Virginia Vale
American actress (1920-2006)
Virginia Vale (born Dorothy Howe; May 20, 1920 – September 14, 2006) was an American film actress. She starred in a number of B-movie westerns but took a variety of other roles as well, notably in Blonde Comet (1941), in which she played a race car driver.
Early years
Vale was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Howe. Before becoming a professional actress, she was a switchboard operator in Dallas, Texas, and honed her acting skills in productions at a little theater in Dallas. After a representative of Paramount Pictures saw her in a leading role, he invited her to make a screen test, which led to a contract. (Another source says that Howe was working at the switchboard in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Dallas office, where a talent scout for Paramount found her and signed her to a contract.)
Career
Dorothy Howe showed promise at Paramount, working steadily in the studio's feature films until 1939. Her best-known Paramount picture is probably The Big Broadcast of 1938, in which she played one of Bob Hope's former wives.
The name "Virginia Vale" had been chosen in advance for the female winner of the 1939 Gateway to Hollywood radio contest, a nationwide talent search sponsored by producer Jesse Lasky—as noted (somewhat indignantly) then by another Virginia Vale a syndicated columnist covering the film industry.
The public source identifies “Virginia Vale” as american actress (1920-2006). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Virginia, Vale and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7934643. VIAF identifies the subject as 4935156811377645390007. The Library of Congress control number is no2019128169. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 2006, 1941 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Virginia Vale” 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.