VERA RALSTON

Vera Hruba was a Czechoslovakian ice skater who started in movies performing her ice skating routines, and her English was so limited she was forced to learn her lines phonetically! After her early ice skating movies, she became the protege of Republic Pictures studio head Herbert Yates, and they married in 1952. He starred her in a series of movies, and gave her an added a last name, "Ralston", making her "Vera Hruba Ralston", and later dropped the "Hruba", just becoming "Vera Ralston", and I guess the idea was to make her sound less "foreign". Her movies were expensive flops (even with John Wayne in some!), partially because she had a VERY thick accent, and Yates was fired from Republic in 1958 (partially because he insisted on starring his wife in movies that lost money), at which point Ralston wisely retired. Yates passed away in 1966 and Ralston inherited $10 million, and she lived until 2003, passing away at the age of 79. Some of her movies include: Timberjack, The Fighting Kentuckian, and Ice-Capades