Molly O'Day was born Suzanne Dobson Noonan in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1909, the youngest of 11 children of a judge, Thomas Francis Patrick Noonan, and a Metropolitan Opera singer, Hannah Kelly. After the judge's death the family fractured: sisters Sally and Isabelle headed west to act, while brother John drew a seven-year prison sentence in 1930 for receiving stolen property and brother Victor faced grand larceny charges over a stock swindle. Suzanne started as an extra in a 1926 Laurel and Hardy short and the Our Gang series before producer Al Rockett spotted her in a mob scene and insisted she star as the tough-girl heroine of The Patent Leather Kid in 1927, beating out 2,000 other hopefuls at age 16.

This episode examines how First National Pictures took ownership of her identity, renaming her Kitty Kelly and then Molly O'Day, how she wa ...