Priscilla Lane

Priscilla Lane (born Priscilla Mullican; June 12, 1915 – April 4, 1995) was an American actress, and the youngest sibling in the Lane Sisters' family of singers and actresses. She is best remembered for her roles in the films The Roaring Twenties co-starring with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart; Saboteur (1942), an Alfred Hitchcock film in which she plays the heroine; and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), in which she portrays Cary Grant's fiancée and bride.

Early years Priscilla Mullican was born on June 12, 1915, in Indianola, Iowa, a small college town south of Des Moines. She was the youngest of five daughters of Lorenzo Mullican and his wife, Cora Bell Hicks. Mullican had a dental practice in Indianola. The family owned a large house with 22 rooms, some of which they rented to students attending nearby Simpson College.

Priscilla and one of her sisters, Rosemary, traveled to Des Moines every weekend to study dancing with Rose Lorenz, a renowned dance teacher at the time. The girls made their first professional appearance September 30, 1930, at Des Moines' Paramount Theater. Priscilla, then 15, performed on stage as part of the entertainment accompanying the release of her sister Lola's Hollywood movie Good News (1930).

After graduating from high school, Priscilla was permitted to travel to New York to visit a third sister, Leota (the eldest of the five Mullican sisters), then appearing in a musical revue in Manhattan. Priscilla enrolled at the nearby Fagen School of Dramatics, and Leota paid the fee. At this time, talent agent Al Altman saw Priscilla performing in one of Fagen's school plays and invited her to screentest for MGM. She was 16 years old. Priscilla wrote to a friend in Indianola, "Leota accompanied me to a sort of theater in a New York skyscraper. Others were there being made up. One was a strange looking girl with her hair slicked back in a sort of a bun. Her name is said to be Catherine Hepburn [sic]. Not very pretty, I thought, but Mr. Altman said she has something. Margaret Sullavan, the Broadway actress, was there too!" A follow-up letter said that her test had proven unsuitable. Neither Hepburn nor Sullavan was approved, and neither received a contract from MGM at the time.

In 1932, Cora and Rosemary arrived in New York. Cora immediately went to work pushing her two young daughters into attending auditions for various prospective Broadway productions, without success. During a tryout at a music publishing office, orchestra leader and radio personality Fred Waring heard them harmonizing. He found them attractive and talented and soon signed them to a radio contract. Priscilla, who at this time adopted the surname Lane, quickly became known as the comedienne of the group. Rosemary sang the ballads, while Priscilla performed the swing numbers and wisecracked with Waring and various guests. Back in Iowa, Mullican instituted divorce proceedings against his wife on the grounds of desertion, and the divorce was granted in 1933.

Film career

Rosemary and Priscilla remained with Fred Waring for almost five years. In 1937, Waring was engaged by Warner Bros. in Hollywood to appear with his entire band in Varsity Show, a musical starring Dick Powell. Both Rosemary and Priscilla were tested and awarded feature roles in the film. Rosemary shared the romantic passages with Powell, while Priscilla played a high-spirited college girl.

Warner Bros. purchased Priscilla and Rosemary's contract from Fred Waring and signed them to seven-year pacts. On June 14, 1941, Lane's mother announced Priscilla's engagement to newspaper publisher John Barry,

At the war's end in 1945, Lane and Howard were living in New Mexico and she was pregnant with their first child. Their son, Joseph Lawrence, was born on December 31, 1945. In 1946, after Howard's discharge from the service, the couple moved back to California, where they resided in Victorville. Howard, who had a degree in engineering, became a building contractor. The family moved to Van Nuys in December 1945. Afterwards Howard and Lane moved to Studio City. Priscilla became pregnant again in 1949. On April 17, 1950, her daughter Hannah was born. By June 1951, the boom in the construction industry in New England had Lane and her family moving back to Howard's native Massachusetts. Howard left the final decision to end her career to Lane, who later declared she never regretted her choice. She fell in love with New England, and the couple settled with their children in Andover, Massachusetts. Lane was busy with her family. She gave birth to a second daughter, Judith, on August 22, 1953. The Howards' fourth and youngest child James was born December 4, 1955.

Outside her family, Priscilla remained busy. She was devoutly religious, having converted to Roman Catholicism, as had her elder sisters Lola and Rosemary. The family attended church regularly, and she was involved with Catholic charities. She enjoyed tending her garden, and growing flowers and vegetables. She ran a Girl Scout troop and volunteered at local hospitals. In July 1972, Joe Howard retired from business, and he and Lane moved to their summer home at 7 Howards Grove in Derry, New Hampshire. Howard died suddenly on May 18, 1976, aged 60. He was still in the Air Force Reserve, which he had joined after his discharge from active duty in 1946. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Heartbroken, Priscilla remained afterward in Derry. She said, more than a year later in 1977, "I'm still trying to pull myself together after Joe's death." She busied herself with volunteer work and her garden.

Lane was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1994. She moved to a nursing home, Wingate, in Andover, near her son Joe and his family. She died there at 7:30 a.m. on April 4, 1995, from lung cancer and chronic heart failure, aged 79. A funeral mass was celebrated at St. Matthew's Church in Windham, New Hampshire. She was laid to rest beside her husband.

Filmography Year Film Role Director Notes 1937 Varsity Show Betty Bradley William Keighley 1938 Love, Honor and Behave Barbara Blake Men Are Such Fools Linda Lawrence Hall Busby Berkeley Cowboy from Brooklyn Jane Hardy Lloyd Bacon Four Daughters Ann Lemp Michael Curtiz Brother Rat Joyce Winfree William Keighley 1939 Yes, My Darling Daughter Ellen Murray William Keighley Daughters Courageous Buff Masters Michael Curtiz Dust Be My Destiny Mabel Alden Lewis Seiler The Roaring Twenties Jean Sherman, later Jean Hart Raoul Walsh Four Wives Ann Lemp Borden Michael Curtiz 1940 Brother Rat and a Baby Joyce Winfree Ray Enright Three Cheers for the Irish Maureen Casey Lloyd Bacon 1941 Four Mothers Ann Lemp Deitz William Keighley Million Dollar Baby Pamela "Pam" McAllister Curtis Bernhardt Blues in the Night Ginger "Character" Powell Anatole Litvak 1942 Saboteur Patricia "Pat" Martin Alfred Hitchcock Silver Queen Coralie Adams Lloyd Bacon 1943 The Meanest Man in the World Janie Brown Sidney Lanfield 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace Elaine Harper Frank Capra 1947 Fun on a Week-End Nancy Crane Andrew L. Stone 1948 Bodyguard Doris Brewster Richard Fleischer