Virginia Sale

Willowy blonde actress Virginia Sale was seen on stage and screen from the mid-1920s. Sale was usually cast as either an efficient secretary or a well-coiffed socialite, appearing in such 1930s films as Her Majesty Love (1931), Man With Two Faces (1934) and Topper. In all, she was in some 200 films, not to mention her 1000-plus live appearances in her own one-woman show. For fifteen years, Ms. Sale offered this tour-de-force (a combination lecture on theatrical arts and demonstration of the actress' versatility) to schools, nightclubs and legitimate theatres, retiring only when the infirmities of age caught up with her in her 80s. Equally active on television, Sale showed up on innumerable anthologies and sitcoms; in 1964, she was the first actress to portray busybody Selma Plout on the long-running Petticoat Junction. The sister of vaudeville headliner Chic Sale, Virginia Sale was long married to Broadway actor Sam Wren, with whom she co-starred in the pioneering TV domestic comedy Wren's Nest (1949).

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide