Anita Louise

Blonde, blue-eyed, Dresden Doll-featured Anita Louise was an actress from age 6, appearing with Walter Hampden in the Broadway production of Peter Ibbetson. She played juvenile roles in silent pictures, billed as Anita Fremault; in 1929, she dropped her "Fremault" surname, billing herself by her first and second names only. Many of her best screen roles were concentrated in the years 1934-1938. She played Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), the unwed mother of the title character in Anthony Adverse (1936), and two famous personages of the French Revolutionary era: Marie Antoinette in Madame DuBarry (1934) and the Princess de Lamballe in Marie Antoinette (1938). She continued accepting ingenue roles into the 1940s, adding spice to the stew with an occasional villainess (she was the much-hated murder victim in 1944's Nine Girls).

In 1956, looking as young and fragile as ever, she played Johnny Washbrook's mother in the TV series My Friend Flicka. That same year, she was substitute host on The Loretta Young Show while Young (one of Louise's closest friends) recuperated from life-threatening surgery. Louise was long-married to producer Buddy Adler, who died in 1962. Retiring from show business upon the occasion of her second marriage to businessman Henry L. Berger, Anita Louise devoted her final years to charitable pursuits like the Children's Asthma Research Center and the National Hemophilia Foundation.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide