生于加拿大艾伯塔省卡尔加里市，当过建筑工人。最初为西部片明星巴克·琼斯主演的动作片和弗里德·克茂莱主演的影片当替身演员，1939年开始在派拉蒙电影公司的影片里扮演小角色。他体格健壮，渐渐在西部片和动作片中崭露头角。四十年代中期，他在环球拍片，由于同伊冯娜·德·卡洛合作的《莎乐美》（1945）而升为主角。之后又合演了《铁骑劫美》（1945）和《河上夫人》（1948）。五十年代又出演了电视连续剧《城市侦探》等。
Born Adelaide Delgado in 1925, Spanish-American Adele Mara was a singer/dancer with Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra in Detroit by the age of 15. Cugat took the beautiful, brown-eyed brunette to New York where she was spotted by a Columbia talent scout and signed in 1942. There she played brisk leading ladies in a series of standard, uneventful "B" films including Vengeance of the West (1942) with Tex Ritter and Alias Boston Blackie (1942) starring Chester Morris.
