Lynne Carver

Who was Lynne Carver?

Lynne Carver was an American film actress. She appeared in 42 films between 1934 and 1953.

Carver was born Virginia Reid Sampson on September 13, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, Reid Johnson Sampson, was a mining engineer in Arizona and New Mexico for several years preceding the World War I, and he and his family were briefly detained by Poncho Villa during one of the Mexican general's raids across the border into the Southwestern US, when Virginia was an infant.

Virginia went to Hollywood at a young age to pursue a career in acting after winning a beauty pageant. Some members of her family maintained that she took a stage name because she felt that her given name was too “old–fashioned” and that she was reaching for her paternal grandmother’s maiden name, Cravens, but could not quite recall it properly.

Early on she was billed as Virginia Reid with RKO Pictures and can be seen in several musicals as one of the "Goldwyn Girls". She dated Howard Hughes, briefly, in the 1930s, before moving on to MGM as Lynne Carver where she became a regular in their stable of actresses. Her older sister, Marjorie Lee Sampson, followed Virginia to Hollywood and landed a few small parts, but never achieved the status of her sister, and soon moved on.