Marion Martin
Birth : 1908-06-07, Philadelphia, PA
Death : 1985-08-13
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marion Martin (born Marion Suplee, June 7, 1909 – August 13, 1985) was an American movie and stage actress.
Martin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a Bethlehem Steel executive. She became an actress after her family fortune was lost in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and appeared in the Broadway productions Lombardi Ltd. and Sweet Adeline.
She made her film debut in She's My Lillie, I'm Her Willie and subsequently played minor roles, often as showgirls. Several of her early roles were in musicals and she achieved some success as a singer. By the end of the decade she had played leading female roles in several "B" pictures, playing one of her most notable roles in James Whale's Sinners in Paradise (1938). Despite her success she was often cast in minor roles in more widely seen films such as His Girl Friday (1940). The majority of her roles were in comedies but she also appeared in dramas such as Boom Town (1940) in which she played a dance hall singer who is briefly romanced by Clark Gable. She played secondary roles in three Lupe Vélez "Mexican Spitfire" films in the early 1940s, and was a comic foil for the Marx Brothers in The Big Store, where the back of her skirt is cut away by Harpo.
She played a ghost in Gildersleeve's Ghost, and was the subject of a legendary fistfight between Gildersleeve star Harold Peary and Warner Bros studio mogul Bud Stevens at the Mocambo nightclub in 1943. Her more substantial roles included Alice Angel, a dizzy showgirl, in the murder mystery Lady of Burlesque with Barbara Stanwyck and Angel on My Shoulder. She also appeared in The Big Street with Lucille Ball, in the western The Woman of the Town with Claire Trevor and in The Great Mike at PRC in 1944.
By the late 1940s, her roles were often minor. Three Stooges fans will remember her as western cowgirl Gladys in Merry Mavericks. She played "Belle Farnol" in a 1950 episode of The Lone Ranger entitled "Pardon for Curley". Shortly afterward, she made her final film appearance in 1952. Married to a physicist, Martin retired, and although she expressed the desire to return to show business, suitable roles were not offered to her.
She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures, at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard. She died in 1985 in Santa Monica, California, and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
LaBelle La Tour
A spunky storekeeper is determined to clean up corruption in her small town, as well as win the heart of the new sheriff. Comedy.
Diana (as Marian Martin)
John Burrows, an ordained minister from a small village in the East, envisions himself with a larger congregation. He is mortified when his wife drunkenly interrupts a sermon, then despondent after her suicide. Burrows travels to Los Angeles for a fresh start, but takes to the bottle himself and ends up arrested for public intoxication. A skid-row con man, Gandy, finds him a bed at a flop house, while a street preacher, Doc Thorssen, and daughter Christine take him to a local mission. Christine is blind. She falls in love with Burrows, enjoying his discussions of the spirit and the soul but knowing little of his past. One day she is struck by a streetcar and knocked unconscious, causing Burrows to once again question his faith. He ultimately accepts the Lord's will and is offered a better place to live and preach. Burrows decides he is better suited to the mission, with Christine by his side.
Gladys
Set in the old west, the stooges are mistaken for lawmen and manage to capture a gang of crooks. The boys then get the job of guarding some money in an old house reputed to be haunted by the ghost of an Indian Chief. The crooks escape and go after the money disguised as ghosts, but Shemp, disguised as the Indian Chief, manages to knock them out.
Blonde Singer
Female outlaw helps lawmen trap railroad bandits.
Emmy
At a mayors convention in San Francisco, ex-longshoreman Steve Fisk meets Clarissa Standish from New England. Fisk is mayor of "Puget City" and is proud of his rough and tumble background. Standish is mayor of "Winona, Maine", and is equally proud of her education and dedication to the people who elected her. Thrown together, the two opposites attract and their escapades during the convention get each of them in hot water back home. Written by Ron Kerrigan
Bar Blonde
Period musical about a song plugger who vows to turn an opera composer's music into popular hits.
Rossi's Manicurist (uncredited)
Two nuns arrive unannounced in the small New England town of Bethlehem, where they recruit various townspeople to help them build a children's hospital.
Pearl (as Marian Martin)
Loggers Jeff Collins and Boomer Benson compete for a mail-order bride by means of a timber-cutting contest.
Loud Friend's Girlfriend
Hugh's loudmouth pal crashes a dinner party Hugh is throwing for his boss.
JoJo, the Blonde
Two men (Don Castle, John Litel) and a woman (June Lang) form a triangle confined by a lighthouse.
Marion, Natalie's Girl Friend (as Marian Martin)
Raised by Natalie Brennan, a flamboyant and irresponsible mother, Ziggy Brennan gets involved in hustling men at a young age. She hangs around with a wild crowd and learns gets her "street smarts" first from her mother, who wants everyone to think they are sisters, and then from Denny Reagan, an older man. He starts teaching her his tricks of the trade and she falls right in line with his crooked ways. Then one night she meets Martin J. 'Mart' Neilson, a tall, handsome, honest farmer boy who's a sailor and they fall in love. While he's away fighting the war, she discovers she's pregnant.
Lou, Blonde (uncredited)
A con artist falls for the rich widow he's trying to fleece.
Mrs. Bentley
The Devil arranges for a deceased gangster to return to Earth as a well-respected judge to make up for his previous life.
Millie
A falsely convicted man's wife, Catherine, and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, who is Martin's wife.
Lola Cassell
Various performers and backstage crew come under suspicion when a dancer is found murdered at a burlesque theatre.
Laura Gibson
A favor for an old friend leads a Los Angeles gambler (Kent Taylor) into a dangerous search for a missing document.
Shooting Gallery Blond (uncredited)
The proprietor of an ice-skating revue promotes a peanut-vendor at the show to a management position based on suggestions he made to improve the act of the show's star, who also happens to be the owner's wife. However, he soon begins to notice that his new manager is paying more attention to his wife than he believes is appropriate...
Burlesque Queen
Judy Jones can claim inheritance only if she marries a genius.
Dixie
A women's prison provides the setting for this drama that centers around a naive small-town woman framed by a man whom she met in a nightclub in the big city. She is not welcomed by the inmates and immediately the prisoners are divided.
Miss Milbane
When two bumbling barbers act as agents for a talented but unknown singer, they stage a phony murder in order to get him a plum role.
Bubbles (uncredited)
Radio's miracle show is on the screen.
Rita (as Marian Martin)
Gang Leader Dutch Malone goes on a hunting trip and is in a car wreck and is confined to the hospital, without the knowledge of any of his gang members. District Attorney Brady induces taxidermist Peter Winkly, who is an exact double for Malone,to impersonate Dutch and assume leadership of the gang. Winkly "takes over" the gang and only Rita, Dutch's girl friend, has any suspicion that he is not really Dutch. But Dutch sees a newspaper showing him out on the town, escapes from the hospital and is on his way to look up the impostor.
Irma King
Musical comedy directed by Edward F. Cline
Betty Hanzel
A reporter learns that an executed killer has taken over a scientist's mind.
Rose Allure
In this amiable Columbia B musical, society girl Ann Miller escapes her Back Bay family by performing in the chorus line in a burlesque house. But trouble starts when her boss (William Wright) decides to build her up as a star. One of the many bread-and-butter Columbia productions graced by the contributions of Cole’s in-house dance studio. Cole dances behind Miller in “I’m Gonna See My Baby.” --Museum of Modern Art
Kitty Tremaine
Story of a boy and his horse. Mike is the horse and is owned by Speck and his best friend Jimmy, together they have a paper route, on which they deliver papers to customers via a wagon pulled by Mike. Recently a horse track has been built in the area and attracts horse breeder and racer Colonel Whiteny. He takes out a subscription for delivery and meets Mike and Speck & Jimmy. Clever Jimmy talks both the Colonel and Speck into taking on the Colonel's pure bred race horses at the track with comedic results.
Celeste Eltree [Chs. 1-4, 7]
A movie serial in 13 chapters: Some swampland becomes valuable, and various factions squabble over ownership of it.
Soubrette
The film concerns a family vaudeville troupe headed by patriarch Pete Monahan. Because of his love affair with the bottle, Pete manages to get himself and his family blacklisted from every major vaude house in the country. Though Pete's kids Jimmy and Patsy love their dad, they're forced to break away from the act and go off on their own to survive. Eventually, the whole gang is reunited in a shamelessly lachrymose musical finale.
Terry Vance
Gildersleeve, running for office, is aided by two ghosts and hindered by a mad scientist and an invisible woman.
Nurse (uncredited)
A young turn-of-the-century newspaper man finds he can get hold of the next day's paper. This brings more problems than fortune, especially as his new girlfriend is part of a phony clairvoyant act.
Ghost of Josephine
A WW-II defense plant worker gets knocked out and dreams about helping the war effort in various ways, including solving a crime.
Daisy Davenport
Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City. Preferring socializing to peacekeeping, Masterson falls in love with Dora Hand, the obligatory golden-hearted chorus girl whose concern for the welfare of her fellow citizens at time reaches Madonna-like dimensions. When Dora is shot down cattle baron King Kennedy, Masterson begins taking his job seriously. After taking care of Kennedy, Masterson determines to enshrine the memory of Dora, whose efforts to clean up Dodge City were largely ignored by the "decent" townsfolk.
Alice Angel
After one member of their group is murdered, the performers at a burlesque house must work together to find out who the killer is before they strike again.
Gloria
Bumbling reporter Robert Kittredge has been fired after bungling his latest assignment. His career isn't all he's botched up: his girlfriend Chris is tired of waiting for him to marry her. When he gets a hot tip on some Nazi spies operating in Washington, D.C., he convinces Chris to help him break the story so he can get his job back. The pair soon find themselves in several awkward predicaments as they track the criminals down in a night club, a burlesque show, and face a final showdown at a beauty salon.
Myrtle
Tim McGuerin and Eddie Corbett operates a big taxi-fleet company together and because of a misunderstanding Tim's wife Sadie thinks he is having an affair with his secretary, Ms. Lucy Gibbs. To annoy Tim, Sadie starts taking classes with a fitness instructor, Samson, and later going with him to his out-of-town health club. To sort out all the misunderstandings both Tim and Eddie go to the health club as well.
Diana De Corro
A pair of shipboard smugglers have a large diamond hidden inside a small elephant statuette, which they plant on absentminded Lord Epping to get it past customs. Now, his lordship is visiting Uncle Matt Lindsay who looks just like him. Thanks to flirtatious Diana's efforts to get the elephant back, the comic confusion proliferates, with 'spitfire' Carmelita (now a blonde) playing a prominent part.
Mimi Venus
Meek busboy Little Pinks is in love with an extremely selfish showgirl who despises and uses him.
'Squirrel' Grey
Ten screenwriters collaborated on this series of tales concerning the effect a tailcoat cursed by its tailor has on those who wear it. The video release features a W.C. Fields segment not included in the original theatrical release.
Sue, Blonde Piano Player
Director Rowland V. Lee's wacky 1942 comedy, about an absent-minded scientist working on a secret formula at an explosives plant, stars Edmond O'Brien, Victor McLaglen, Dorothy Lovett, June Havoc, Eddie Foy Jr., Marion Martin and Mary Gordon.
Mrs. Errol
Errol is a character actor who wears various makeups, costumes, and disguises when he goes home. His neighbors mistakenly suspect his glamorous young wife is playing around with strange men.
Fifi Russell
An advertising executive and his temperamental wife sail to Hawaii in search of business. The fifth entry (of eight) in the "Mexican Spitfire" comedy series.
Nurse
Young intern Jeff Burton, impulsively offers a lift to an odd-looking gentlemen. It soon turns out that Jeff's passenger is an inventor has just escaped from a shady sanitarium, where he has been held prisoner by Nazi spies.
Mrs. Gloria Weatherby
Jim is hardly thrilled when his new bride, Ellen, invites an old friend, Randy, over for dinner. Yet Jim turns genuinely dismayed once Randy arrives and turns out to be an insufferable, boorish braggart with bad manners and little self-awareness. That dismay turns to outright annoyance when Jim realizes Randy thinks he has come to stay for the weekend. How much damage to a marriage can one unwanted guest do in the space of one weekend?
Fifi
An advertising executive and his temperamental wife adopt a war orphan who turns out to be a beautiful woman.
Ruby / Mary Jordan
A Chicago gang led by Slade carries out an audacious brokerage robbery. Lieutenant Bill Mason takes the case, continuing his friendly-enemy relationship with crime reporter Ann Rogers. One gang member is caught; eventually, others follow. But Mason hasn't a clue to Slade, principally because he's unaware she's a woman.
Mitzi
The romantic story of Franz Schubert 's fight for recognition of his music. The 1941 Reinhold Schunzel biographical musical composer melodrama.
Flashy Blonde in Corridor
A young man in a small town wins $5000 in a radio contest. He goes to New York City to propose to his girlfriend, but gets mixed up with a crooked attorney and two con men...
Liza Hatrack
A family of hillbillies mistake a radio announcer for their long-lost relative.
Peggy Arden
A detective is hired to protect the life of a singer, who has recently inherited a department store, from the store's crooked manager.
Gertie
Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused the sleeping giant of feminism!
Wanda
A writer of pulp Westerns cranks out more words than his editor and publisher want to pay for.
Dawn
Robin Hoodish gangster in 1929 Chicago is an object of affection, kind to New York hood and bad to a bad crook.
Cornelia
The mysteriously ill John Braun makes a new will, leaving out his daughter Barbara, over the protests of his wife. The trouble began when the daughter wanted to marry Mr. Braun's doctor, James Rogers. Mrs. Braun asks Inspector Queen to help find the long-missing Barbara. The inspector's son, Ellery, works on the case. He goes to a home frequently visited by Dr. Rogers where the bell is answered by Nikki Porter who Ellery mistakes for Barbara and insists she return to the Braun home. Nikki does, to protect Barbara, and a short time later finds herself alone in a room outside Braun's bedroom. She finds him dead - his throat cut. No weapons are found and the door to the room where Nikki had been is locked, and she is suspected. Ellery hides Nikki in his apartment. Braun's body, sent for an autopsy, disappears and in its place is a life-sized statue of the dead man.
Blondie, Jewel Thief
A beautiful blonde places a stolen diamond on an unsuspecting man. Later, she returns to retrieve it.
Whitey
McMasters and Sand come to oil towns to get rich. Betsy comes West intending to marry Sand but marries McMasters instead. Getting rich and losing it all teaches McMasters and Sand the value of personal ties.
Evangeline (uncredited)
Hildy, the journalist former wife of newspaper editor Walter Burns, visits his office to inform him that she's engaged and will be getting remarried the next day. Walter can't let that happen and frames the fiancé, Bruce Baldwin, for one thing after another, to keep him temporarily held in prison, while trying to steer Hildy into returning to her old job as his employee.
Blonde (uncredited)
A gangster is unable to go straight after returning home from prison.
Mlle. de la Valliere
Tyrannical King Louis XIV learns that he has an identical twin brother, Philippe, who was raised from birth by his late father's trusted friend D'Artagnan and his faithful musketeers, Porthos, Athos and Aramis. After Philippe falls for the king's betrothed, Spanish Princess Maria Theresa, Louis imprisons him, forcing his brother to don an iron mask that will slowly suffocate him -- and it's up to D'Artagnan to rescue him.
Lola Snow
An egotistical boxer romances a rich backer's daughter.
Charlotte LePage
A dedicated police officer is torn between family and duty when his son turns to a life of crime.
Cafe waitress Barbara Whitney refuses to acknowledge her marriage to Air Policeman Nick Conlon until he upgrades his career. He does so by infiltrating a hi-jacking gang, posing as passengers, that robs airplanes carrying valuable items and money, and parachuting their escape from the scene of the crime.
Gypsy McCoy
A milquetoast clerk is betrothed to the socialite whose aunt holds a big account with his company.
Jane
A passenger ship unexpectedly runs into a typhoon.
Girl on Beach
McCrea plays Joe Meadows, whose only ambition as a Kansas farm boy was a life at sea. He moves to New York to try to get a job as a sailor, finds it more difficult than he thought, and meets Helen Brown, who falls for him and uses her feminine wiles to try to prevent him leaving.
Iris Compton
The survivors from a plane crash are washed up on an island where the only inhabitants are Mr. Taylor and his servant, Ping. The mismatched group must learn to get along and work together if they are to convince Taylor to let them borrow his boat and return to the main land.
Annabelle Postal -1st Prospective Bride
Because his family has a history of insanity that breaks out when a family member hasn't married by the time they are 25 years old, Nikolai Nikolaevich visits a matrimonial firm searching for a bride. But all the candidates are either too fat, too young, too old, too skinny or too ugly,and he turns them all down.
Professor Pierre is assigned to find a missing heiress whose fortune will go to a worthless relative if she isn't found. He uses most of his dialect ability in the search by posing as a Chinaman, an Englishman, a sailor and a Scotchman, but is unable to find her. He meets his sweetheart at a restaurant and, there, discovers she is the heiress he has been searching for. She breaks off their romance when she finds out she is rich.
A musical short about a young couple, an artist for an advertising firm and a hopeful model. They try a couple of schemes to get Sally a job with the firm.
Miss Brooks
A star goes on a cruise under a false name to enjoy his vacation. When people accidently believe he is a wanted criminal he performs a few acts to prove his real identity.
Theatre Cashier (uncredited)
Caddish lawyer Lee Gentry is going out with Katy Costello, but carrying on an affair with dancer Carmen Brown. When he wants to end the dalliance with Carmen, she is so distraught that she becomes suicidal. Seizing the gun from Carmen, he accidentally shoots her, and thinking she's dead, concocts a series of increasingly outlandish alibis to cover his tracks under the guidance of a ghostly apparition that is his alter ego.
The Blonde
As the rather fussy 'Mr. W' is dining in a restaurant, the waiter introduces him to an attractive woman, who sits down at his table. She asks him to take her to the theater, but he declines, indicating that he would prefer to relax at the restaurant. To entertain her, he teaches her a word game called the 'Minute Game'.
