Actress. A veteran of around twenty Hollywood films during the 1940s, she was best known for playing Alice Moore in Jacques Tourneur's 1942 classic "Cat People". Born Jane Roemer, she was raised in Kokomo, Indiana, and in 1939 moved to Hollywood to study acting. Briefly under contract to Warner Brothers, she made her 1941 silver screen debut as a hatcheck girl in "Manpower" and had some other small roles but was to get larger parts after switching to RKO; her first major credit was in the 1942 "Highways by Night" which was followed by her turn as an ice skater, one of the two human characters in Disney's 1942 animated "Bambi". "Cat People", in which she was a girl terrorized in an indoor swimming pool, established her niche in "film noir", her roles either calling for a vulnerable girl or a femme fatale. A popular World War II pin-up, June of 1942 saw her as the first cover girl for "Yank" magazine. Jane reprised Alice in 1944's "The Curse of the Cat People", was accused of killing her drunken husband in "Jealousy" (1945), and framed an innocent man in the 1947 "Railroaded!". She made her final silver screen appearance in 1948 in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", married wealthy developer Jaime del Amo in 1949, and spent most of her remaining days in Spain as a socialite with an interest in painting. In her final years, she divided her time between Gstaad, Switzerland, and Los Angeles and died from surgical complications following a fractured hip.
Actress. A veteran of around twenty Hollywood films during the 1940s, she was best known for playing Alice Moore in Jacques Tourneur's 1942 classic "Cat People". Born Jane Roemer, she was raised in Kokomo, Indiana, and in 1939 moved to Hollywood to study acting. Briefly under contract to Warner Brothers, she made her 1941 silver screen debut as a hatcheck girl in "Manpower" and had some other small roles but was to get larger parts after switching to RKO; her first major credit was in the 1942 "Highways by Night" which was followed by her turn as an ice skater, one of the two human characters in Disney's 1942 animated "Bambi". "Cat People", in which she was a girl terrorized in an indoor swimming pool, established her niche in "film noir", her roles either calling for a vulnerable girl or a femme fatale. A popular World War II pin-up, June of 1942 saw her as the first cover girl for "Yank" magazine. Jane reprised Alice in 1944's "The Curse of the Cat People", was accused of killing her drunken husband in "Jealousy" (1945), and framed an innocent man in the 1947 "Railroaded!". She made her final silver screen appearance in 1948 in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", married wealthy developer Jaime del Amo in 1949, and spent most of her remaining days in Spain as a socialite with an interest in painting. In her final years, she divided her time between Gstaad, Switzerland, and Los Angeles and died from surgical complications following a fractured hip.
Bio by: Bob Hufford
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