Here's an amatuer slide looking south down Vine St. from Franklin Ave., August 1953....photo is courtesy the poster ElectroSpark at Flickr.....
Feb. 2021 GSV
Of course, I had to examine the 1950 census for the Vine Manor Hotel to determine if any lodgers were showbiz types, either on the way up or on the way down....I found one name that required investigation....
Betty Jane Pettit has an IMDB page with a handful of credits....she appeared (and apparently performed a song) in a 1946 short featuring the bandleader Lawrence Welk....her "big" year was 1952 with 4 film appearances, all minor roles....she did a Three Stooges short called "Listen, Judge" that year, uncredited she played an "Attractive Blond Party Guest"....
....there's only one party scene in the film, and one young "attractive blond", so I am fairly certain that's Pettit to the left (screen grab from YouTube).
Also in '52 she appeared as a chorus girl in "Singin' in the Rain"....
....that might be her in the forefront, to the right of Debbie Reynolds.
Betty J. Pettit was born Betty Jane Sharp on Nov. 25 1922, at 808 N. Bonnie Beach Pl. in City Terrace (note that she informed the census enumerator she was 24 in 1950)....
....in '43 she was going by Betty Jane Reed (the name change was apparently not via a marriage), and she wed Herbert Beal Stedman Jr., a merchant mariner....
....in his 1940 draft registration card we find Stedman was a strapping 6 ft 183 lbs....
...I can't find the divorce from Stedman, but in '51 Petitt remarried....note she claims no previous marriages, was the '43 union possibly annulled?...she also says she's still 24....
....at some point the Richard Lazar marriage dissolved, and in '57 Betty Jane Sharp/Reed/Stedman/Pettit/Lazar wed Bernard (born Goldstein) Girard....
She claims age 27 here....so she was 21 in '43, 24 in the '50 census, 24 in the '51 marriage, and 27 in '57.
Bernard Girard in an undated photo
Girard was a television and film director of little note, perhaps his only "major" film was the 1966 caper flick "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round", starring James Coburn, Camilla Sparv and Aldo Ray....it's maybe best remembered for the first on-screen appearance of Harrison Ford, he had a bit part as a bellhop.
The marriage to Girard ended in 1967...
Apparently she never married after the split with Girard, and I can't find a record of any children.....Betty Jane Sharp died in 1996 at age 74 (her birth year is misstated in this entry).....
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