Kathleen Burke
Toronto Daily Star, March 1 1933
The Panther Woman talent contest, held in 1932, was to determine who was to be given the role of Lota, The Panther Woman, in the movie Island of Lost Souls. Approximately 60,000 women entered the contest; Kathleen Burke (1913-1980) was the winner.
Her newly wedded husband, Glen Rardin, had taken the photographs of her that had been entered in the contest. Their marriage did not last: they separated two months after the marriage, were briefly reconciled, and then were divorced in 1934.
Ms. Burke married twice more after her divorce from Rardin. She married and divorced Jose Torres Fernandez, a dancer from Mexico, before marrying a man named Forrest Smith, who outlived her. She appeared in more than twenty films in the 1930s before she retired from film acting in 1938.
YouTube has a trailer for Island of Lost Souls. In it, Ms. Burke is billed only as "The Panther Woman".
Created September 18, 2025.