Frances Drake

    Frances Drake (October 22, 1912 – January 18, 2000) was an American actress, best known for playing Eponine in Les Misérables (1935).

    Drake was born in New York City as Frances Morgan Dean to a wealthy family. She was educated at Havergal College in Canada and at age 14 "she was sent to school in England, under her grandmother's wing." She was there when the stock market crashed in 1929.

    Needing to make money for the first time in her life, Drake became a dancer and stage actress and found that film paid even better. In 1933, she explained: "I met an actor in London -- Gordon Wallace, who was in Eva Le Gallienne's repertory company for a while -- and he asked me to form a dance team with him. We danced, and a stage producer asked us to take parts in a play. Then I was invited to make films in England."

    She returned to the United States in 1934, Offered a contract by Paramount, which changed her name to Frances Drake (after the studio initially wanted her new name to be Marianne Morel) to avoid confusion with the then-popular star Frances Dee. She returned to America in 1934, where she was coached by opera singer and actress Marguerite Namara while continuing in film. She was often typecast in "damsel in distress" roles and appeared in proto-horror and proto-sci-fi films opposite stars like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre. One film reference book summed up Drake's career as follows: "She played leads in many Hollywood productions of the '30s, often as the terrified heroine of horror and mystery tales."

    On February 12, 1939, Drake married Hon. Cecil Howard (1908–1985), second son of Henry Howard, 19th Earl of Suffolk, who disapproved of her career. She retired from the screen when he received his inheritance. After Howard's death in 1985, she married David Brown in 1992; he died in 2009.

    She has a star in the Motion Picture section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.

    Drake died in Irvine, California in 2000, aged 87. She is interred in Section 8 Garden of Legends in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California.