The memories are vague when it comes to recalling this London-born leading lady, but Muriel Angelus did have her moments. She managed to appear in a few classic Broadway musical shows and Hollywood films before her early retirement in the mid-1940s. Of Scottish parentage, the former Muriel Findlay developed a sweet-voiced soprano at an early age. She made her singing debut at 12, eventually changing her name and becoming a popular music hall performer. She entered films toward the end of the silent era with The Ringer (1928), the first of three movie versions of the Edgar Wallace play. Her second film Sailor Dont Care (1928) was important only in that she met her first husband, Scots-born actor John Stuart. Her part was excised from the film. Though in her first sound picture Night Birds (1930), she got to sing a number, most of her films did not usurp her musical talents. The sweet-natured actress who played both ingenues and other woman roles co-starred with husband Stuart in No Exit (1930), Eves Fall (1930) and Hindle Wakes (1931), and appeared with British star Monty Banks in some of his farcical comedies, including My Wifes Family (1932) and So You Wont Talk (1935). Muriel received a career lift with the glossy musical London hit Balalaika and a chain of events happened with its success. It led to her securing the pivotal role of Adriana in The Boys From Syracuse and, in turn, a contract with Paramount Pictures. Divorced from Stuart by this time, Muriel settled in Hollywood and made her best films while there. She was touching as girlfriend to blind painter Ronald Colman in The Light That Failed (1939), a second remake of the Rudyard Kipling novel, and appeared to great advantage in Preston Sturges classic satire The Great McGinty (1940) as _Brian Donlevy_s secretary. After scoring another long-running Broadway hit with Early To Bed in 1943, Muriel met Radio City Music Hall orchestra conductor Paul Lavalle while appearing on radio in New York and married him in 1946. She retired to raise a family in New England. They had a daughter, Suzanne, who later worked for NBC. Muriel pretty much stayed out of the limelight for the remainder of her life. She died at 95 in a Virginia nursing home in 2004, some seven years after her husbands death.
Catharine McGinty
Film 1940
Mary Lenley
Film 1928
Maisie
Film 1939
Fay Thorne
Film 1940
Dolly Mooreland
Film 1930
Beatrice Farrar
Film 1931
Ann Ansell
Film 1930
Ena Burslem
Film 1930
Eve Warren
Film 1930
The Bride Who Was
Film 1931
Sybil Craig
Film 1932
Peggy Gay
Film 1931
Katrina
Film 1935