Mary Martin

She married Benjamin Hagman in 1930 at the age of 17 and the couple had a child, Larry Hagman. Since she was young and naïve, she didn’t fully understand and enjoy the responsibilities of being a wife. The couple separated in 1936.

She married Richard Halliday in 1940 and they remained married till his death in 1973.

In 1982, she met with a tragic accident which resulted in two of her ribs being fractured, a punctured lung and a fractured pelvis. One person travelling along with them died on the spot and the other died two years later after suffering from complications from the accident.

Mary Virginia Martin was born on December 1, 1913 to Preston Martin and Juanita Presley in Weatherford, Texas. She led a comfortable and happy childhood with her parents, who were extremely fond of her.

From a very young age, Martin was extremely talented at mimicking others and grew up like a tomboy. She would often climb trees along with her elder sister Geraldine or ride ponies to keep themselves occupied.

Her first public appearance was when she sang at a pavilion with two other girls, dressed in bellhop dresses. She was gifted with a graphic memory as a child and as a result, could memorize songs, mimicry or even acting.

When she was a teenager, she decided to get married and was forced to leave finishing school in Ward-Belmont, because she became pregnant.

Scared that she had made the wrong decision about getting married young, she looked for a way to vent her feelings, which she found through dance. It is believed that her sister was the first person who taught her how to dance the waltz clog.

In Hollywood, she attended a number of auditions which earned her the nickname, ‘Audition Mary’. At one of the auditions, Oscar Hammerstein II noticed her singing talent and immediately became the face behind launching her Broadway career.

Her first job was singing on radio in Dallas and in nightclubs in Los Angeles.

She made her Broadway debut with Cole Porter’s ‘Leave It to Me!’ in 1938. In the production, she sang, ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’, which made her an overnight star. The same year, she debuted with a motion picture, ‘The Rage of Paris’.

From 1940 to 1943 she starred in a range of movies including, ‘Love Thy Neighbor’, ‘Kiss the Boys Goodbye’, ‘New York Town’, ‘Birth of the Blues’, ‘Star Spangles Rhythm’ and ‘Happy Go Lucky’.

From 1943 to 1948, she appeared in multifarious theatre productions including ‘One Touch of Venus’, ‘Pacific 1860’, ‘Lute Song’ and ‘Annie Get Your Gun’.

One of her greatest achievements was playing the title character in the theatre production, ‘Peter Pan’, in 1954. She won a Tony Award for her performance as the lead character, ‘Peter Pan’. She even reprised her role for the television adaptation of the same, in 1960.