The Lane (née Mullican) sisters were four Iowa gals who got their break in 1933 as singers for bandleader Fred Waring. Hollywood soon came calling, resulting in a series of Lane Sisters movies. Priscilla (1915-1995) went on to solo fame, headlining Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant. We know Burbank’s Priscilla Lane honors her because she christened its street sign with a champagne bottle in May 1941. (The whole thing was probably a publicity stunt engineered by Warner Bros., where she was under contract.) Less than a mile away is Rosemary Lane, named in July 1942. A news article that month claimed that it was named for Priscilla’s older sister Rosemary (1913-1974), but if there was a similar launch party for it, it didn’t make the news. Rosemary Lane, stuck in B-movie limbo while Priscilla’s star soared, quit Hollywood in 1945. Priscilla herself retired three years later. The other two Lane sisters, Leota and Lola, have no streets in Burbank, but Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel said he named the character Lois Lane after Lola, so she had that going for her.
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