Cara Williams

Perky, talented, blue-eyed redhead Cara Williams had acting aspirations from the get-go. She was born in Brooklyn on June 29, 1925, as Bernice Kamiat, to an Austrian Jewish father, Benjamin Kamiat, and a mother of Romanian Jewish descent, Flora (Schwartz). Cara began performing as a child and continued into her teens. After her parents' divorce, she relocated with her mother to Hollywood where she attended the Hollywood Professional School and lent her voice to both radio and animated cartoon shorts. At age 16 she was signed by 20th Century-Fox and began to play minor, often unbilled parts in drama, comedy and musicals billing herself as Bernice Kay. Throughout WWII she was always reliable for adding a little pep and zing to her smallish roles. She played various shapely secretaries, salesgirls, girlfriends, etc. in such minor fodder as Wide Open Town (1941), Happy Land (1943), In the Meantime, Darling (1944) and Don Juan Quilligan (1945), but nothing to propel her into the front rank