Allene Roberts Dead: Actress In Nicholas Ray’s ‘Knock On Any Door’ Was 90
Allene Roberts, whose film career blossomed in the late 1940s and early 1950s opposite such stars as Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and William Holden, has died. She passed Thursday in Huntsville, Alabama at age 90.
Born on Sept. 1, 1928, in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, Roberts beat out 85,000 others in a competition to name “America’s Most Charming Child” run by the New York Daily Mirror. She won $1,000 and a screen test with Warner Bros.
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The screen test amounted to nothing, but Roberts and her mother stayed in California, and she slowly edged her way into show business. Among her notable roles was the female lead in Bomba on Panther Island, opposite jungle boy Johnny Sheffield, as the love interest of Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray’s Knock On Any Door; as a kidnapping victim rescued by William Holden in Union Station; and as a young girl who ventures into the woods in the drama The Red House, with Edgar G. Robinson.
She later transitioned to television and appeared in episodes of The Adventures of Superman and Dragnet. Her final TV appearance came in 1957.
Survivors include her children John, Leslie, Julie and Laurie, and grandchildren Amanda, Kay, Scott,
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