Alix Talton

Alix Talton was born Alice Talton on June 7, 1920 in Atlanta, Georgia. Of part Cherokee Indian descent, Alix studied dancing and singing while growing up. After being crowned Miss Atlanta in a local beauty pageant in 1938, Talton went on to represent Georgia in the Miss America beauty pageant held on September 10, 1938 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Alix was also a model in New York and a member of the singing group The American Jubilee as well as learned her craft by doing summer stock in Brattleboro, Vermont. Talton was discovered by a Warner Brothers scout in a Community Playhouse stage production in Atlanta, Georgia and subsequently added to the contract list at Warner Brothers in March, 1941. Alix married ex-Hollywood agent and Air Force sergeant Lou Kerner in Beverly Hills, California on April 8, 1944; the couple were the parents of a son, Bruce M. Kerner. Talton divorced Kerner in 1949 and married her second husband George Cahan on March 18, 1950. Alix and Cahan had a daughter, Claudia Cahan. Talton remained married to Cahan right up to his death from a heart attack on June 12, 1991.

Alix's show business career was interrupted in the early 1950's when she was thrown off a horse at a resort near San Bernardino, California and broke two vertebrae. Moreover, Talton attracted public notice in 1954 when she successfully pleaded with members of a parole board in Atlanta, Georgia to release her brother Richard from prison where he was serving a nine-to-twenty year sentence for a robbery he committed in 1950. In addition, Alix acted in a handful of films and TV shows in a career that spanned several decades. Talton died from lung cancer on April 7, 1992 in Burbank, California. She was survived by her son Bruce M. Kerner, daughter Claudia Cahan, and two grandchildren.