Mary Halsey

Biography

Mary Halsey came from a prominent Milwaukee family. Her father was Jay S. Halsey, Western representative of the Ply metal company and her mother Zoe Halsey (1888-1965) was working as a interior decorator. The Halsey family went to California in the early twenties. Her parents divorced in 1924. Mary lived with her mother, brother William Henry Halsey and sister Betty in Beverly Hills. William Henry, her brother, died young. In the late twenties, Mary and her older sister Betty began working in movies. An uncle, Horace Halsey, worked as a set designer at one of the studios. In 1929, Mary Halsey was involved in a car accident when a man stepped from behind a parked car and walked in front of her car. The man, a tailor from Los Angeles, was struck and injured fatally by Halsey's car. Mary was not arrested and the coroner's jury held that she was not to blame for the man's death. She married several times; her husbands included Merrill Pye, the Hollywood art-director. She divorced Pye in 1940. She had one son, Jim, with Pye. She married Navy-officer Milton Hicks in 1944. Mary Halsey was also a Red Cross field worker and a member of the women's ambulance and defense corps. In WW 2, she was part of a RKO group who entertained the troops. Her sister Betty (1910-1996) married Maurice Geraghty, brother of movie-actress Carmelita Geraghty in 1932.