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Lucile Gordon
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born:
20 September 1889 Auchterless, Aberdeenshire, Scotland |
died:
17 June 1976 Odessa, Texas, United States of America (cardiac arrest, age 86) |
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Tall Scottish-born actress with auburn hair and blue eyes. Elfrida Hogg, the future Lucile Gordon, and her family immigrated from Scotland to Canada around 1903-04. On 29 December 1910, she married Robert Laing Shimmin, a stockbroker, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They had at least two children, Vanda (originally Phyllis) Jean Shimmin (1915-1920), who passed at age 5 from pneumonia, and Phillip Shimmin, who was later adopted and became Richard Virden Whiting (1919-1983). There exists a Los Angeles birth certificate for Phyllis/Vanda, with both parents listed as residing at 1926 11th Street in L.A., suggesting residence in the United States prior to the 1920 date given on Elfrida/Lucile's naturalization records. In any event, the Shimmins were back in Canada a year later, where they were recorded in the "Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, 1916" as living in Calgary, Alberta, followed by Phillip/Richard's birth in Victoria, British Columbia, three years later. Per her naturalization records, Elfrida/Lucile arrived in the United States, this time for good, on 17 March 1920, at San Pedro, California; she later recalled that this was to regain her health, and that in that time Mr. Shimmin, who remained in Canada, never sent her money nor asked her to return home. In March 1923, Elfrida/Lucile filed for divorce from Shimmin; her half-sister, Millicent Hogg (also a motion picture actress), testified that she wrote to Shimmin inquiring as to why he did not seek reconciliation with Elfrida/Lucile; he replied to Millicent "that he and his wife had never been able to agree and that he thought their lives should follow different roads." Elfrida/Lucile filed her declaration of intention to become a naturalized United States citizen on 7 February 1931. She filed her petition for naturalization on 1 March 1933, with fellow actresses Jessie Heathman and Jessalyn Van Trump serving as witnesses; Elfrida/Lucile was granted her naturalization on 9 June 1933. On 25 May 1955, she remarried to Adolph Henry Koch (1891-1981) in Santa Barbara County, California, a union that lasted until her passing 21 years later. They resided in San Marino, California, moving to Odessa, Texas, shortly before Elfrida/Lucile's passing. Elfrida Mary Koch passed at the Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, Texas, where she had been for a "few months," at 2:15am on 17 June 1976, from cardiovascular collapse and cardiac arrest (duration of both: "sudden") with "probable myocardial infarction" [heart attack]; her son, Richard Whiting, served as the certificate's informant. She was cremated through Restland Crematory in Dallas, Texas, and her remains are buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. |
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Real name: Elfrida Mary Hogg Height: 5'8" |
Films listed on this page: complete Hal Roach filmography. |
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