1737) Ruth Judd

Ruth Judd (1905 – 1998, born Winifred Ruth McKinnell).  American medical secretary in Phoenix, Arizona, who was accused of murdering her friends, Anne LeRoi and Hedvig “Sammy” Samuelson, in October 1931. The murders were discovered when Judd transported the victims' bodies, one of which had been dismembered, from Phoenix to Los Angeles, California, by train in trunks and other luggage, causing the press to name the case the "Trunk Murders". Judd allegedly committed the murders after a jealousy-based argument about Jack Halloran, a prominent Phoenix businessman.

Judd was tried for LeRoi's murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death. However, the sentence was later repealed after she was found mentally incompetent, and she was committed to the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane. Over the next three decades, Judd escaped from the asylum six times; after her final escape during the 1960s, she remained at large for over six years and worked under an assumed name for a wealthy family. She was ultimately paroled in 1971 and discharged from parole in 1983.

Judd's murder investigation and trial were marked by sensationalized newspaper coverage and suspicious circumstances suggesting that at least one other person might have been involved in the crimes. 

- "Even among the scandalous crimes of 1930s Los Angeles, the saga of Judd--a tiny, sweet-faced young woman with red hair and enigmatic blue eyes..."   https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-13-me-12329-story.html 

- "She had copper-colored hair and large, curiously pale blue eyes.” https://www.major-smolinski.com/ONEKIND/RUTHJUDDX.html

1736) Michael Medwin

 Michael Hugh Medwin (1923 – 2020). English stage and film actor and film producer.

Medwin's West End theatre credits include Man and Superman, The Rivals, Love for Love, Duckers and Lovers, Alfie, St Joan of the Stockyards, and What the Butler Saw. At the National Theatre he played a season which included Weapons of Happiness, Volpone and The Madras House. He also played Lloyd Dallas in one of the casts of the long-running production of Noises Off in the early 1980s.

He is probably best known for his role as radio boss Don Satchley in the BBC television detective series Shoestring, as well as for playing Scrooge's nephew Harry in the film version of Scrooge, a musical based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

He made many film appearances, taking a leading role as Ginger Edwards in the 1953 Guy Hamilton film The Intruder. Others included Carry On Nurse (1959) and The Longest Day (1962), before turning to producing films.

Among the films he produced for Memorial Enterprises, a company he established with actor Albert Finney, are Charlie Bubbles (1967), directed by Finney, and Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

- "As a young actor, with red hair and wide grin, he ranged effortlessly from war drama to light comedy..." https://web.archive.org/web/20200307234906/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/02/27/michael-medwin-actor-familiar-face-1950s-tv-cinema-later-television/

1735) Janis Paige

Janis Paige (born Donna Mae Tjaden; 1922 –  2024). American actress and singer. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

After high school, she moved to Los Angeles, where she became a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II, as well as posing as a pin-up model.

This led to a film contract with Warner Bros., although she later left the studio to pursue live theatre work, appearing in a number of Broadway shows. She continued to alternate between film and theatre work for much of her career. Beginning in the mid-1950s, she also made numerous television appearances, as well as starring in her own sitcom It's Always Jan.

- "Janis Paige, the ebullient redhead who starred in the original Broadway production of The Pajama Game..." https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/janis-paige-dead-silk-stockings-pajama-game-1235914085/

1734) Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835 – 1915). English popular novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 novel Lady Audley's Secret, which is considered one of the foundational examples of sensation fiction. She is known for her focus on bigamous relationships in her novels, as well as her illegitimate marriage to John Maxwell (1824–1895), a publisher of periodicals

Aside from writing, Braddon worked as an actress for eight years as a way to support herself and her mother. After establishing herself as a successful writer, she worked as a magazine editor and publisher. Braddon founded the magazine Belgravia in 1866.

- "Tall with curly auburn hair, and later described as having a very fine speaking voice, she decided upon the then shocking career of actress."  https://www.sensationpress.com/literarylives.htm 

Portrait of Mary Elizabeth Braddon by William Powell Frith, 1865

1733) Gloria DeHaven

Gloria Mildred DeHaven (1925 – 2016). American actress and singer who was a contract star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

DeHaven was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actor-director Carter DeHaven and actress Flora Parker DeHaven, both former vaudeville performers. She began her career as a child actor with a bit part in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) and was then signed to a contract with MGM. 

She was also cast as a singer in many of her films including I'll Get By, So This Is Paris and The Girl Rush. In the 1950s, DeHaven often appeared at the El Rancho Vegas, the first full service hotel casino on the Las Vegas Strip. 

She also appeared in many TV shows as well.

- "Her forte was romantic musical comedy — Technicolor fare in which her golden red hair glistened for the camera..."   https://web.archive.org/web/20160802232553/https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/gloria-dehaven-actress-in-1940s-hollywood-musical-comedies-dies-at-91/2016/08/01/de86f874-57ed-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html

1732) Phyllis Marion Gotch

Phyllis Marian Gotch (1882–1963), also known as Phyllis Maureen Gotch and in later life as Marquise de Verdières. Only child of Newlyn-based artists, Caroline Burland Yates and Thomas Cooper Gotch. She featured in several of her father's paintings, one of the most famous being The Child Enthroned. She later became a singer, a published author and campaigned for community issues in Newlyn. After the death of her first husband in 1918 she married Andre, Marquis de Verdières. Following their divorce in 1935 she married her cousin once removed, Jocelyn Bodilly, who became Chief Justice in the Western Pacific.

From her first husband, Patrick Doherty, she had her only child, Deirdre. 

In the mid 1930s Deirdre had a relationship with Major Robin Thynne who was living in the village of Paul, Cornwall not far from Newlyn. He was involved with several schemes, one of which was trying to launch the Mandrake Press. He became associated with the English occultist and novelist, Aleister Crowley, whom he hoped to publish. He introduced Deirdre Doherty to him and a friendship developed between them. Deirdre eventually had a child with Crowley named Randall Gair, who died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 65.

My Crown and Sceptre

The Child Enthroned

The Heir to All Ages

1731) Thomas Cooper Gotch

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854–1931). English painter and book illustrator loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement; he was the brother of John Alfred Gotch, the architect.

Gotch studied art in London and Antwerp before he married and studied in Paris with his wife, Caroline, a fellow artist. Returning to Britain, they settled into the Newlyn art colony in Cornwall. He first made paintings of natural, pastoral settings before immersing himself in the romantic, Pre-Raphaelite romantic style for which he is best known. His daughter was often a model for the colourful depictions of young girls.

His works have been exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal College of Art and the Paris Salon.

Self-portrait