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| Loretta Rush |
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born:
05 June 1906 Chicago, Illinois, United States of America |
died:
01 January 1972 Los Angeles, California, United States of America (age 65) |
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Blonde American actress, stuntwoman, and champion swimmer who had a decent Hollywood career. In 1922, she held the breaststroke swimming championship for women in Panama; the next year, she won the Pacific Coast breaststroke championship in Los Angeles, holding the title for three years. She was a member of the Hollywood Athletic Club women's swimming team, and became a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty in the mid-1920s. As a stuntwoman, she doubled for Virginia Bruce, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor, Mary Brian, Dorothy Dwan, Madeline Hurlock, Margaret Quimby, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy, Jeanette MacDonald, Mary Pickford, Anna Q. Nilsson, Shirley Mason, Ann Little, and other actresses. In March 1927, she was in an auto accident that claimed the life of actress Helen Howard; Rush and actor William Demarest were injured. Two years later, Rush sued the driver, stating that the accident robbed her of the courage necessary to perform her stunt work. Almost exactly a decade later, in March 1937, she was in another fatal car accident, this time while filming a stunt for the Warner Bros. film "The Footloose Heiress"; former Los Angeles beauty queen Marcella Arnold was killed, while Rush and Gordon Carveth (who was behind the wheel) were injured. The accident was blamed on a mechanical defect. On New Year's Eve, 1927, she married assistant director and production manager Horace Stallings Hough (1891-1965); both were working at the Fox studio at the time. The marriage ran into trouble in 1956, when Loretta was granted a divorce after she and a detective found Hough associating with a divorcée; Loretta's spotting of a pipe that she had given Horace for Christmas on the woman's table was the giveaway. However, they evidently patched things up, and when Hough died in 1965, his obituaries listed Loretta as his wife. Loretta and Horace Hough are buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. |
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Real name: Loretta Rose Rush Height: 5'4" |
Films listed on this page: complete Hal Roach filmography. |
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