About 1950 I photographed a young lady named Ella Raines, whom I was told was a movie star. I hadn’t heard of her before, and I haven’t heard of her since. What can you tell me about her?
—Reid Rowland, Bountiful, Utah
Ella Raines was indeed a movie star. The striking Washington-born brunette made about two dozen films during the 1940s and ’50s, heating up the screen alongside John Wayne in Tall in the Saddle, George Raft in A Dangerous Profession and Randolph Scott in The Walking Hills. In 1954, she starred in her own network TV series, Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. She retired from show business in 1956, re-emerging two decades later to make a single guest appearance on the TV series Matt Houston. She died in 1988 at the age of 67 from throat cancer.
