Martha O'Driscoll

Actress/singer/dancer Martha O'Driscoll managed to pack 37 film appearances into her 11 years in Hollywood, mostly at Paramount and Universal. She led several Universal B-musicals and RKO melodramas, survived two leading-lady stints with zany funsters Olsen and Johnson (Crazy House and Ghost Catchers), and, in Abbott and Costello's Here Come the Coeds (1945), she had the dubious honor of playing Bud Abbott's sister. Her last film was the 1947 "cultural" effort Carnegie Hall. At 25, O'Driscoll retired from films to marry a Chicago businessman. Thereafter, she was one of the Windy City's most powerful and personable social leaders, serving as an executive in such organizations as the Sarah Siddons Society, the Ways and Means Committee of Chicago's Junior League, and the Women's Board of Boys Club; she was also treasurer of the World's Adoption International Fund. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Martha O'Driscoll was a guest speaker at numerous movie-nostalgia conventions, continually putting to rest persistent rumors that she passed away in the early '70s.