Background
Carver was born Virginia Reid Sampson on September 13, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, Reid Johnson Sampson, was a mining engineer in Arizona and New Mexico for several years preceding World War I, and he and his family were briefly detained by Pancho Villa during one of the Mexican general"s raids across the border into the Southwestern United States, when Virginia was an infant.
Career
She appeared in 42 films between 1934 and 1953. Virginia went to Hollywood at a young age to pursue a career in acting after winning a beauty pageant. Early on she was billed as Virginia Reid with Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures and can be seen in several musicals as one of the "Goldwyn Girls".
She dated Howard Hughes, briefly, in the 1930s, before moving on to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Lynne Carver where she became a regular in their stable of actresses.
First playing minor bit parts, Lynne Carver eventually moved up to the level of ingenue in a few of her later roles, probably because of her striking looks and Southern charm. As her career advanced, she appeared in several films with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and was probably best known for her role as Alice Raymond in the early Doctor Kildare films.
She was "Barbara" in the magical musical production Maytime in 1937 along with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald and also appeared with them in Bitter Sweet, a 1940 attempt to recapture the success of Maytime. Both films were released in 1938.
Her last film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was Tennessee Johnson which starred Van Heflin as the 17th President of the United States.
Carver played Martha, the daughter of Andrew Johnson. The slowdown of work in Hollywood due to World World War II caused her career to stall. Carver died at Memorial Hospital in New York City after a year-long battle against cancer, on August 12, 1955 aged 38.