Gale Storm (aka Gail Storm), a Texas native who landed in Hollywood after winning a national talent search and later shot to the top on television as the vivacious star of two popular 1950s situation comedies, “My Little Margie” and “The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna,” has died. She was 87.

Storm, who also had a successful recording career during her TV heyday, died Saturday of natural causes at a convalescent hospital in the Northern California community of Danville, according to her son Peter Bonnell.

Storm was a pert and pretty 17-year-old Houston, Texas, high school senior named Josephine Cottle when she arrived in Hollywood in late 1939 as a finalist in the nationwide “Gateway to Hollywood” talent contest.

Born on April 5, 1922, in Bloomington, Texas, the auburn-haired Storm was the youngest of five children whose father died when she was a year old.

She had played the leads in numerous plays and musicals in school, but two of her teachers had to push her to enter the “Gateway” competition.

The winning actor and actress were promised contracts with RKO Studios and guaranteed a role in a major motion picture. And, as Hollywood tradition dictated, they would be given new, marquee-suitable names.

During the elimination period in Hollywood, the male and female finalists acted in scenes broadcast live on Sundays over CBS Radio, with the home audience spurred to tune in again the following week to find out:

“Who will be Terry Belmont?”

“Who will be Gale Storm?”

Recalling her win in a Los Angeles Times interview nearly 50 years later, Storm flashed her trademark dazzling smile and said, “At the time, I was so impressed, I didn’t even see the humor in the name Gale Storm. It was so exciting and so thrilling. It’s like a Cinderella story.”

If young Josephine Cottle was Cinderella, her Prince Charming was her male co-winner, the newly christened Terry Belmont: Lee Bonnell, a handsome Indiana University drama student from South Bend, Ind.

In 1941, Storm married Bonnell, who became an insurance executive after a short-lived film career. Their marriage lasted until Bonnell’s death in 1986 and produced three sons and a daughter: Phillip, Peter, Paul and Susie.

Beginning with “Tom Brown’s School Days” in 1940, Storm appeared in 36 movies over the next dozen years. Dropped by RKO after six months and two pictures, she appeared in a variety of B-movies at Republic, Monogram, Allied Artists and Universal.

Among her film credits, which included musical comedies, film noir dramas and westerns (three with Roy Rogers), are starring roles in films such as “Freckles Comes Home,” “Where Are Your Children?,” “Campus Rhythm,” “G.I. Honeymoon,” “Sunbonnet Sue,” “Swing Parade of 1946,” and “It Happened on 5th Avenue.”

But by the early ’50s, her movie career was in a slump and she was resigned to devoting full time to her family when she received a call from producer Hal Roach Jr., who wanted her for the lead in a proposed TV series, “My Little Margie.”

“Without television, I would still be Gale Storm, housewife and sometimes bit player,” Storm told The Times in 1953.

Her success with “My Little Margie” on television — and a radio version with original episodes — led to her being approached to do a nightclub act in Las Vegas during the summers of 1953 and 1954. Storm, who had spent five years studying voice, also sang on numerous TV variety shows.