Nancy Gates

Biography: Teenaged actress Nancy Gates had already accrued a respectable string of stage and radio credits when she was signed by RKO Radio studios in 1942. She served a short apprenticeship in 2-reelers and "B"-pictures (and also showed up very briefly in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons) before being promoted to such RKO "A"s as This Land is Mine (1943) and The Spanish Main (1945). Though a pleasant and attractive screen personality, Gates never exuded true star quality, and by the 1950s she was free-lancing in low-budget films like The Atomic City and in television. Retiring from films in 1960 to spend more time with her family, Nancy Gates began making occasional TV appearances again in such series as The Twilight Zone and Mod Squad.