Dona Drake Net Worth is
$1.1 Million

Mini Biography

In times that closely recalls the Fannie Hurst story “Imitation of Life” when a girl aims to move for white, beautiful, light-skinned African-American actress/singer/dancer/bandleader Dona (pronounced “dough-nuh”) Drake, with regard to her job, denied her heritage and handed down for white (in her case Mexican) throughout it. Although it didn’t make her a genuine superstar, her zesty abilities and charm proceeded to go quite a distance in neuro-scientific war-time music. Unlike the storyplot, Dona, however, didn’t depart her parents or deny her parentage. Dona was created Eunice (nicknamed “Una”) Westmoreland in Jacksonville (some sources mention Miami), Florida, on November 15, 1914, of African-American parents (Joseph Andrew Westmoreland and Novella Smith Westmoreland). A gifted kid musically, her dad moved his family members and later opened up a cafe in Philadelphia. Five season old Eunice began to perform and play musical musical instruments there as entertainment. Pursuing schooling, she shifted to ny where (billed as Una Villon) she captured the fetching eyesight of Broadway and nightclub skill (“Murder on the Vanities” (1930)) and proved helpful as different chorines on stage, nightclubs and Earl Carroll revues. Declaring she was Latino, she also went as far as to understand Spanish. In 1935 Dona changed her name to Rita Rio to emphasize her “ethnicity” and spiced up her image even more when she received a included spot in Eddie Cantor’s film Hit Me Green (1936). Although it do not result in more film function, it do enable her to create her very own glitzy and gorgeous all-girl music group, Rita Rio and Her Tempo Women [aka The Girlfriends], which toured effectively. On her behalf own, Dona did several short motion pictures and two-reelers, sang in the airwaves and revved up her image signing on radio. Buddy Dorothy Lamour helped in obtaining her registered to Paramount, where in fact the studio transformed her name to “Dona Drake” and developed her Latino history by sending out studio room resumes that she was christened Rita Novella, was of Mexican, Irish and French descent and delivered and elevated in Mexico Town. Dona’s initial picture for the studio room is at the Dorothy Lamour automobile _Aloma from the South Seas (1941). She after that pepped in the ‘Bob Wish’ starrer Louisiana Buy (1941) aswell as an Arab female in the Wish/Crosby/Lamour comedy Street to Morocco (1942). struggling to use of her typecast being a spicy performing support, her agreement was slipped after a gleaming big band performing business lead loanout to Monogram entitled Scorching Rhythm (1944). For this time she wedded the Oscar- and Emmy-winning outfit developer William Travilla’. Dona freelanced in Without Reservations (1946), co-starred with Kent Taylor in Dangerous Large numbers (1946) and was featured in Another Area of the Forest (1948) (being a partner to weaselly Dan Duryea), Beyond the Forest (1949) (as Bette Davis’ Indian maid, THE LADY from Jones Seaside (1949) (as Eddie Bracken’s paramour) so that as the gold-digging second business lead in WHICH MEANS THIS Is NY (1948). After her relationship and a girl, Nia Novella, delivered, she well developed down her filmmaking but came back in the middle-1950s for some film and Television parts before retiring in 1957 because of health and psychological issues (center disorder, seizures/epilepsy). She and Travilla separated but under no circumstances divorced in 1956. but still made an appearance together at features sometimes. Dona passed away of pneumonia and respiratory failing in 1989 with Travilla dying twelve months later.

Known for movies