Evalyn Knapp


Evalyn Knapp was an American film actress of the late 1920s, 1930s and into the 1940s. She was a leading B-movie serial actress in the 1930s. She was the younger sister of the orchestra leader Orville Knapp.

Life and career

Knapp was born in 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri. She started acting in silent films, her first role being in the 1929 film At the Dentist's. She was cast as leading lady in Smart Money in 1931, the only film starring both Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. In 1932, Knapp was one of 14 girls, along with Ginger Rogers and Gloria Stuart, selected as WAMPAS Baby Stars.
Knapp achieved success in cliffhanger serials, which were popular at the time. She played the title character in the 1933 serial The Perils of Pauline. The same year, she starred, with top billing, alongside 26-year-old John Wayne in His Private Secretary, a light comedy in which Wayne portrays a playboy determined to win her over. She also appeared in Corruption that year opposite Preston Foster. One of her better known film roles was opposite Ken Maynard in the 1934 film In Old Santa Fe featuring Gene Autry in his first screen appearance, in which he sang with a bluegrass band.
She worked through 1941, but her career slowed afterward. In 1943, she played her last role, uncredited, in Two Weeks to Live, one of the Lum and Abner films starring Chester Lauck and Norris Goff.

Personal life

In 1931, Evalyn Knapp spent several months in the hospital after she fell from a cliff during a hike with her brother, Stanley. Two vertebrae were fractured and it was necessary for her to learn to walk again, step by step.
Her brother, orchestra Leader, Orville Knapp, died in a plane crash while piloting the plane in 1936, smashing into the runway. He was 32 years old.
Her brother was married to film actress Gloria Grafton.
She married Dr. George A. Snyder in 1934. Snyder gave her a yacht as a wedding gift, and she became one of Hollywood's leading yachtswomen and a big game fisher woman.
Following her retirement, she concentrated on her family. She and Snyder remained married until his death in 1977. On June 12, 1981, five days before her 75th birthday, Knapp died of heart disease at St. Vincent's Hospital in Los Angeles, California.

Partial filmography