

Filmography