Janet Shaw on AllMovie

Blonde leading-lady Janet Shaw was a teenager when, in 1937, she was signed to Warner Bros. At first billed as Eileen Clancy, Shaw played a variety of minor roles before her first big break as Dee, the daughter of Bette Davis, in The Old Maid (1939). Unfortunately, this assignment led only to a few nondescript heroine roles in such programmers as RKO's Rookie Cop (1939). In 1940, she became a contract player at Universal, playing parts of all sizes, usually small. She was memorable as the girlfriend of alderman Thurston Hall in the opening scenes of Abbott and Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941), and even more so as sluttish waitress Louise in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). She spent the mid-'40s at Monogram, essaying featured roles in a handful of Charlie Chan pictures, as well as a pleasing cameo in Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Janet Shaw apparently retired after appearing in RKO's They Won't Believe Me (1947).