Olympe Bradna

Biography

Brunette leading lady of Czech, Austrian and German ancestry. Signed by Paramount in 1936, she was introduced with a famous publicity campaign which instructed prospective American audiences to pronounce her first name 'O-lamp'. Olympe was born on a Parisian backstage, in between a matinée and evening performance to vaudevillians Joseph and Jeanne Bradna. Their dog act headlined at the Olympia Theatre -- hence her first name. The Bradnas had been in show business for generations. Her father had been a circus rider and former ringmaster for Ringling Brothers. Likewise, her uncle Fred had been ringmaster for Barnum & Bailey. Her mother was a former operatic singer. Trained by her dad, Olympe soon joined the family business as a singer and dancer. Even before reaching her teens, she performed as an acrobatic dancer (costumed as a sailor) in a Parisian production of the Broadway musical "Hit the Deck", billed as the "tiniest sailor in France". Olympe became noted for her poise and for her ballet taps, later joining an American company of the Folies Bergere as an acrobatic dancer for Chicago's World Fair. She then performed for eight months at the French Casino in New York, where she was 'discovered' by Paramount talent scouts and discreetly signed under contract. For three months, Olympe was tutored in English, tap dancing and horse riding. She was then launched in a minor musical, Three Cheers for Love (1936). In the same year, she also made College Holiday (1936), but her tiny role was totally submerged by the antics of star comedians Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Allen and Martha Raye. Her first leading role was opposite Gene Raymond in Stolen Heaven (1938), a forgettable second-string programmer about a couple of jewel thieves on the run. This was followed by the Ray Milland comedy Say It in French (1938) and a sentimental theatrical drama, The Night of Nights (1939), which flopped, despite a script by Donald Ogden Stewart and direction by Lewis Milestone. On loan to Warners, Olympe made three more films, the last being International Squadron (1941), an aviation drama about a cocky American pilot in the RAF, starring Ronald Reagan. In the majority of her films as the perfunctory love interest to sporting champs or war heroes, she had little else to do but be ornamental. Unsurprisingly, Olympe gave it all up in 1941 upon her marriage to Santa Barbara socialite Douglass Wood Wilhoit Sr., devoting the rest of her life to family and to various charities.