
Gertrude Michael (June 1, 1911, Talladega, Alabama – December 31, 1964, Beverly Hills, California) was an American film, stage and television actress.
Born as Lillian Gertrude Michael in Talladega, Alabama, she reportedly graduated from high school at the age of 14. She became a radio singer on the radio. She attended the University of Alabama and Converse College, Cincinnati. Her childhood home in Talladega, Alabama was destroyed by fire in 2007.
In 1929 in Cincinnati she made her stage debut in a stock company. She subsequently appeared on Broadway in Rachel Crothers' Caught Wet (1931). She entered the movies playing Richard Arlen's finaceé in Wayward (1932), but her best-remembered role is probably as Rita Ross in Murder at the Vanities (1934), one of the last pre-Code films, in which she sang an ode to marijuana (Sweet Marijuana).
She had an affair with writer Paul Cain (aka Peter Ruric).After they broke up, Cain wrote the role of the alcoholic lover (based on Michael) in his only novel published during his lifetime, Fast One.
Gertrude Michael died, aged 53, from undisclosed causes, in Beverly Hills, California.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gertrude Michael,licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Cleopatra
1934 · as Calpurnia

Caged
1950 · as Georgia Harrison

Woman Trap
1936 · as Barbara 'Buff' Andrews

I'm No Angel
1933 · as Alicia Hatton

Club Havana
1945 · as Hetty - Powder Room Attendant

Flamingo Road
1949 · as Millie

Women's Prison
1955 · as Chief Matron Sturgess

Wayward
1932 · as Mary Morton

Bugles in the Afternoon
1952 · as May

The Last Outpost
1935 · as Rosemary Haydon

Night of Terror
1933 · as Sarah Rinehart

Ann Vickers
1933 · as Mona Dolphin

Murder on the Blackboard
1934 · as Jane Davis

Parole Fixer
1940 · as Collette Menthe

Faces in the Fog
1944 · as Nora Brooks

George White's Scandals
1934 · as Miss Lee

Darling, How Could You!
1951 · as Mrs. Rossiter

Murder at the Vanities
1934 · as Rita Ross