Acting Career
She moved to Hollywood with her mother and signed a contract in 1943 with Republic Pictures. During her career she was known as Vera Hrubá Ralston and later Vera Ralston. She normally played an immigrant girl, because of her limited English skills. Among the 26 films Ralston starred in were Storm over Lisbon with Erich von Stroheim (1944), Dakota (1945), I, Jane Doe (1948) with Ruth Hussey and John Carrol, The Fighting Kentuckian with John Wayne (1949), A Perilous Journey with David Brian (1953), and Fair Wind to Java with Fred MacMurray (1953). She retired from films in 1958.
In 1952 Ralston married the head of the studio Herbert Yates. Yates was nearly 40 years her senior, and had left his wife and children to be with Ralston. Yates used his position to obtain roles for Ralston, and at one point was sued by studio shareholders for using company assets to promote his wife. Yates died in 1966, leaving his $10 million estate to Ralston. She suffered a nervous breakdown shortly thereafter, then remarried and lived quietly in southern California.
She died on February 9, 2003, in Santa Barbara, California, after a long battle with cancer. For her work in films, Ralston has a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The authors of the book The Golden Turkey Awards nominated her for the dubious honor of "The Worst Actress of All Time," along with Candice Bergen and Mamie Van Doren. They all lost to Raquel Welch.
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