Louise LaPlanche

The "Genuine Pennzoil Girl" of 1940s billboard fame and the sister of Miss America of 1941, Louise La Planche played a gypsy girl at the age of three in the 1923 Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was also in some Hal Roach shorts but La Planche's screen career didn't get into high gear until the 1940s when she became a showgirl for MGM and Paramount, appearing as hatcheck girls, handmaidens, and models in everything from Ziegfeld Girl (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), and Easter Parade (1948). After retiring to raise a family, La Planche returned to the limelight in the 1980s, playing bits in such television shows as The Golden Girls, Knots Landing, and Days of Our Lives, as well as the feature film The Rocketeer (1991). At the age of 80, the Ann Arbor, MI, resident and former Miss Catalina was voted "Miss Michigan Achievement 2000." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide