Lane Sisters
The four sisters, Leotabel (Leota), Dorothy (Lola), Rosemary and Priscilla, were from a family of five daughters born to Dr. Lorenzo A. Mullican and his wife, Cora Bell Hicks.
The first three children had been born in Macy, Indiana, but the family moved in 1907 to Indianola, Iowa, a small college town south of Des Moines.
Before marrying, Cora Bell Hicks had been a reporter with a local newspaper in Macy, and had originally harbored acting ambitions herself, but was frustrated by the strict religious beliefs of her Methodist parents who frowned on any form of public entertainment.
The War Song closed four months into its run and Lola went to Hollywood where she made her debut starring as Alice Woods alongside Paul Page in the drama Speakeasy (1929).
Rosemary, then 17, and Priscilla, 15, performed on stage as part of the entertainment accompanying the release of Lola's Hollywood movie, Good News.
Rosemary, a member of the National Honor Society, graduated from Indianola High in 1931 and attended Simpson College for a while, playing on the freshman basketball team.
[citation needed] After graduating from high school, Priscilla was permitted to travel to New York to visit Leota who was then appearing in a musical revue in Manhattan.
At this time talent agent Al Altman saw Priscilla performing in one of Fagen's school plays and invited her to screentest for MGM.
Cora immediately went to work pushing her two young daughters into attending auditions for various prospective Broadway productions, without success.
It was while the girls were trying out numbers at a music publishing office that Fred Waring, an orchestra leader, heard them harmonizing.
In 1937, Waring was engaged by Warner Bros. in Hollywood to appear with his entire band in Varsity Show, a musical starring Dick Powell.
This was followed by Love Honor and Behave, another light romantic comedy again with Morris and Cowboy From Brooklyn again teaming with Dick Powell.
[citation needed] Warner Bros. had purchased a story by Fannie Hurst titled Sister Act and planned to star Errol Flynn in the film, along with four actresses.
When the film, now titled Four Daughters, was released on September 24, 1938, it proved to be a big hit and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The story concerned a girl, the daughter of a feminist and one time suffragette, who decides to spend a weekend alone with her fiancé, played by Jeffrey Lynn.
The premise of the film in which an unmarried couple spent a weekend together unchaperoned was roundly criticized and was banned in some parts of the United States.
The supporting cast included Roland Young, Fay Bainter, May Robson, Genevieve Tobin, and Ian Hunter.
[citation needed] Priscilla was again cast with John Garfield in Dust Be My Destiny, a melodrama of prison life.
Priscilla attained full starring status in her next film, The Roaring Twenties and was billed above the title along with James Cagney.
A major box office hit, Priscilla was shown to advantage as a night club singer, who marries lawyer Jeffrey Lynn, but is lusted after by gangster Cagney.
[citation needed] Priscilla was next assigned the lead in My Love Came Back, a romantic story involving a female violinist.
[citation needed] Lola continued her career into the 1940s with her tough girl persona in dramas such as Convicted Woman (1940), Gangs of Chicago (1940), Mystery Ship (1941), Miss V from Moscow (1942) and Lost Canyon (1942), although she desperately wanted to break away from her type-casting .
Her last three films – Why Girls Leave Home (1945) as Irene Mitchell, Deadline at Dawn (1946) as Edna Bartelli, and They Made Me a Killer (1946) as Betty Ford – had her in supporting roles.
Rosemary earned good reviews for 1940's The Boys from Syracuse, based on Rodgers and Hart's Broadway hit of 1938.
On April 28, 1941, she was heard on Lux Radio Theater with George Brent and Gail Patrick in Wife, Husband and Friend.
She freelanced next, signing a one-picture deal with Universal Studios where she starred with Robert Cummings in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942).
The first was Silver Queens for producer Harry Sherman in which she was co-starred with George Brent and played the owner of a gambling house in 1870s San Francisco.
[4] While living in Van Nuys, Priscilla was offered and accepted the leading role in Fun on a Weekend for producer–director Andrew Stone, co-starring Eddie Bracken.
In 1948, Priscilla accepted the offer of the lead role opposite Lawrence Tierney in a film noir, Bodyguard, starring as Doris Brewster.
In January 1951, Cora Mullican died at the San Fernando Valley home her daughters had bought for her years earlier.
