Ann Richards (actress)

After her retirement, Richards ventured into painting and poetry, publishing several well-received volumes, including The Grieving Senses (1971) and Odyssey for Edmond (1991). She also wrote the verse play Helen of Troy in the 1970s, which Angelo and she presented on college campuses. They remained married until Angelo's death in 1983. Richards died in Torrance, California, on 24 August 2006.

Eventually Richards appeared in The Slasher, produced and directed by her husband, which was retitled Breakdown (1952). The film was not a success and Richards appeared in no further dramatic films. Angelo decided to make no further films.

In October 1951 it was announced she would make a film with Angelo, The Slasher, then do a play directed by him, Personal Triumph by Arthur Alsburg. There was also going to be a second film, You're So Dangerous, where Richards would play a social worker mistaken for a gangster's moll.

In February 1949 it was reported that Byron Haskin was trying to get her to star in The Scarlet Empress to be shot in Mexico.

In 1949, it was reported she was trying to get up a film called Michelle as an independent producer.

Richards retired in 1949 following her marriage to electronics engineer Edmond Angelo.

Richards then appeared in two movies for Eagle Lion, Lost Honeymoon and Love from a Stranger. She then had the third lead in a popular film for Wallis Sorry, Wrong Number (1948).

In 1948 she was announced for a play Recessional by William Hurbert. Edmund Angelo bought the rights.

In April 1948 she told the Los Angeles Times she was determined to play younger parts as opposed to the more mature ones she had been doing.

Instead she supported Randolph Scott in Badman's Territory (1946). That year in an interview she said she thought her Australian accent might have held her back in Hollywood. Wallis gave her the lead role in The Searching Wind (1946) with Robert Young, but the film was not successful. In October 1946 Wallis announced Richards would make Paid in Full from a script by Robert Blees but the film was never made. In November 1946 Hedda Hopper announced Cinesound wanted her to star in Botany Bay in Australia. In 1947 she appeared in The Astonished Heart at La Jolla Playhouse alongside Dorothy McGuire.

She returned to Australia in 1946 for a well-publicised holiday. She took back a pair of wicketkeeping gloves belonging to Bert Oldfield to C. Aubrey Smith in Hollywood.

Wallis scheduled her to star opposite Barry Sullivan in Love Letters (1945). However, he then changed his mind and chose to use Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten in the lead roles; Richards was given a supporting part.

RKO renewed their option on her in April 1945. They announced they would put her in None So Blind with Charles Bickford and Joan Bennett. It was eventually made without her as The Woman on the Beach.

Richards attended the conference establishing the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945.

She asked to be released from her contract. In April 1944 she signed with RKO, who had been impressed by her None But the Lonely Heart test, to make two films a year.

In July 1944 she signed with Hal B. Wallis, who announced he would put her in Love Letters and The Searching Wind. David O. Selznick also expressed interest in signing her. "I always wanted to be a free lance and now it looks like I'm a free lance and a contract player... isn't it wonderful?"

In April 1943 she was given the most prestigious role of her career: the female lead in An American Romance (1944), a big-budget production from director King Vidor starring Brian Donlevy. News of this reached her parents in Australia half an hour before she received a telegraph from the army that their son Roderick, Richards' brother, was a POW in Borneo. However, the film ended up spending a lot of time in post-production and received mixed reviews when released. MGM recorded a loss on the film and Vidor refused to work for MGM again.

The following year, she appeared in her final Australian film, the war-time featurette 100,000 Cobbers (1942), directed by Hall.

Within her first week in Hollywood, Richards was cast in a short, The Woman in the House (1942), which led to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio saw her as a "young Greer Garson".

In June 1942 she was given a small role in Random Harvest (1942) with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. This was followed by a part in Three Hearts for Julia, and then a supporting role as an Australian nurse in Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant (1942).

Richards left Australia for Hollywood only a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. She arrived with only $75, all that the government would allow her to take out of the country.

In 1940, she appeared on stage in a production of Charley's Aunt at the Minerva Theatre. She also appeared in stage productions of The Ghost Train and Are You a Mason.

Her final Australian feature was Come Up Smiling (1939), supporting Will Mahoney and directed by William Freshman, though produced by Hall.

Richards' third film for Hall was playing the daughter of Bert Bailey in Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938).

She was spotted in an amateur theatre production when selected for Cinesound Productions' Talent School, where she worked for six months. This led to her casting as Cecil Kellaway's daughter in It Isn't Done (1937) for director Ken G. Hall at Cinesound Productions.

Hall used Richards in his next film, the logging adventure Tall Timbers (1937) where she romanced Frank Leighton.

She was the female lead in another adventure saga for Hall, Lovers and Luggers (1937), playing opposite American import Lloyd Hughes.

Shirley Ann Richards (13 December 1917 – 25 August 2006) was an Australian actress and author, who achieved notability in a series of 1930s Australian films for Ken G. Hall before moving to the United States, where she continued her career as a film actress, mainly as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet. Her best known performances were in It Isn't Done (1937), Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938), An American Romance (1944), and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). In the 1930s, she was the only Australian actor under a long-term contract to a film studio, Cinesound Productions. She subsequently became a lecturer and poet.