Lane Sisters

The Lane Sisters were a family of American singers and actresses.

The sisters were Leota Lane (October 25, 1903 – July 25, 1963), Lola Lane (May 21, 1906 – June 22, 1981), Rosemary Lane (April 4, 1913 – November 25, 1974) and Priscilla Lane (June 12, 1915 – April 4, 1995).

(Their other daughter, Martha, did not enter show business.) 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.

Here Dr. Mullican had a dental practice.

The Mullicans owned a large house with 22 rooms, some of which they rented out to students attending nearby Simpson College.

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.

Cora Mullican encouraged her daughters to sing and play musical instruments.

All the girls were fond of music, and at one time or another studied music in night classes at Simpson College in Indianola.

Dorothy was already playing piano at age twelve for a silent screen movie house.

Leota was the first to leave home to pursue a musical career in New York in the mid-1920s.

In 1928, Dorothy (later Lola) followed Leota to New York.

The girls shared an apartment and made the theatrical rounds.

They eventually obtained parts in a Gus Edwards show, Greenwich Village Follies.

It was Edwards who changed their names to Lane, and consequently Dorothy became Lola Lane.

Martha, meanwhile, eloped with a college professor and moved to Des Moines.

She had no interest in show business.

She had a child, later divorced, and became a medical secretary.

Leota and Lola both made their Broadway debuts in the late twenties, Lola in 1928, as Sally Moss in The War Song, which opened on Broadway on August 24, 1928, at the Nederlander Theatre (then known as the National Theatre) and Leota in 1929 as Contrary Mary in Babes in Toyland, which opened on December 23, 1929 at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre.

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).

She was soon teamed with Page again in the film The Girl from Havana (1929) as Joan Anders.

Meanwhile Babes in Toyland closed after only thirty-two performances.

The girls made their first professional appearance September 30, 1930, at Des Moines' Paramount Theater.

Rosemary, then 17, and Priscilla, 15, performed on stage as part of the entertainment accompanying the release of Lola's Hollywood movie, Good News.

Leota followed her sister to Hollywood where she made her screen appearance in a comedy short film Three Hollywood Girls (1931) directed by Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, but soon returned to New York.

Rosemary and Priscilla travelled to Des Moines every weekend to study dancing with Rose Lorenz.

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.

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.

Priscilla decided to enroll at the nearby Fagen School of Dramatics and Leota paid the fee.

At this time talent agent Al Altman saw Priscilla performing in one of Fagen's school plays and invited her to screentest for MGM.

She was 16 years old.

Priscilla wrote to a friend in Indianola, "Leota accompanied me to a sort of theater in a New York skyscraper. Others were there being made up. One was a strange-looking girl with her hair slicked back in a sort of a bun. Her name is said to be Catherine [sic] Hepburn. Not very pretty, I thought, but Mr. Altman said she has something. Margaret Sullavan, the Broadway actress, was there too!"

A follow-up letter said that her test had proven unsuitable.

Neither Hepburn nor Sullavan were approved, and neither received a contract from MGM at the time.

In the meantime, Cora had left her husband and in 1932, accompanied by Rosemary, arrived in New York.

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.

He found them attractive and individually talented.

Lola, Rosemary, and Priscilla co-starred with Gale Page in four films together: Four Daughters (1938), Daughters Courageous (1939), Four Wives (1939) and Four Mothers (1941).

Leota did not find the same success as her sisters and left Hollywood for New York City before the sisters' breakthrough.

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.