Hollywood B movie heroine of westerns

Austin Mutti-Mewse

Sunday 3 September 2006 19.04 EDTLast modified on Friday 1 January 201610.09 EST

The career of Lois January, who has died aged 93, following the onset of Alzheimer's disease, spanned Broadway, talkies, radio and television. From the 1960s onwards she was featuring on shows such as Marcus Welby, Barnaby Jones, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Love Boat. In the 1930s she was the redhead who tended to the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz, and in that year of 1939, she was also on Broadway opposite Buddy Ebsen in the musical Yokel Boy.

It was in 1934 that she was spotted by Universal and went to work with the British director of Frankenstein, James Whale, on the comedy By Candlelight. "He was so gentle and helpful in his direction," she recalled.

Other small parts were in Let's Be Ritzy, with Lew Ayres and Patricia Ellis, Glamour, The Black Cat and Embarrassing Moments. She had the lead in Tripping Through the Tropics and Do Your Stuff (1935) and bit parts in a couple of Hal Roach's two-reelers featuring Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts.

Lois was the roundfaced heroine of at least a dozen 55- to 70-minute B-westerns opposite stars such as Bob Steele, Tim McCoy, and Johnny Mack Brown. "I could ride a horse like the best of them, so the cowboys loved me," she recalled, "many of those cowgirls were fashion plates who didn't want to get down and dirty."

Lois was the leading lady in Bar Z Bad Men, Lightnin' Crandall, The Trusted Outlaw and The Red Rope for Republic in 1937 and, after a tiny part in the Dick Powell vehicle The Singing Marine, she filmed Courage of the West at Universal. Then, from autumn 1938 came three months on The Wizard of Oz where there was "a lot of singing with Judy [Garland] and the money was good".

The older of two children, she was born in McAllen, Texas, the daughter of a professional baseball player and a mother who was "a terrible pushy stage mom". At three, Lois was partnered with another infant, Margaret May. As January and May they danced at conventions across Texas. By the 1920s the family was in California. She was educated at Virgil junior high school in Hollywood, where she took dance classes, and the exclusive Marlborough school for girls.

She then toured with the Denishawn dancers, a company led by the famous Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn. When the troupe disbanded in 1931, she moved into stage acting and then, as a 22-year-old she was talent-spotted. After Yokel Boy, on Broadway came High Kickers, with George Jessel and Sophie Tucker. Lois's own radio series followed but by the mid-1940s her cutie-pie image was out of fashion. So in the 1950s she moved into TV.

By the 21st century she had launched her own website and was chatting to Wizard of Oz fans online. She also hosted her own cable TV show and made spectacular appearances at film functions - sporting henna hair and false eyelashes.

She is survived by her daughter.

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