Florence Rice

Florence Davenport Rice was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the only child of the noted sportswriter Grantland Rice and Fannie Katherine Hollis.^[2] She attended Dwight School for Girls at Englewood, New Jersey,^[3] and Smith College.^[4]

Rice became an actress during the late 1920s and, after several Broadway roles, eventually made her way to Hollywood, where she acted in almost 50 films between 1934 and 1943.

Rice was cast as the reliable girlfriend in several films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM gradually provided her with more substantial roles, occasionally in prestige productions. Rice never became a major figure in movies, but she performed in a number of screen pairings with Robert Young.^[1]

Her most widely seen performances were in Double Wedding (1937), in which she was billed third in the cast credits behind William Powell and Myrna Loy, Sweethearts (1938) with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, and The Marx Brothers film At The Circus (1939).

During the 1940s, the quality of her roles steadily decreased, and in 1947, she retired.

Rice's first marriage, to David Page, was annulled.^[5] She married broker Sydney A. Smith in New York City on June 12, 1930;^[6] they were divorced on May 18, 1931.^[5] On March 30, 1939, she married fellow actor Robert Wilcox.^[7] They separated less than 2 months later and divorced on July 30, 1940.^[8] From August 29, 1946 until her death, Rice was married to Fred Thomas Butler.^[9] In 1958, they moved to Hawaii.^[4]

On February 23, 1974, at age 67, Rice died from lung cancer at Straub Clinic in Honolulu.^[10] She was survived by her husband.^[4] At her request, there was no funeral, and her remains were cremated, with her ashes scattered over the waters near Waikiki Beach.^[10]