Paula Stone Sloan, 85 Actress and Broadway producer

By Doug Galloway

Paula Stone Sloan, a former legit, radio and screen actress who later worked behind the footlights as a Broadway producer, died Dec. 23, 1997, at Sherman Oaks Medical Center following a lengthy illness. She was 85.

The daughter of Fred Stone, a popular entertainer and star of stage musicals during the first half of the century, she began her career on the Broadway stage appearing in her father's musical "Ripples." She also had roles in several other plays, including "Stepping Stones," "Smiling Faces," "A Church Mouse" and "White Horse."

Stone moved to Hollywood in the 1930s and appeared in a handful of films, including the first Hopalong Cassidy film, "Hopalong Cassidy Enters." She also appeared in "Colleen" and "Idiot's Delight."

During the war years she turned to radio and produced the "Lionel Barrymore Show" and the "George Murphy Show." In 1945 she starred on the radio program "Leave It to the Girls," which was broadcast over the Mutual Network until 1949.

During the 1950s she returned to Broadway and produced the Victor Hugo musical "The Red Mill," which starred Eddie Foy Jr.; and, along with her husband, Michael Sloan, produced "Sweethearts," "The Country Girl," "Carnival in Flanders" and "Top Banana" with Phil Silvers.

She later moved to London, where she ran the Lyric Hammersmith Theater. She retired from show business in the early 1980s. In later years, she staged the yearly Ding-a-ling shows at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills.

She is survived by her son, Michael, a TV producer-writer, and a daughter Judy, an entertainment journalist.

-- Doug Galloway

Variety