Marion Martin was born in Philadelphia and grew up going to private schools and living an entitled Main Line life of as the daughter of a Bethlehem Steel executive. In 1929, her family’s fortune was wiped out in the stock market crash. Twenty year-old Marion pursued a career in show business to help her family’s financial situation. Florenz Ziegfeld signed her to replace famed exotic dancer Gypsy Rose Lee in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. Her popularity led her to Hollywood where, after a few small, uncredited roles, she got her big break in James Whale’s desert island adventure Sinners in Paradise in 1938. Marion starred alongside the top names in Hollywood, such as Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, Lucille Ball and Clark Gable. She even had the back of her dress clipped out by Harpo Marx in the Marx Brothers’ 1941 retail romp The Big Store. Although she found steady work throughout the 1930s and 40s, Marion was typecast as the one-dimensional brassy, buxom blond in countless films.
Not content with the roles she was offered, Marion retired from show business, became happily married and quietly devoted the rest of her life to charitable causes. Still expressing a desire to return to movies in the right role, Marion passed away in 1985 at the age of 76.
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “obsession”.
Regular readers of my blog (all four of you) are already familiar with my obsession — the one aside from drawing.
I love old movies, Hollywood scandals, obscure actors and actresses and stories of untimely demise. So, how do I satisfy all of those interests at one shot? I visit cemeteries, specifically the ones that are the eternal home to the famous, infamous and almost famous.
It all started on a trip to Cleveland to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After a full day of touring the museum (jammed with its share of tributes to famous dead people), my family and I ate dinner at the Cleveland branch of the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain. As is the case with touristy restaurants, the friendly waitress asked us the standard questions posed to out-of-towners —where we were from? how long are you in town? what have you visited? Then she recommended an unusual spot for sightseeing - Lake View Cemetery. She told us that it is the final resting place of James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States and one of eight presidents from Ohio. We finished our dinner, paid and headed back to our hotel - all the while intrigued at the thought of visiting a cemetery.
On our way home to Philadelphia, we stopped at Lake View. Without a map or guidance of any kind, we blindly drove the narrow, winding roads through the grassy expanses of headstones. Garfield’s grave is housed in a huge terra cotta decorated structure that stands tall above the grounds. In addition, Lake View is home to John D. Rockefeller, G-Man Eliot Ness and Ray Chapman, the only baseball player killed as a result of an injury received during a game. It was very cool.
And so it began, my death obsession became even more intensified.
You can see where my obsession has brought me (with my poor family, in tow) at these links:
Enjoy! I know I did.
