Constance Moore, 84; Film, Stage, TV Actress, Singer
LA Times
Constance Moore, the glamorous singer-actress who co-starred in a string of World War II-era movie musicals and gained cult-film status as Buster Crabbe’s co-star in the 1939 “Buck Rogers” serial, has died. She was 84.
Moore, who also appeared in a hit Broadway musical in the early ’40s, died Friday of heart failure at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills after a long illness, said her son, Michael Maschio.
Moore was a band vocalist on a Dallas radio show before being discovered by a Universal Studios talent scout. She arrived in Hollywood as a teenager in 1937 and subsequently appeared in comedies, dramas, westerns and musicals.
Among her more than 40 film credits are the movie musicals “Delightfully Yours” with Jane Powell, “Show Business” with Eddie Cantor and George Murphy, “Earl Carroll Vanities” with Dennis O’Keefe and “Hit Parade of 1947″ with Eddie Albert.
She also appeared with Ray Milland and William Holden in the wartime drama “I Wanted Wings,” co-starred with Bill Elliott in the western “In Old Sacramento” and supported Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray in the comedy “Take a Letter, Darling.”
On television two decades later, she co-starred with Robert Young in the short-lived “Window on Main Street,” a 1961-62 situation comedy.
But Moore may be best remembered for playing the daughter of W.C. Fields’ Larson E. Whipsnade in the classic 1939 comedy “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man” and Wilma Deering in “Buck Rogers,” the 1939 science-fiction serial based on the popular comic strip.
