Jean Byron, (given name Imogene Burkhart) was born in Paducah in western Kentucky, and her family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, when she was still quite young, and then to California when she was nineteen during World War II. She appeared briefly as a singer on radio, but studied drama from 1947 to 1950. Then she did a stint with the Players Ring, a theatre group that did not pay well but offered the performers needed exposure. It was here in a play titled Merrily We Roll Along, that she came to the attention of Harry Sauber, elderly talent adviser for Sam Katzman. She was asked to read from the script and imitate a British accent, which she did. And right then and there she got her union card. When asked her name, she replied Imogene Burkhart. Katzman rejected that name; so she volunteered the stage name, Jean Byron, which she had already been using and which the Columbia Pictures brass found more palatable.
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