Zolya Talma


Zolya Valentina Talma, born Emma Valentina Cranz, sometimes credited as Zola Talma, was an American actress who began her career in silent films, performed in dozens of Broadway productions, and was a character actress on television programs from 1949 to 1974.

Biography

Talma was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of William S. Cranz and Dolores Cranz, though she sometimes claimed she was from Barcelona. Her mother was a German-speaking nurse born in Mexico. Her father was involved in silver mining, and died in 1912. As a girl she was a student at the Egan School of Music and Drama. Talma lived in New York City with an uncle in 1915, and with Australian actress Margaret Linden and her sons in 1920. Playwright Augustus Thomas suggested her stage name.
Talma had a career in films, on stage in comedies and dramas, and on television, from the 1910s into the 1970s. She died in 1963, at the age of 88, in Los Angeles.
Her uncle Franklin F. Cranz was mayor of Nogales, Arizona, from 1904 to 1906. The Frank F. Cranz House is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Films

Outcast On with the Dance

Broadway

Her Honor, the Mayor Mis' Nelly of N'Orleans The Checkerboard Near Santa Barbara The Morning After The Love Song Stronger than Love Mama Loves Papa Kept Where's Your Husband? Lally Interference The Great Necker Zeppelin Evensong Prisoners of War The World We Make Romantic Mr. Dickens

Other stage work

Television

The Clock The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre Lights Out The Ford Theatre Hour The Web Hallmark Hall of Fame Guiding Light Omnibus: Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2 Crown of Audubon Proudly I Love Rocky King Detective Martin Kane, Private Eye Robert Montgomery Presents Kraft Television Theatre Studio One The Asphalt Jungle Cain's Hundred The Eleventh Hour Breaking Point The Alfred Hitchcock Hour The Big Valley Jericho The Felony Squad Adam-12 Ironside The Other Man