Gail Davis
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Gail Davis (October 5, 1925– March 15, 1997) was an American actress best known for her role as Annie Oakley in a 1950s television Western series.
The daughter of a small town physician, she was born Betty Jeanne Grayson in a hospital at Little Rock. Her family lived in McGehee, Arkansas, where she was reared until they moved to Little Rock. She had been singing and dancing since childhood and after graduation from high school in Little Rock, she went to study drama at a woman's college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania before completing her education at the University of Texas at Austin. While at university she met and married Bob Davis, with whom she had a daughter.
She and her husband moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in motion pictures and in 1947, as "Gail Davis," she made her motion picture debut in a comedy film short. She then appeared in minor roles in another four films until landing a supporting role under star Roy Rogers in a 1948 Western film called The Far Frontier. Between then and 1953, Davis appeared in more than three dozen films, all but three of which were in the Western genre, including fourteen films with the singing cowboy star, Gene Autry. In 1950, she began to guest star in television Westerns, notably in the Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid series plus more than a dozen appearances on the Gene Autry Show.
Between 1954 and 1956, Davis starred in the Annie Oakley television series on the ABC network. Her costars were Brad Johnson as Deputy Lofty Craig and Jimmy Hawkins as her younger brother, Tagg Oakley. An adroit horseback rider, Davis also toured North America in Gene Autry's travelling rodeo. She appeared in The Gene Autry Show too.
After her retirement from the entertainment business, Davis made guest appearances at western memorabilia shows and film festivals.
Gail Davis died of cancer in Los Angeles. She was interred there in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.
For her contribution to the television industry, Gail Davis has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Blvd. In 2004, she was posthumously inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.
