Nina Quartero

Nina Quartero was born Gladys Quartararo on March 17, 1908 in New York Ciy. She came from a close family and was the youngest of seven children. Nina was signed by D.W. Griffith when she was a teenager. She appeared in a number of silent films billed as "Gladys Quartero" and in April 1924 she was on the cover of Movie Weekly. Unhappy with the way her career was going she left D.W. Griffith and moved to California. She landed a role in the 1928 western Driftin' Sands (1928). When she auditioned for the Ramon Navarro film Romance the studio said she looked too young. Director James Cruze saw Nina's screen test and gave her the lead in his film The Red Mark (1928). Her performance earned rave reviews and her future in Hollywood seemed bright. Nina's olive skin and Spanish-Italian ancestry allowed her to play many different types of characters. She worked with Olive Borden in The Eternal Woman (1929) and with John Wayne in Arizona (1931). In 1933 she appeared in the horror classic The Monkey's Paw (1933). As a publicity stunt, she told the press she was engaged to a football quarterback named Frank Carideo. Unfortunately, Frank denied the engagement and demanded an apology from Nina. She married John C. Outhet in 1934. They divorced three years later and she married Joseph C. Shea. Sadly this marriage also ended in divorce. Although Nina never became an A-list star she continued to get small parts in movies like Wife vs. Secretary (1936) and Trouble in Panama (1938). Her final film was the 1943 comedy A Lady Takes a Chance (1943). She retired from making movies and lived a quiet life in Woodland Hills, California. Nina died on November 23, 1985 at the age of seventy-seven.