Marjorie Lord

Biography

Poised and lovely Marjorie Lord started her long and varied career on the Broadway stage and in "B" films as a sweet-natured ingénue. Born Marjorie F. Wollenberg, of German and Czech heritage, on July 26, 1918 in San Francisco, California, her family transported themselves to New York City when she was 15. Here she enrolled in both acting and ballet at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Chaliff School of Dance, respectively. Marjorie's first job (billed as Marjorie Lord) was as a 17-year-old replacement on Broadway in "The Old Maid" starring Judith Anderson in 1935. Film parts from recently-signed RKO Studio started coming her way in 1937 with the Harry Carey western Border Cafe (1937); the murder mystery Forty Naughty Girls (1937); the Wheeler & Woolsey musical comedy High Flyers (1937); and a top role in the family drama The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939). She met actor John Archer after they appeared together in the stage production of "The Male Animal" and married at the end of 1941, they settled in Hollywood after playing Los Angeles in a stage tour of "Springtime for Henry" with Edward Everett Horton in 1942. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1953. Son Gregg avoided show business and became an airline pilot while daughter Anne Archer followed in her parents' footsteps as an actress. Marjorie earned a Universal contract in the process and throughout the 1940s and 1950s and would alternate between theater and film assignments. She returned to Broadway with the plays "Signature" in 1945 and "Little Brown Jug" a year later, returning a decade later as a replacement in the popular Moss Hart comedy "Anniversary Waltz" in the mid-1950s. Most of Marjorie's films were inconsequential and set her up as a pretty diversion -- Escape from Hong Kong (1942), Moonlight in Havana (1942) and The Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943). Some of her better films of that period included a loan-out, Johnny Come Lately (1943), with James Cagney, and Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) starring the irrepressible sleuthing team of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Freelancing from the late 1940s on, Marjorie was the co-star or second lead in such films as the jazzy musical drama New Orleans (1947) for Hal Roach Studios; the Universal crimers The Strange Mrs. Crane (1948) and The Argyle Secrets (1948) as a femme fatale; the Columbia action adventure Air Hostess (1949); the Tim Holt RKO western Masked Raiders (1949) in an interesting shady role; Monogram's Bomba the Jungle Boy offering The Lost Volcano (1950); the Columbia action drama Chain Gang (1950); and the amusing crime comedy Stop That Cab (1951). Moving more into the new 1950s medium of TV, Marjorie had guest parts on such shows as "Racket Squad," "The Adventures of Kit Carson," "China Smith," "Ramar of the Jungle," "Hopalong Cassidy," "The Loretta Young Show" and "Wagon Train," along with the anthology series "Four Star Playhouse," "Schlitz Playhouse," "Fireside Theatre," and "'Cavalcade of America." Marjorie greatest exposure, however, came in 1957 when she was cast as the second wife of widower/entertainer Danny Thomas in the long-established comedy hit The Danny Thomas Show (1953). She lucked into the role when Danny's "first wife" (played by actress Jean Hagen, best known for her classic role as screechy "Lina Lamont" in Singin' in the Rain (1952)) asked to leave the series and the writer had her character "die." Marjorie proved an able sparring partner for the comedian for seven more seasons, but was unsparingly typecast as the wholesome wife thereafter. Following this Marjorie appeared in a number of dinner theater productions for work, but would indelibly remain Kathy ("Clancy") Williams in the public eye and appeared very sparsely on TV ("Love, American Style") and film (fifth billed as the wife of Bob Hope in the comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)). As a result, she graciously returned to Danny Thomas and her famous TV wife role in the sequel series Make Room for Granddaddy (1970). Marjorie gently phased her career out for the most part after her third marriage in 1977, but could be seen from time to time in such programs as "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat." In 1987, she returned for a short-lived run on the domestic sitcom Sweet Surrender (1987) starring Dana Delany and Mark Blum, as the latter's mother. Her last camera appearance was a featured part in the "grumpy old men"-styled TV movie Side by Side (1988) starring Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and her TV husband Danny Thomas. Made a widow by her second and third husbands, Marjorie published her memoir, "A Dance and a Hug," in 2005. She died on November 28, 2015, age 97, in Beverly Hills, California, of natural causes.