LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Evelyn Ankers
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From All Movie Guide: After several years' worth of stage and film appearances in England, actress Evelyn Ankers came to Broadway in 1940 to appear in Ladies in Retirement. Besieged by offers from Hollywood, Evelyn chose to work at 20th Century-Fox, but production delays in her first American film led to her signing a contract with Universal Pictures. Despite her British upbringing, Evelyn was cast as the all-American heroine in her premiere Hollywood film, Abbott and Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941). With her co-starring stint in The Wolf Man (1941), Evelyn began her tenure as Universal's resident horror heroine, possessed of a blood-curdling scream. She ... appeared in two Sherlock Holmes films, playing a villainess with a penchant for disguise in the second Holmes effort The Pearl of Death (1944). During the war years, the multilingual Ms. Ankers (who was born in Chile to British parents) starred in a radio program in Argentina.
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In Universal's entertaining The Ghost of Frankenstein, Evelyn Ankers gets carried around so much that she should have come with a handle. LEFT: Ankers recoils from Lon Chaney Jr. as Frankenstein's monster. RIGHT: With Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi as Ygor
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Though they had played enemies onscreen, in real life Anne was a close friend of Universal's Queen of Horror, Evelyn Ankers. Ankers served as matron of honor at Gwynne's wedding, and Gwynne vouched for Evelyn's character when Ankers applied for American citizenship. Gwynne left Universal in 1944, on the advice of some agents who convinced her to obtain a release from her contract. "They said they would see that I went places," she told Michael Fitzgerald for Fangoria magazine. "Well, I went places all right -- out the door to Poverty Row!" Her acting career was at its nadir in 1957 when she appeared with dubious distinction in "Teenage Monster," a low budget, horror-sci-fi-western.
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After playing mostly good girls, Evelyn was uncomfortable portraying evil-minded Ilona in Universal’s Weird Woman (1944), one of the studio’s six "Inner Sanctum" mysteries and based on Fritz Leiber, Jr.’s novel Conjure Wife. Near the core of her character’s many machinations, Evelyn had to menace her good friend Anne Gwynne, who played the suspected witch-wife of a university professor (Lon Chaney, Jr.).
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After the war, Ankers' career began to dim as Universal's monster movies went out of favor with audiences. She left the studio in 1945 and freelanced at PRC, Republic, and Columbia mainly in mysteries and dramas. She ... acted with husband Richard Denning in the 20th Century Fox release Black Beauty (1946). By 1950, Ankers had settled into married life and motherhood and walked away from her film career.
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A generally joyful, active life continued until Evelyn Ankers lost a battle with cancer on August 29, 1985 at age 67. Richard Denning passed away on October 11, 1998. He was 84.
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Evelyn Ankers