Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

'Evelyn Ankers' (August 17, 1918 - August 29, 1985) was a British actress born in Chile, noted for playing the cultured young leading lady in many American horror films during the 1940s, most famously The Wolf Man (1941) at age 23 opposite Lon Chaney, Jr., a frequent screen partner. Known as "the Queen of the Screamers", her other films include The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Captive Wild Woman (1943), Son of Dracula (1943), The Mad Ghoul (1943), Jungle Woman (1944), Weird Woman (1944), The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944), and The Frozen Ghost (1945). Ankers also appeared in Hold That Ghost (1941), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), The Pearl of Death (1944), Pardon My Rhythm (1944), Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949), and played Calamity Jane in The Texan Meets Calamity Jane (1950), for which she received top billing. Ankers made over fifty films between 1936 and 1950, then retired from movies to be a housewife (occasionally playing television roles) at the age of 32, returning ten years later to make one more film, No Greater Love (1960), with husband Richard Denning. Evelyn Ankers died of ovarian cancer at the age of 67 on August 29, 1985 in Maui, Hawaii.