Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix max-w-170 mt-7.5 mb-10 mx-auto” data-dateline data-subscriber-content> SCHULENBURG, Texas — When Leslie Hannah and her sister were children, their aunt, Lora Lee Michel, appeared to them as a spectral figure, becoming real only when she appeared on screen. A child actress in the 1940s, Lora Lee at 7 was billed as a “sensation” with “the greatest appeal since Shirley Temple.” She appeared in more than a dozen films, sharing the screen with Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford and Olivia de Havilland. “We’d be watching TV and there’d be these films Lora Lee was in and my mom would turn them on and show us,” Hannah said. “That’s her. You can hear her voice!” But Lora Lee was a shooting star — one that would quickly crash-land. At 9, during the height of her celebrity, she stood at the center of a scandalous custody trial that grabbed headlines and captured the country’s imagination. It set in motion a chain of events that not only cut short her promising career but led to the unraveling of her life. Just before her 10th birthday, a judge
