1. Mary Eaton was an American stage actress, singer, and dancer in the 1910s and 1920s, probably best known today from her appearance in the first Marx Brothers film, The Cocoanuts.
14 Facts About Mary Eaton
1. 2.
Mary Eaton appeared in another early sound film, Glorifying the American Girl.
3.
In 1911, all three sisters were hired for a production of Maurice Maeterlinck's fantasy play The Blue Bird at the Shubert Belasco Theatre in Washington, DC While Mary Eaton had a minor role in the show, it marked the beginning of her career in professional theatre.
4.
In 1915, all three sisters appeared in a new production of The Blue Bird for Poli; Doris and Mary Eaton were given the starring roles of Mytyl and Tytyl.
5.
Mary Eaton was featured in three editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, those of 1920,1921, and 1922.
6.
Mary Eaton had a brief film career, appearing in two important early sound movies that were filmed at Paramount's New York studios in Astoria, Queens.
7.
Mary Eaton was the ingenue in The Cocoanuts, the first film starring the Marx Brothers, and might have gone on to play similar featured roles in early talkies.
8.
Paramount gave Mary Eaton the starring role of an ambitious shopgirl who goes into show business and fights her way to the top, with little regard for her friends and colleagues.
9.
Mary Eaton's singing and dancing routines, including her signature pirouette sequence, were featured, but they couldn't overcome her limited screen personality.
10.
Mary Eaton's speaking voice on film was a carefully affected, high-pitched twitter that enunciated dialogue carefully, probably a remnant of her stage training.
11.
Mary Eaton's actual speaking voice, without the affectation and in a lower, more realistic range, can be heard briefly in Glorifying the American Girl.
12.
Many of the Eaton siblings, including Mary, found their careers waning in the early 1930s.
13.
Mary Eaton married Millard Webb in the summer of 1929.
14.
Mary Eaton died at age 47 in Hollywood, California of a heart attack.