- Born
- Died
- Birth nameBeryl Heischuber
- Voluptuous Beryl Wallace was born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of nine children of working class Austrian-Jewish émigrés. With her knockout looks and obvious shapeliness, the "Big Apple" beauty naturally gravitated toward an entertainment career and first turned to dancing. She was only a teenager when, acting on a casting call ad, earned a role in the "Earl Carroll Vanities" of 1928. Carroll changed her marquee name to "Beryl Wallace" and off she went to appear in other provocative shows that featured flesh and fantasy themes, some even requiring frontal nudity. Outside of Carroll's Vanities of 1930, 1931, 1932, 1935 and 1940, Beryl also appeared on Broadway in the musical comedy "Treasure Girl" (1928), Carroll's "Murder at the Vanities" (1932) and "The Women" (1936), in which she had a small part as a model.
The pencil-browed brunet and producer/mogul Earl Carroll, who was at least 16 years her senior, began to engage in a personal relationship as well as professional. In Hollywood he had her headlining his shows at the Earl Carroll Theatre and Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. From there she made her movie debut in a film adaptation of Carroll's Broadway play Rythmes d'amour (1934), and then went on to appear in a number of small roles until co-starring with western star Tom Keene in the Monogram programmer Romance of the Rockies (1937). She went on to perform in nearly two dozen "B" films, mostly action adventures or westerns, opposite a number of good-looking leading men including Kermit Maynard in Rough Riding Rhythm (1937), Larry J. Blake and Dick Purcell, who fought over her in Air Devils (1938), Roy Rogers in Sunset on the Desert (1942), and Richard Dix in Le cavalier du Kansas (1943). Her last films, in which she was again reduced to secondary femmes, were in La loi du far-west (1943) and Enemy of Women (1944). Most of her other films, to her detriment, had the gorgeous gal serving as mere set decoration and in unbilled parts.
Throughout her minor film reign, she remained a star attraction at Earl Carroll's spectacular musical reviews. During World War II, sexy Beryl did her part by singing and hosting on radio shows. She also entertained soldiers at the Masquers Club and danced at the Hollywood Canteen. The fact that her film career did not amount to too much did not have her overly concerned. She WAS a star -- in Earl Carroll's extravaganzas.
In 1948, Carroll was in the final planning stages of opening a larger theater just one block from his current location. The new one would rival New York's Radio City Music Hall and cost upwards of $15,000,000. On June 17, 1948, while en route from Los Angeles to New York City, both Beryl and Earl perished in the crash of United Airlines Flight 624 at Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. Forced to make an emergency landing, the plane crashed into a 66,000 volt transformer on its quick descent and exploded. According to Carroll's wishes in his will, their ashes were interred together in the Garden of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. On top of their crypt lies a huge facsimile of Carroll's own hands holding a life-sized figure symbolizing the impossibly beautiful Beryl.- IMDb mini biography by: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
- At the Earl Carroll Theatre and Restaurant in Hollywood, Carroll created for her a 20-foot-high neon facial portrait of her. A recreation of Beryl's landmark portrait can be seen these days at Universal CityWalk, at Universal City, as part of the collection of historic neon signs from the Museum of Neon Art.
- Was the star of a popular night club act at the time of her death.
- The mystery of what happened to the plane was never solved. It was later suggested, after reviewing the final radio transmissions, that carbon dioxide fumes from a deployed extinguisher may have leaked into the cockpit and knocked the crew out, allowing the unguided plane to descend by itself until it crashed.
- Earl Carroll's long time romance with beauty Dorothy Knapp fell apart during the disastrous stage production of "Fioretta". Beryl stepped in as Earl Carroll's new star and the two became inseparable until their deaths together in a plane crash.
- Hollywood folklore has it that Beryl had been enamored with Earl Carroll since the age of 13, after hearing the soft-spoken producer on a local radio program.
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