Barbara Weeks (film actress)

Barbara Weeks
Barbara Weeks in The Violent Years (1956)
Born (1913-07-04)July 4, 1913
Somerville, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died June 24, 2003(2003-06-24) (aged 89)
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
Occupation Film actress
Spouse(s) Guinn Williams (divorced)
Lewis Parker (died)
William Cox (divorced); 1 child

Barbara Weeks (July 4, 1913 – June 24, 2003) was an American actress of the 1930s.

Early years

Weeks was born in Somerville, Massachusetts,[1] and attended Melrose High School.[2] She entered acting through her participation in the Ziegfeld Follies. Her mother was an actress, and "from the time Barbara was 3 years old her ambition was to be an actress, too."[3]

Film

In 1931, Weeks was named as one of 14 girls selected as a "WAMPAS Baby Star",[4] which launched her into a brief but successful acting career, mostly in cliffhanger serials and B-movie films and B-Westerns.

Eight of her films starred Tim McCoy, Buck Jones, Tom Tyler and Charles Starrett. For a time she was married to the B-Western actor Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. She left the film business in the late 1930s after she married the Lockheed test pilot Lewis Parker in 1938. In 1945, after the end of World War II, Parker's plane disappeared over the North Atlantic and he was never found.

On August 23, 1938, Weeks appeared in a television experiment at NBC, an adaptation of Edwin Burke's play Good Medicine, co-starring Pat Lawrence and Lily Cahill. NBC telecasts were officially secret at the time, with audiences limited to 500–1000 viewers on company-owned sets.

Later years

Following Parker's death, Weeks moved to New York City and began working as a model. In 1949, "following a brief marriage to the actor Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams,"[1] she married William Cox, with whom she had a son, Schuyler John Wing Cox. The couple were married for a short time before divorcing. She then moved to Las Vegas where she worked as a secretary. She died in Las Vegas 20 days before her 90th birthday in 2003.

Partial filmography

References

  1. 1 2 "Barbara Weeks". The Telegraph. November 24, 2003. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  2. ↑ Peak, Mayme Ober (August 20, 1931). "Selection of 'Baby Stars' Causes Row in Filmdom". The Boston Globe. Massachusetts, Boston. p. 26. Retrieved July 12, 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ↑ Dillon, Patricia (October 17, 1930). "Even Chorus Can Produce Prim Miss". Wisconsin, Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Sentinel. p. 4. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  4. ↑ Peak, Mayme Ober (August 30, 1931). "Talkies Announce Bumper Crop of Wampas Starlets". Hartford Courant. Connecticut, Hartford. p. 41. Retrieved July 4, 2018 – via Newspapers.com.


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