Josephine Owaissa Cottle (April 5, 1922 – June 27, 2009),[1] known professionally as Gale Storm, was an American actress and singer.

[3] First prize was a one-year contract with a movie studio, which she won, and was immediately given the stage name Gale Storm.

Her performing partner (and future husband), Lee Bonnell from South Bend, Indiana, became known as Terry Belmont.

Monogram had always relied on established actors with reputations, but in Gale Storm, the studio finally had a star of its own.

She shared top billing in Monogram's The Crime Smasher (1943), opposite Edgar Kennedy, Richard Cromwell, and Frank Graham in the role of Jones, a character derived from network radio.

Honeymoon (1945) and It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), the Western Stampede (1949), and the 1950 film-noir dramas The Underworld Story and Between Midnight and Dawn.

In the 1950s, she made singing appearances on such television variety programs as The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom.

[7] In Gallatin, Tennessee, in November 1954, a 10-year-old girl, Linda Wood, was watching Storm on a Sunday night television variety show, NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour, hosted by Gordon MacRae, singing one of the popular songs of the day.

Linda's father Randy Wood was president of Dot Records, and he liked Storm so much that he called to sign her before the end of the television show.

Her first record, "I Hear You Knockin'", a cover of a rhythm and blues hit by Smiley Lewis, sold over a million copies.

[citation needed] Storm had several other hits, headlined in Las Vegas and appeared in numerous stage plays.

She was also interviewed by author David C. Tucker for The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms, published in 2007 by McFarland and Company.

[12] Storm continued to make personal appearances and autographed photos at fan conventions, along with Charles Farrell from the My Little Margie series.

She also attended events such as the Memphis Film Festival, Cinecon, the Friends of Old-Time Radio and the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention.