by Hal Erickson
biography
The daughter of legendary sports journalist Grantland Rice, actress Florence Rice launched her stage career in the late '20s. In films from 1934, Rice was generally wasted in insipid "good girl" roles. The least prepossessing of these was the antiseptic heroine in the 1939 Marx Brothers comedy At the Circus; upon being introduced to the mischievous Marxes on the set, Rice was promptly locked in the lion's cage, where she quietly remained until the property man showed up. Spending her last professional years in B-productions at such studios as Columbia, Republic, and PRC, Florence Rice retired from films in 1943.
