Marguerite Chapman(1918-1999)
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Marguerite Chapman, a small-town secretary and tomboy nicknamed
"Slugger", became a model only after friends insisted "you oughta be in
pictures", and she went on to act in more than 30 movies. Never a
Hollywood wannabe, Chapman grew up in Chatham, New York, with four
brothers. She started working as a typist and switchboard operator in
White Plains, New York. Praised repeatedly for her beauty, she became a
John Powers model in New York City. After she had appeared on the
covers of enough magazines, studios beckoned her to Los Angeles. From
1940 to 1943 she appeared in 18 movies, ranging from
Charles Chaplin comedies to armed
services booster films as a member of the Warner Bros. singing and
dancing Navy Blues Sextet. Chapman was cast as the leading lady in
Destroyer (1943) with
Edward G. Robinson and Glenn Ford. During World War II she entertained troops, kissed purchasers
of large war bonds and appeared in a string of war-themed pictures. By
the 1950s, however, she had slipped into supporting roles, notably as
the secretary Miss Morris in
7 ans de réflexion (1955)
with Marilyn Monroe and
Tom Ewell. As her film career waned, she made
a few appearances on television, and appeared occasionally in small
theaters. Her last film,
L'incroyable homme invisible (1960),
was a low-budget sci-fi quickie shot by cult director
Edgar G. Ulmer in a few days on the
grounds of the state fair in Texas (she was asked to appear as "Old
Rose" Calver in Titanic (1997), but she
was too ill at the time, and the role went to
Gloria Stuart). She was married and
divorced from attorney G. Bentley Ryan and assistant director
Richard Bremerkamp. Her acting career
is memorialized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
