Jane Adams

Betty Jane Bierce, better known by her stage name Jane "Poni" Adams was an American actress in radio, film, and television in the 1940s and 1950s. Adams was born in San Antonio, Texas, but her family moved to California when she was two. During her high school years, she studied violin and drama, and she was selected to be a concert mistress of the all-city high school orchestra of Los Angeles. She received a full scholarship to Juilliard, which she turned down to spend years studying at the Pasadena Playhouse. After the Playhouse, she got her start on Lux Radio Theatre, and then with the Harry Conover Modeling Agency, where she was given her nickname "Poni". This was supposedly due to her love of horses, but in reality it was to provide her with a more memorable stage name.(In the book Westerns Women: Interviews with 50 Leading Ladies of Movie and Television Westerns from the 1930s to the 1960s, Adams said: "I was given that name at the Harry Conover Modeling Agency. Why, I don't know!" She returned to using her real name in 1945.