Barbara Jo Allen
American actress (1906-1974)
Barbara Jo Allen (born Marian Barbara Henshall; September 2, 1906 – September 14, 1974) was an American actress. She was also known as Vera Vague, the man-crazy spinster character she created and portrayed on radio and in films during the 1940s and 1950s. She based the character on a woman she had seen delivering a PTA literature lecture in a confused manner. As Vague, she popularized the catchphrase "You dear boy!"
Early years
Allen was born on September 2, 1906, in Manhattan, New York, to Charles Thomas Henshall and Grace Esther Selby. Following her mother's death when Allen was 9, she went to live with an aunt and uncle in Los Angeles. She was educated at Los Angeles High School, UCLA, Stanford University, and the Sorbonne. Her acting ability first surfaced in school plays. Concentrating on language at the Sorbonne, she became proficient in French, Spanish, German, and Italian.
Film, radio, and television
In 1933, Allen joined the cast of NBC's One Man's Family. In 1936 she became a regular on Signal Carnival, a weekly program on NBC's regional Pacific Red network; she left the Signal show in November 1941 to join Bob Hope's radio troupe.
“Barbara Jo Allen” enters the record as american actress (1906-1974). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Barbara, Allen and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Barbara Jo Allen” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Barbara, Allen and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2883970. VIAF identifies the subject as 35719155. The Library of Congress control number is n78080691. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1974, 1933 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbara Jo Allen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.