Mary Eaton(1901-1948)
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in January, 1901, Mary Eaton was one of
'The Seven Little Eatons'
famous in the '20s and '30s. In fact, she received the greatest fame of
her fellow performing brothers Joseph Eaton and
Charles Eaton
and sisters Pearl Eaton and
Doris Eaton. Sister Evelyn was a
stage manager and brother Robert was never lured into the business. The
star of both the 1920 and 1922 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, blond
Mary was Florenz Ziegfeld's backup in case his biggest star,
Marilyn Miller, proved too
recalcitrant. Eaton later replaced Miller as Eddie Cantor's leading
lady in the phenomenally successful Broadway hit_Kid Boots (1923)_ and
again in 1927 in Sunny. But Mary was a natural for talking picture
stardom and was teamed with an aging Broadway juvenile,
Oscar Shaw, in the Marx Brothers_The
Cocoanuts (1929)_. She followed that up in the lead role of the all
star cast_Glorifying the American Girl (1929)_. However, fame fades
quickly and the Eaton family found themselves unwanted by the end of
the '30s, on stage and on film. Mary, Pearl and Charles turned to
alcohol. Mary married three alcoholics and died young of severe
cirrhosis of the liver in 1948 aged 47. Pearl was murdered in her
Manhatten Beach apartment in 1958 aged 60. The crime has never been
solved. Charles died in 2004, aged 94. Doris died in 2010, aged 106.
