Behind Closed Dores: The Many Faces of Nadine Dore, AKA Carol Wyndham
Nadine Dore: Dancer, actress, pilot, equestrian, minister, astrologist, and filer of studio suits when Olivia de Havilland was a schoolgirl
For those who may be reading for the first time, given the recent biblical exodus from Twitter to Bluesky and the resulting thousand plus new faces in my following, I’ve been enamored with the obscurities of the Dirty Thirties (especially in the pre-Code era of classical Hollywood film) for years. I’ve always connected with the early Depression years (1930-1933), and as a chronic overthinker with an affinity for old paper and sparkling Busby Berkeley scenes full of forgotten faces, it seemed writing about it was bound to happen naturally.
One of my first passion projects was unearthing the life of actress Adrienne Doré (pronounced ‘Dor-ay’ with the accent) after watching her in The Wild Party (1929) as a teenager around 2017—I found enough to fill up a website for her, and unintentionally ended up opening several other Dores, if you will, as well (longtime readers are hopefully familiar with my excusatory love for the corniest titles in the world).
During my research, I kept coming up with articles and credits pertaining to ‘Nadine Dore’ (or ‘Doree’) whose career, I discovered, ended up directly paralleled Adrienne’s in many ways—both found so-called ‘success’ in beauty pageantry, both wore the title of ‘Miss Los Angeles’, and both went on to have interesting but middling careers in film. Both, also, opted to pronounce their surname the French way, though Nadine chose to convey it with a double ‘E’ rather than an accent. Funnily enough, Nadine actually led a longer career on film than Adrienne, but smaller parts and a slew of name changes mean you can’t really tell.
Nadine and I were born in the same city—San Jose, California—nearly ninety years apart. Phyllis Nadine Redman (as was written on her birth certificate) was born on September 18, 1912, to PG&E laborer Joseph Redman and his wife, accomplished soprano musician Nina Koehler, a combination that certainly makes for an interesting upbringing—especially being their only child.1,2
According to a 1913 San Jose city directory, little Phyllis and her parents lived at 331 Carlysle Street in what we now consider Central SJ, which is apparent from the family home now being either a parking garage or an empty lot.
Like many families with talented young daughters in the twentieth century, they eventually headed south to Los Angeles at the close of 1919 when Phyllis was seven, a move that could have been exacerbated by a significant amount of familial drama after Phyllis’ wealthy great-uncle committed suicide in a ‘fit of melancholia’. The Redmans appear as roomers at 1001 East 29th in south central Los Angeles on the 1920 census, a historic Foursquare-style home that amazingly still exists—and looks great.4,5,6
The Redmans wasted no time in letting little Phyllis loose on the Tinseltown beauty circuit at a tender age; by the spring of 1921, the eight-year-old was having her portrait taken by Hollywood’s esteemed Witzel Studios and taking home laurels at children’s talent competitions.7,8
Phyllis was competing next to teenagers in beachside beauty contests by the time she was ten, beating out older, established girls for a prize of $50 in 1923—while a ‘mother and her newborn baby’ were one atypical entry to take home another prize, ten-year-old Phyllis still looks wholly out of place in a romper and dark lipstick that ironically all but emphasize just how much of a child she was.9
Luckily, the girl had more substantial interests to fall back on, such as a pony named ‘Prince Regent’ that won ribbons at the fourth annual Los Angeles National Horse Show in 1925.10 There was also, apparently, a plane to supplement her youthful presence on the chorus line at the new Hollywood Music Box Theatre at only fourteen, when she suddenly drops the decidedly modest ‘Phyllis’ and starts calling herself ‘Nadine Dore’.
A Los Angeles Times article from late 1926 claims ‘seventeen’ year old Nadine Dore as ‘probably the only chorus girl’ who owned a plane and could also fly it, going on to name her tutor as stunt aviator Finley Henderson.11 This writer has to wonder if a teenage Nadine lifted the surname from 1925 Miss America runner-up Adrienne Doré in a bid to further establish her image, but perhaps they were just two coincidental birds of a feather; after all, there was more than one Adrienne Doré (a story for another day). Interestingly enough, Larry Ceballos, a choreographer Adrienne worked with frequently, was staging Nadine Dore’s dance numbers at the Music Box.12
Nadine’s flying doesn’t make another blip on the radar, though, before she was awarded the title of ‘Miss Southern California’ in the so-called ‘largest beauty parade’ of 1927, which, ironically, Adrienne judged.13 By now, the Redmans had conveniently relocated to a Culver City address on Lincoln Avenue, mere blocks from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Nadine kept tossing her rings at beauty pageants, shoving more prizes under her belt around Hollywood as she honed her artistic chops at a prestigious local drama school that offered six month long courses to hopefuls hoping to break into show business.16,17 She’d find her footing in film circles by 1928, when her picture was published in a collage of screen stars. Soon after, fifteen-year-old Nadine got a break at a ball held for aspiring film actresses in Venice when she was awarded the title of ‘Perfect Figure’ by a gaggle of studio publicity men (all ‘yeesh’ noises aside).18,19
Evidently, someone or other took a real shine to her, as the teenager left for New York with a handful of other chorines to appear in the Broadway run of Hammerstein, Schwab & Mendel’s The New Moon. Nadine ended up joining the ensemble of Good News, too, which culminated in an engagement with Earl Carroll’s Vanities in December 1928, just after her sixteenth birthday.20,21,22
Nadine’s ascension to film fortune looked, from here, all but complete. Upon her return to California sometime in the first half of 1929, she was added to the chorus of RKO’s Rio Rita (1929), her first confirmable credit.
Films didn’t take her out of the beauty racket, though; she stayed in the ring and kept on sweeping prizes, taking home an ermine wrap valued at $1,200 (an eye-popping $20,000 today) after being named the ‘Queen of Beauty’ at a national pageant mere days before the stock market crash.24
By the time the census takers came knocking in April 1930, the Redmans were renting a cozy apartment on Willoughby Avenue, literally just across the street from RKO, where ‘Nadine D. Redman’, whose commute was only a pleasurable stroll, was still working as an actress. Interestingly enough, father Joseph gave his occupation as ‘actor’; anything about a so-called career under that name, however, can’t be located, which implies he might have been piggybacking off his daughter’s success.25
Evidently Nadine was following (or being gently pushed) into her mother’s footsteps, as the next month saw the LA Times calling her a ‘highly gifted young soprano’ of the RKO studios; having sold her trick pony for extra cash in November, there was apparently room for another pursuit.26,27
The summer showered Nadine with further treats, including a long-term contract as a showgirl with RKO; her second confirmable, visible film outing was as a dancer in Luther Reed’s oddball Dixiana (1930) with Bebe Daniels, which is lucky enough to retain its dreamy color sequences.28
Not much in the way of major appearances except for a few publicity poses around the lot, the beach, and other picture-worthy locales in 1930, including with esteemed dynastic makeup artist Ern Westmore and on the set of RKO’s Cimarron. The studio dropped Nadine like a hot potato after putting too many showgirls on the roster,29 and it was back to beauty contests for the nineteen-year-old, who bagged the coveted title of ‘Miss North America’ as a representative of Los Angeles in September 1931 after a stint promoting her face on a brand of peaches.30
In the interim, she nabbed a plum chorus role in the delightfully zany Palmy Days (1931); a job as one of forty-four featured beauties in the background of the contest-themed She Wanted a Millionaire (1932); and a speaking bit as a spoiled ‘Party Girl’ in Good Sport (1931), where she strips to her skivvies in protest of not receiving $500 from a rich party daddy for a new dress to replace a soiled one31:
In typical Hollywood fashion, Nadine was rewarded with a second stab at contractual bliss after adding another winning beauty sash to her collection. Warner Brothers brought her into their brood over the fall at, funnily enough, the same time they took in Adrienne Doré.32,33 Bad publicity over a $15 speeding ticket incurred when the titled teenager thought she was going fifteen miles per hour on Crescent Heights Boulevard (it was really forty-five), but it failed to make much of a dent in her upward arc.34
Nadine went straight into crowd scenes to help fill up the massive train depot built for Warner Brothers-First National’s Union Depot (1932),35,36 which featured Adrienne Doré as a dress shop attendant named Sadie. Confusingly, Nadine’s next venture as an extra in Play Girl (1932) saw her credit being given to Adrienne in newspapers and trade publications, causing headaches for researchers up to ninety years later; however, only Nadine appears in the cast listed in Play Girl’s studio-issued pressbook. Warners might have seen the potential problem right off the bat, as Nadine was ousted and roaming Hollywood’s open range by February (Adrienne, meanwhile, didn’t hit the chopping block until May).37
Late that month, Nadine and ten other lucky girls were sifted from the extra ranks by an ultra-glam committee at Paramount consisting of Carole Lombard and costume designer Travis Banton for the purpose of appearing as models in Sinners in the Sun (1932). Publicity releases claim there were three hundred entrants to be judged on traits varying in tangibility such as beauty, charm, voice, poise, and ‘clothes sense’, and of the eleven crème de la crème beauties excelling in each, Nadine was judged to be the prettiest.38,39
Nadine, on top of being charged with a Banton-designed riding costume, was given a single sassy line to throw back into the face of a fellow model at the beginning of the film. She and the others of Paramount’s so-called ‘shapeliest eleven’ fed their ‘beauty secrets’ to advice columns, and by early summer, a flash in the publicity pan promised Nadine a fabled long-term contract, a million dollar insurance policy, and the leading role in Million Dollar Legs (1932). However, her arsenal of beauty prizes notwithstanding, the role was instead quietly and unceremoniously passed to peer Susan Fleming, a fellow dancer from the Rio Rita chorus. Not only was Nadine on the bad end of a sudden switcheroo, any scenes she may have filmed were cut; she’s not even afforded a visible place among the extras supporting Susan on Klopstokia’s women’s swim team.40
Within months, Nadine’s horseshoe had turned all the way over, and she found herself in the B-Western rut on Poverty Row that meant roles were getting harder to get; she stayed at Monogram Studios to be the ‘leading lady’ in the low-budget Law of the North (1932) opposite forgotten cowboy Bill Cody, in which she only appears for brief interludes, and for a bit as ‘Winston’s date’ in the cheap horror flick The Thirteenth Guest (1932), which stars a fresh-faced Ginger Rogers. Ironically, contemporaneous online credits erroneously give this credit to Adrienne Doré, who never worked at Monogram, further blending the lines between the two actresses and piling onto their joint obscurity.
A slew of further blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances at Monogram followed, including in A Parisian Romance and A Strange Adventure (both 1932), the last of which saw her as a main character without many lines, lingering prettily by the camera like a belated silent star. Nadine was further relegated back to the chorus line for Dancing Lady (1933), which at least puts the mark of an excellent film on her permanent record, before hoofing on back to RKO for appearances in forgotten featurettes that have all but been consigned to oblivion.
In the interim between Monogram and MGM, with her career at a crossroads, Nadine decided to get married at the ripe old age of twenty. In April 1933, Nadine and twenty-six year old actor and Los Angeles Community Theater director Chester Miller elected to fly over to the hottest off-Hollywood elopement spot—Yuma, Arizona—to say their vows.41,42 They’d undoubtedly met during the local theatrical performances Nadine continued to do with her drama school troupe, but their shared love of performance couldn’t keep their spark going long; the fire turned cold with the coming winter, when Nadine filed for divorce after a whopping seven months. By then, she’d gotten a long-term contract with Fox that slated her to appear in Stand Up and Cheer! and George White’s Scandals (both 1934), which may have contributed to the discord.43
On December 9—a day before Chester was slated to direct his wife in a stage production for which she was lent by ‘special courtesy’ of Fox—Nadine filed for divorce in Superior Court, alleging that he ‘beat and choked her’ out of jealousy.44,45 Over a month later, it was reported that Nadine had canceled the divorce and minimized it to a ‘break’.
“We shall live separately for six months to test our lonesomeness for each other, at the end of the sixth month we shall have a trial reconciliation,” Nadine told George Shaffer in mid-January 1934. Evidently, she’d made up her mind before those six months came to pass, as she won an uncontested divorce from Miller in early May. It would be her only marital venture.46,47
Nadine slipped off the radar until she made headlines in December 1934 for taking Fox Film Corporation to court in order to rescind her contract. Her months-long absence was explained by her complaint that Fox used predatory wording in her contract, which she’d signed without legal advice, in order to suspend her from work for indefinite amounts of time; she lit her claims up even further by alleging that Fox had violated California labor law by never paying her over $49 a week, when she was really entitled to at least $15 a day.48
Having effectively committed studio suicide by tagging herself as a troublemaker (something that wouldn’t be challenged until well after the famed suit of Olivia de Havilland a decade later), Nadine is nearly nowhere to be found in films throughout the following year, save for some extra work on She Couldn’t Take It (1935). With her chances evaporated at barely twenty-two, Nadine took a note from the phoenix, ditched her stage name entirely, and rose from her own ashes by reinventing herself as ‘Carol Wyndham’.
Nadine—or Carol—had to claw her way back up from Poverty Row from there, debuting her new persona with another leading role in a forgotten Western by ‘Reliable Pictures’, which unreliably folded soon after. Her dramatic efforts, though rough around the edges, are bright and promising, but she wouldn’t get much of another chance to flex them; one of her only other jobs in 1936 was making eyes at Franchot Tone as an uncredited ‘flirt’ in von Sternberg’s The King Steps Out.
“Did you happen to notice that glint in her eye?” Franchot as Franz Joseph asks costar Grace Moore of Nadine/Carol, to which she replies dismissively, “She glints like an amateur.”
In December, articles pitying Nadine/Carol’s plight started cropping up in newspapers across the country, in which she claimed she had a ‘dark history’ that included winning too many beauty contests to ever again be taken seriously as an actress, at least as Nadine Dore—though she refused to give her right name.
“I’ve had such a hard time living down my past,” lamented Nadine/Carol in an unsigned interview, “after I won those beauty contests I thought for a while that I was wonderful. But a couple of years in the movies knocks that feeling out of you.”
Nadine/Carol went on to claim it took ‘two years’ to knock the conceit out of her, in which time she realized it took a real personality to be a star and riding on the coattails of superficial beauty had gotten her nowhere. “A girl with that background [in beauty contests] was at a disadvantage even if she did get a job. They just don’t give you the same chances.”49,50
Ironically, name twin and possible influence Adrienne Doré made similar comments on beauty to Gardner Bradford in 1932, maintaining that beauty was ‘dumb’ and building her career on its shallowness had hindered further progress in film.51
Nadine/Carol used both stage names for her next bits at Columbia, which were in Women of Glamour, When’s Your Birthday?, When You’re in Love, and Venus Makes Trouble (all 1937), none of which she was credited in. By the close of the year, roles were again getting thinner; one article proclaimed she’d been dignified with lines in Nothing Sacred (1937), which don’t survive (or never existed).52
Similarly, Nadine/Carol’s film career went out with a whimper later that year, finally bowing out after an uncredited role (using the Carol name again) as one of the hundreds of co-eds in Start Cheering (1938) with The Three Stooges and Jimmy Durante.53 Having spent sixteen straight years vying for film fame without any substantial success, she was still only twenty-five years old.
By the time we catch up with Nadine again on the 1940 census, she was unemployed and had taken to using her bland legal name, Phyllis Miller; she was still living with her parents at 4174 Lincoln in Culver City, just blocks away from MGM where her father worked to support the family as a florist.54,55 Interestingly, Nadine still claimed an ‘actress’ profession on her 1942 voter registration, but by 1944, she was out of the business entirely and doing secretarial work.56,57
Nadine kept toiling in various typist day jobs until her mother died prematurely of heart and kidney issues on St. Patrick’s Day, 1948; after that, she was apparently free to launch a new era on the nightclub circuit without any maternal finger-wagging. She tried on the shiny new alias of ‘Kay Nadine Loring’ (borrowed from the lead character of the 1933 Paramount film, Girl Without a Room, with dance numbers she likely appeared in) for her debut as an exotic dancer around 1949; the first known mention of her in this context comes from a local club columnist who late that year called her ‘a stripper that sure knows how to take it off biz’. She just couldn’t escape her name curse, though—a film actress and another nightclub entertainer shared the Kay Loring sobriquet, too (and the other nocturnal Kay would make headlines for ‘accidentally’ shooting her husband in 1956).58,59,60
By the 1950 census, Nadine was fully living a double life; she still held a day job as a clerk,61 but by night, she was one of the 1841 Club on Cahuenga Boulevard’s ‘exotic dance specialists’.62 She even appears twice on the census; having moved out of her father’s house, one entry for ‘Phyllis Miller’, a divorced typist in her mid-thirties, places her on Council Street on the Hollywood outskirts. Another taken weeks later has ‘Kay M. Lorring’, a twenty-six year old ‘club singer and dancer’, living with a musician friend on Westminster Avenue in the Palms neighborhood. Nadine would keep shaving off her first decade for the rest of her life.63,64
The mid-1950s were quiet, and in the meantime, Nadine relocated to the San Fernando Valley55 and made a 180 to apply herself to another (clothed) endeavor—spiritualism. By July 1965, ‘forty-two’ year old ordained minister Kay Nadine Loring—who was really fifty-two—had amassed enough of a spiritual career to attract the attention of local police. Nadine, who claimed ‘definite’ soothsaying powers in addition to her study of the stars, was arrested after telling fortunes for a newlywed couple that was really a pair of undercover cops. She was booked on a violation of the city code that specifically prohibited ‘fortune telling’ and was uniquely charged with ‘fortune telling by means of astrology’—she’d go on to fight the accusations pro se at a court hearing in September.
The case of course made headlines on the basis of its peculiarity. Among the officer’s complaints about Nadine were her claims that she had predicted the Kennedy assassination, that she was sure of Lyndon B. Johnson being the next to die in office, and that various mysterious ‘high-ranking’ state officials didn’t make a single move without consulting her. Likewise, Nadine told one of the officers that ‘much trouble would befall’ her and that someone close to her would die within the coming years.
“The stars impel but do not compel,” Nadine said mysteriously in her own defense, asserting that she’d been practicing astrology as ‘part of her religion’ professionally for ten years and that all of her predictions were ‘conditional’—some of them even simply lifted from others in her field.
The convoluted case, which brought on an ‘astrology expert’ to clarify the function of the practice for the courtroom and took a four hour jury deliberation to settle, ended with Nadine getting off scot-free.65,66,67,68,69
The dancing minister-astrologist didn’t let a brush with scandal scare her off from spirituality. She packed up shop and moved southeast to the desert sometime in the 1970s after an unfruitful stint in café ownership,70 establishing herself as a ‘top astrologer’ of Cathedral City by the early 1980s. She gave frequent interviews on her work throughout the decade, with two appearing in The Desert Sun in May 1988 alone.
Local columnists consulted her on a variety of mystic issues, including on Nostradamus’ earthquake predictions, which she deduced as ‘accurate, but hard to understand’.71
“The planets don’t give a damn whether you believe in them or not,” Nadine responded to criticisms of astrology, “they’re going to go right on doing their thing.”
She went on to name eccentric LA spiritualist Manly P. Hall as her mentor and pooh-poohed ‘so-called astrologers’ with a ‘superficial knowledge’ that gave her religion a ‘bad name’, going into the history of American astrology and blaming the downfalls of Hitler and Napoleon on their feeling more important than the planets. “If they’re married, they want out; if they’re single they want in,” Nadine said sassily of her regular clients, “and they’re unhappy no matter what happens.”72
Nadine remained an active astrologer in Cathedral City until her death at age seventy-nine on April 18, 1992. An obituary for Kay Nadine Loring, ‘sixty-eight’, calls her a ‘retired movie actress, stage actress, business owner, spiritualist, and champion dog trainer’. She’d apparently spent the last years of her life being the untethered companion of one Palm Springs resident Raymond A. Meyer, whose children are named as her ‘stepchildren’ (though it appears the couple was never legally married).73,74
She was buried, as Kay Nadine Loring (with a 1923 birth year), near her parents in the Freedom Mausoleum at Glendale’s Forest Lawn—stars of her era such as Clara Bow and Jeanette MacDonald surround her in the firmament, affirming her adjacency to Hollywood film history forever. While Nadine never found the singularity in films that she (and her parents) initially hoped for, she, like Adrienne Doré, left the rat race and the public to find offscreen happiness in home and hobbies, however esoteric, which seems to always constitute failure to someone somewhere. Even Susan Fleming, who walked off with Nadine’s pot of gold during Million Dollar Legs, didn’t mince any words when it came to working in Hollywood: “I hate it!”75
This 1932 Adrienne quote lives in the back of my brain, and it surfaces wherever regret surrounding middling Hollywood careers lives: “Maybe it’s the forgotten beauties that are the happy ones. Newspapers don’t print happiness stories. There’s no drama in contentment. Perhaps most of the forgotten beauties are laughing at us because we’re sorry for them. It would be interesting to know, wouldn’t it?”51
It certainly would.
“Our basic path is laid out for us [...] Always remember there is a right time and place for everything. Timing is everything, is everything.” —Phyllis Redman AKA Nadine Dore AKA Carol Wyndham AKA Kay Nadine Loring, May 1988
References and Notes
"California Birth Index, 1905-1995," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VLNC-7NQ : 27 November 2014), Phyllis N Redman, 18 Sep 1912; citing Santa Clara, California, United States, Department of Health Services, Vital Statistics Department, Sacramento.
“Oakland Couple Suddenly Turn Short Journey Into Honeymoon.” Oakland Tribune, 15 Jun 1910, p. 11.
"U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995", indexed database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 17 Nov 2024), page 355, Joseph Redman entry; citing "San Jose, California, City Directory, 1913” (San Jose, California.:n.p., 1913).
“Frank Munson Commits Suicide.” Concord Transcript, 16 Jan 1919, p. 1.
“Tampering With Witness, Charge.” Oakland Tribune, 30 Oct 1919, p. 24.
"United States Census, 1920", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MH7S-MJS : Sun Jul 14 23:17:10 UTC 2024), Entry for Joseph Redman and Nina M Redman, 1920.
“Klever Kiddies Free Photos This Week Only.” Los Angeles Evening Express, 27 Apr. 1921, p. 17.
“Klever Kiddie Prizes Are Given 600.” Los Angeles Evening Express, 30 May 1921, p. 4.
“Beach Beauties Show Good Form in Mar Vista Sales.” Los Angeles Evening Express, 15 Sep 1923, p. 23.
“Horse Show Ends With Fine Exhibit.” Los Angeles Daily News, 22 Feb 1925, p. 2.
“Chorus Girl Owns Airplane.” The Los Angeles Times, 28 Dec 1926, p. 2.
“Hoofer Shows ‘Em New Steps.” Los Angeles Evening Express, 13 Nov 1926, p. 11.
“Beauty Parade To Be Biggest Yet Attempted.” Venice Evening Vanguard, 30 May 1927, pp. 1,6.
“Hub City Girl Is Winner in Beauty Parade.” Venice Evening Vanguard, 5 Jul 1927, p. 1.
“King Art Hunts New Joan.” The Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1928, p. 36.
“Two Beauties for Vagabond.” Hollywood Vagabond, vol. 1, no. 25, 25 Aug 1927, p. 1.
“Gerson School to Give Four Plays.” Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 10 Dec 1927, p. 3.
“See How Well You Have Guessed Them!” The Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb 1928, p. 141.
“Thais Argyle Chosen As Ideal Extra Girl.” Venice Evening Vanguard, 12 Apr 1928, p. 1.
“Coast Chorus Girls Go to New York.” The Los Angeles Times, 26 Jul 1928, p. 18.
“Held Costumes.” Daily News [New York], 13 Aug 1928, p. 23.
“Engagements.” Variety, 19 Dec 1928, p. 42.
“Chorus Girls Change Names.” The Los Angeles Times, 28 Jul 1929, pp. 13, 23.
“Brunette Wins Beauty Show’s Queen Crown.” The Los Angeles Times, 14 Oct 1929, p. 19.
"United States Census, 1930", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XCJY-KNH : Sun Mar 10 20:57:19 UTC 2024), Entry for Joseph M Redman and Nina M Redman, 1930.
“Southland Beauty Accuses Her Agent.” The Los Angeles Times, 23 Nov 1929, p. 19.
“Singers From Studios Fill Engagements.” The Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1930, p. 40.
“28 Pearl Eaton Girls Awarded New Contracts.” The Film Daily, 1 Aug 1930, p. 9.
Le Berthon, Ted. “Damsels Are Surprised.” Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, 7 Nov 1930, p. 17.
“Nadine Dore, Trupak Girl, Will Appear in Person at Black’s Store.” The Fresno Morning Republican, 9 May 1931, p. 6.
“Theatres--Dances--Amusements--Irving.” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 27 February 1932, p. 19.
“Victory As Beauty Opens Film Career.” The Akron Beacon Journal, 19 Dec 1931, p. 11.
“Warners Sign “Miss America.” The Film Daily, 3 Nov 1931, p. 2.
“Beauty’s Car Rides Easily On Rough Road to Court.” Los Angeles Evening Express, 19 Nov 1931, p. 4.
Cast of characters list on page two of the Union Depot pressbook, published by Warner Brothers, 1932. Accessed on archive.org: archive.org/details/pressbook-wb-union-depot.
Miller, Frank. “Union Depot.” Tcm.com, Turner Classic Movies, 28 Oct 2006, www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2077/union-depot#articles-reviews?articleId=149241. Accessed 19 Nov. 2024.
“Fast Warner Turnover On Star Possibilities.” Variety, 17 May 1932, p.3.
“New Qualities Used to Pick 11 Actresses.” The Times [Hammond, Indiana], 24 Feb 1932, p. 9.
“California Blonde Chosen as Prettiest ‘Extra Girl’.” The Tribune [Coshocton, Ohio], 14 Apr 1932, p. 3.
“Million Dollar Legs Selected For Film Role.” Los Angeles Daily News, 9 Jun 1932, p. 1.
“Arizona, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1865-1972,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/900130801:60873 : accessed 20 November 2024), marriage register image, Chester G. Miller and Nadine Dore Redman, 22 April 1933, no. 1178 image 1771 of 1920; citing County Marriage Records. Arizona History and Archives Division, Phoenix, Arizona.
“Bay Artists to Be Seen in ‘Mary’s Other Husband’.” Venice Evening Vanguard, 5 Aug 1931, p. 3.
“Fox Signs 24 Girls To 7-Year Contracts.” Motion Picture Daily, 5 Nov 1933, p. 12.
“Beverly Group Opens New Play.” Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, 9 Dec 1933, p. 3.
“Beauty Charges Beating in Her Divorce Plea.” The Los Angeles Times, 10 Dec 1933, p. 11.
Shaffer, George. “Nadine to Try Absent Test to Save Marriage.” Daily News [New York], 20 Jan 1934, p. 25.
“Nadine Dore Says Husband Beat Her.” The Los Angeles Post-Record, 11 May 1934, p. 5.
“Miss America Sues Studio.” The San Francisco Examiner, 16 Dec 1934, p. 19.
“Beauty Contest Title Hampers Girl in Films.” The Spokesman Review [Spokane], 23 Dec 1936, p. 5.
“Beauty Contest Winner Shakes Jinx--Gets Break.” Oakland Tribune, 26 Dec 1936, p. 5.
Bradford, Gardner. “Beauty Gets You Nowhere.” The Los Angeles Times, 24 Jan 1932, pp. 3, 10.
Shaffer, George. “Perfect Curves Held Handicap to Film Career.” Chicago Tribune, 23 Aug 1937, p. 15.
“Carol Wyndham.” Afi.com, catalog.afi.com/Person/27745-Carol-Wyndham. Accessed 27 Nov. 2024.
"United States, Census, 1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K9WP-6ZJ : Fri Mar 08 00:40:48 UTC 2024), Entry for Joseph M Redman and Nina M Redman, 1940.
“Obituaries--Joseph M. Redman.” The Los Angeles Times, 30 Jan 1963, p. 30.
1942 voter registration for Miss Phyllis Redman, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Voter Registrations, 1900-1968 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2017.
1944 voter registration for Miss Phyllis Redman, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Voter Registrations, 1900-1968 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2017.
Death certificate for Nina Margaret Redman, "Norwalk, Los Angeles, California, United States records," images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9SV-HX2L?view=index : Dec 10, 2024), image 1919 of 2771; Los Angeles County (California). County Clerk.
Crooks, Sam. “Going Places?” Santa Ana Register, 12 Nov 1949, p. 18.
“Psychiatrist Shot By Angry Wife.” Birmingham Post-Herald, 28 Nov 1956, p. 7. Portrait of the other Kay Loring, who is obviously not ours, appears.
"U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995", indexed database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 Nov 2024), page 309, Nadine Redman entry; citing "Culver City and Palms City Directory, 1949” (Los Angeles, California.:n.p., 1949).
“Nite-Life.” Los Angeles Mirror, 10 Feb 1951, p. 10. Many related advertisements for Kay Nadine’s engagements at the 1841 Club appear throughout the same month.
"United States, Census, 1950", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XG7-DJGW : Tue Oct 03 20:49:46 UTC 2023), Entry for Phyllis Miller, 10 April 1950.
"United States, Census, 1950", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XGX-92P6 : Wed Oct 04 06:32:40 UTC 2023), Entry for Kay M Lorring, 27 April 1950.
“Arrest Reseda Astrologer on Fortune Telling Charge.” The Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, 30 Jul 1965, p. 4.
“Astrologer Facing Trial for Prophesy.” Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 30 Sep 1965, p. 15.
“Valley Woman Being Tried on Fortune-Telling Charge.” The Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, 30 Sep 1965, p. 64.
“Jury Says ‘Not Guilty’ of Fortune-Telling Charge.” The Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, 1 Oct 1965, pp. 1, 12.
“Woman Acquitted on Fortune Telling Charge.” The Los Angeles Times, 1 Oct 1965, p. 103.
“Grant Permits in Valley Area--Cafe Entertainment.” Valley News [Van Nuys], 12 Dec 1968, p. 48.
Hussar, John. “Nostradamus Aside, Seer Feels Pressure.” The Desert Sun [Palm Springs], 7 May 1988, p. A4.
Heider, Frederick. “Astrologer Issues Warning: Don’t Ignore Planets.” The Desert Sun [Palm Springs], 23 May 1988, p. A3.
"California, Death Index, 1940-1997," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VPSM-RH6 : 26 November 2014), Kay Nadine Loring, 20 Apr 1992; Department of Public Health Services, Sacramento.
“Kay Nadine Loring.” Findagrave.com, 2015, www.findagrave.com/memorial/85454417/kay-nadine-loring?_gl=1. Accessed 29 Nov. 2024. Mother Nina M. Redman’s niche, per FindAGrave, is #12805 in the Sanctuary of Piety, Freedom Mausoleum.
Oliver, Myrna. “Susan F. Marx, 94; Widow of Comedian Harpo Marx.” The Los Angeles Times, 27 Dec 2002, p. B10.