Mary Brian (born Louise Byrdie Dantzler), was an American actress, who made the transition from silent films to sound films. Brian was dubbed “The Sweetest Girl in Pictures.”
After her showing in a beauty contest, she was given an audition by Paramount Pictures and cast by director Herbert Brenon as Wendy Darling in his silent movie version of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. There she starred with Betty Bronson and Esther Ralston, and the three of them stayed close for the rest of their lives. Ralston described both Bronson and Brian as ‘very charming people’. The studio, who created her stage name for the movie and said she was age 16 instead of 18, because the latter sounded too old for the role, then signed her to a long-term motion picture contract. Brian played Fancy Vanhern, daughter of Percy Marmont, in Brenon’s The Street of Forgotten Men, which had newcomer Louise Brooks in an uncredited debut role as a moll.
Her first talkie was Varsity, which was filmed with part-sound and talking sequences, opposite Buddy Rogers. After successfully making the transition to sound, she co-starred with Gary Cooper, Walter Huston and Richard Arlen in one of the earliest Western talkies, The Virginian, her first all-talkie feature. In it, she played a spirited frontier heroine, schoolmarm Molly Stark Wood, who was the love interest of the Virginian.
Brian co-starred in several hits during the 1930s, including The Royal Family of Broadway, Paramount on Parade, and The Front Page.
After her contract with Paramount ended in 1932, Brian decided to freelance, which was unusual in a period when multi-year contracts with one studio were common. That same year, she appeared on the vaudeville stage at New York’s Palace Theatre. Also in the same year, she starred in Manhattan Tower.
When World War II hit in 1941, Brian began traveling to entertain the troops, ending up spending most of the war years traveling the world with the U.S.O., and entertaining servicemen from the South Pacific to Europe, including Italy and North Africa.Flying to England on a troop shoot, Mary got caught in the Battle of the Bulge and spent the Christmas of 1944 with the soldiers fighting that battle. She appeared in only a handful of films thereafter. Her last performance on the silver screen was in Dragnet, a B-movie in which she played Anne Hogan opposite Henry Wilcoxon. Over the course of 22 years, Brian had appeared in more than 79 movies. She played in the stage comedy Mary Had a Little… in the 1951 in Melbourne, Australia, co-starring with John Hubbard.
Like many “older” actresses, during the 1950s Brian created a career for herself in television. Perhaps her most notable role was playing the title character’s mother in Meet Corliss Archer in 1954. She also dedicated much time to portrait painting after her acting years.
Mary Brian Biography / Wiki
| Name | Mary Brian |
| Also Know | The Sweetest Girl in Pictures (nickname) |
| Gender | Female |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Corsicana, Texas, USA |
| Date of Birth | 1906-02-17 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 96 |
| Deathday | 2002-12-30 |
Mary Brian Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Manhattan Tower | Mary Harper | 1932-12-01 | The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor…. |
| The Marriage Playground | Judith Wheater | 1929-12-12 | A delightful pre-code cocktail recipe. Take three couples (add gin and tonic), their several divorces and the seven children/stepchildren of their int… |
| One Year Later | Molly Collins | 1933-08-24 | A man is convicted of killing his boss, whom he suspected of having an affair with his wife. On board the train taking him to prison for his execution… |
| Monte Carlo Nights | Mary Vernon | 1934-05-20 | A man wrongfully convicted of murder escapes custody and goes in search of the real killer. The problem is that he only has one clue to go on…. |
| Captain Applejack | Poppy Faire | 1931-01-30 | An ordinary man is confronted by gangsters who have reason to believe a treasure is buried somewhere on his property…. |
| Fog | Mary Fulton | 1933-11-11 | The murders are committed in swift succession on board a liner crossing the Atlantic in a dense fog, and many of the passengers come under suspicion b… |
| Killer at Large | Linda Allen | 1936-10-27 | A master of disguise poses as a wax figure to rob a safe of its jewels…. |
| Charlie Chan in Paris | Yvette Lamartine | 1935-01-21 | Charlie’s visit to Paris, ostensibly a vacation, is really a mission to investigate a bond-forgery racket. But his agent, apache dancer Nardi is kille… |
| The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss | Frances Clayton | 1936-07-28 | A bored millionaire wagers his doctor that he can support himself at a working class job for year without touching his inheritance…. |
| Blessed Event | Gladys Price | 1932-09-10 | A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press…. |
| Man on the Flying Trapeze | Hope Wolfinger | 1935-08-03 | Hard-working, henpecked Ambrose Ambrose Wolfinger takes off from work to go to a wrestling match with catastrophic consequences…. |
| The Man I Love | Celia Fields | 1929-05-25 | Wellman’s first all-talkie, scripted by Herman Mankiewicz, with arrogant boxer Richard Arlen romancing Mary Brian, then falling for temptress Olga … |
| Moonlight and Pretzels | Sally Upton | 1933-08-01 | A song plugger is stranded in a small town. There he meets a girl who later helps him to put on a show on Broadway…. |
| Hard to Handle | Ruth Waters | 1933-01-28 | A hustling public relations man promotes a series of fads…. |
| The Light of Western Stars | Ruth Hammond | 1930-04-19 | A friend of Dick Bailey is killed by a mysterious assailant, whom Dick suspects to be Stack, who is in league with the crooked sheriff. Out on a spree… |
| Only the Brave | Barbara Calhoun | 1930-03-07 | Cooper is a Union Army officer who after being jilted by girlfriend, Virginia Bruce, volunteers on what could be a suicide mission. He volunteers to g… |
| It’s Tough to Be Famous | Janet Porter McClenahan | 1932-04-02 | Scotty, an unwilling Navy war hero is cast into the limelight. He wants to get married and be an engineer, but is forced to fulfil the expectations of… |
| Affairs of Cappy Ricks | Frances ‘Frankie’ Ricks | 1937-05-24 | Cappy Ricks, a crusty old sea captain, returns home from a long voyage to discover that his family and his business are in chaos–his daughter is set … |
| Navy Blues | Doris Kimbell | 1937-03-29 | A sailor bets his friends he can get a date with any woman they choose. They pick out a librarian with glasses and a bookish appearance. When he pursu… |
| The Run-Around | Evelyn | 1931-08-21 | Filmed in an early Technicolor process, The Runaround tells the story of Broadway dancer Evelyn who refuses to play the gold-digging games indulged in… |
| Burning Up | Ruth Morgan | 1930-02-02 | Racecar-driver Lou Larrigan gets mixed up with a crooked gang of racetrack promoters, and is in love with Ruth Morgan, whose father is marked as a vic… |
| The Social Lion | Cynthia Brown | 1930-06-21 | Marco Perkins is a garage mechanic and a would-be-prizefighter who gets a place on the ritzy country club’s polo team because he is the town’s most pr… |
| Danger! Women at Work | Pert | 1943-08-23 | Three women inherit a 10-ton truck and decide to go into business. Hi jinks ensue…. |
| River of Romance | Lucy Jeffers | 1929-06-28 | Mississippi, 1830’s. Tom Rumsford comes back to Magnolia Landing, his parents’estate. Having been brought up in the North by Quaker relatives, he just… |
| The Kibitzer | Josie Lazarus | 1930-01-11 | In this comedy, a Yiddish fellow cannot keep from kibitzing into other people’s lives. Trouble ensues when he is mistakenly given a huge fortune in st… |
| Harold Teen | Lillums Lovewell | 1928-04-28 | Farmboy Harold moves to the city and there attends high school. Soon he is very popular, his spirited nature causing much excitement on the campus. He… |
| Ever Since Eve | Elizabeth Vandergrift | 1934-03-25 | Neil Rogers, a young man who owns a substantial share of a Western gold mine, comes East and falls in love with the rather wild Elizabeth Vandegrift…. |
| I Was a Criminal | Frau Obermueller, the Mayor’s Wife | 1945-01-01 | In Prussia shoemaker Voight needs a residence permit to get a job, but can only get a job if he already has a permit. He dons a captain’s uniform to o… |
| More Pay – Less Work | Betty Ricks | 1926-07-04 | Albert Gran and E.J. Ratcliffe are warring San Francisco shipping magnates; Mary Brian is Gran’s daughter and Charles (Buddy) Rogers is Ratcliffe’… |
| Gun Smoke | Sue Vancey | 1931-04-10 | Following a killing and robbery in a big city back east, gang leader Kedge Darvas and some of his henchies take a train to a small western town in Ida… |
| Black Waters | Eunice | 1929-04-05 | A mad captain poses as a cleric to murder people aboard a fogbound ship…. |
| Dragnet | Anne Hogan | 1947-08-16 | Scotland Yard Inspector Geoffrey James comes to the United States looking for a band of international gem-thieves who have smuggled a rich load of jew… |
| Stepping Along | Molly Taylor | 1926-11-14 | Johnny Rooney is a fast-stepping young politician and Molly Taylor is an even faster-stepping showgirl in “George White’s Scandals” in a tale of New Y… |
| He’s a Prince! | Girl | 1925-10-05 | Prince Alexis is the son of the king of a small European country. His duties, though fairly unimportant, nevertheless keep him so busy that he has no … |
| Knockout Reilly | Mary Malone | 1927-04-16 | A Malcolm St. Clair silent boxing sports romantic love triangle prison melodrama about a steel worker who saves a girl in a bar fight by knocking out … |
| Once in a Million | Suzanne | 1936-08-03 | Fantasy of a bank clerk who accepts a deposit of a million too late to put it in the bank and has to guard it over the weekend…. |
| Under the Tonto Rim | Lucy Watson | 1928-02-04 | Gold miner Edd Denmeade loves Lucy Watson, the sister of the official mining claim recorder. Denmeade suspects Watson of killing his father, who after… |
| Man Power | Alice Stoddard | 1927-07-09 | Caterpillar-tractor operator Tom Roberts’ mission is to deliver a fragile cargo of dynamite, to be denoted for the purposes of redirecting an anticipa… |
| Shanghai Bound | Sheila | 1927-10-15 | Landing at a Chinese port, tough sea captain Bucklin and his passengers are threatened by a marauding war lord, who intends to kill the captain and ho… |
| The Front Page | Peggy Grant | 1931-04-04 | Hildy Johnson is an investigative reporter is looking for a bigger paycheck. When an accused murderer escapes from custody, Hildy sees an opportunity … |
| The Royal Family of Broadway | Gwen Cavendish | 1930-12-22 | Julie Cavendish comes from a family of great Broadway actors. Her mother Fanny staunchly continues acting. Her boisterous brother Tony is fleeing a br… |
| Homicide Squad | Millie | 1931-08-01 | The police use a gangster’s son to get to him…. |
| The World Gone Mad | Diane Cromwell | 1933-04-15 | A district attorney and a reporter try to find the killer of a D.A. who uncovered a massive stock fraud…. |
| Only Saps Work | Barbara Tanner | 1930-12-05 | Rubber-legged comedian Leon Errol made his talkie starring bow in Paramount’s Only Saps Work. Based on a play by Owen Davis Sr., the film casts Erro… |
| Girl Missing | June Dale | 1933-03-04 | Kay and June, two showgirls, are hurt when they seek financial help from Daisy. On Daisy’s wedding night when she is rendered missing, Kay and June de… |
| Calaboose | Doris Lane | 1943-01-29 | A love-smitten cowpoke acciidentally causes a horse stampede…. |
| Spendthrift | Sally Barnaby | 1936-07-22 | A profligate, polo-playing playboy (Henry Fonda) is married to a beautiful but superficial heiress (Mary Brian). They divorce, and the wife gets all t… |
| Brown of Harvard | Mary Abbot | 1926-05-02 | Tom Brown shows up at Harvard, confident and a bit arrogant. He becomes a rival of Bob McAndrew, not only in football and rowing crew, but also for th… |
| Partners in Crime | Marie Burke, The Cigarette Girl | 1928-03-01 | After being dismissed for imitating his boss’s voice on radio, former Assistant District Attorney Richard Deming witnesses a store robbery and is take… |
| The Street of Forgotten Men | 1925-07-24 | Easy-Money Charley, the best fake crippled beggar in New York, loses his beloved dog and adopts a dying prostitute’s daughter to fill the empty place … | |
| Paris at Midnight | Victorine Tallefer | 1926-04-17 | In a Paris boarding house, a mysterious stranger seems to somehow solve the problems and conflicts of the residents, all the while hiding a secret of … |
| Behind the Front | Betty Bartlett-Cooper | 1926-02-22 | During World War I a young man joins the army and winds up befriending another young recruit, not knowing that it’s the same pickpocket who stole his … |
| The Air Mail | Minnie Wade | 1925-03-15 | Russ Kane obtains work as a pilot in the airmail service with the purpose of robbing the mails. However, during his training period at the Reno field,… |
| Song of the Eagle | Elsa Kranzmeyer | 1933-04-27 | This drama centers on the fight for certain post-Prohibitionist groups to gain total control over the liquor industry. Much of the tale is focused upo… |
| I Escaped from the Gestapo | Helen | 1943-05-14 | A forger is forced to work for a Nazi spy ring. His conscience gets the better of him, though, and he secretly conspires with the FBI to turn over the… |
| Running Wild | Elizabeth Finch | 1927-06-10 | Cowardly Elmer Finch is browbeaten by his wife, daughter, fat son and the family dog. After hypnosis he is domineering. He enters a contract with a fi… |
| Two Flaming Youths | Mary Gilfoil | 1927-12-17 | Sheriff Ben Holden is in love with hotel owner Madge Malarkey when down-and-out carnival man Gabby Gilfoil shows up hoping to take her for some money…. |
| The Unwritten Law | Ruth Evans | 1932-11-26 | A film producer is found murdered on a ship, and among the suspects are a young woman whose mother was mistreated by him and his recently fired electr… |
| The Virginian | Molly Stark Wood | 1929-11-09 | A good-natured cowboy who is romancing the new schoolmarm has a crisis of conscience when he discovers his best friend is engaged in cattle rustling…. |
| Three Married Men | Jennie Mullins | 1936-09-24 | Jennie Mullins and her fiancé Peter Cary are happily in love but their families are miserable about their relationship. The Carys and Mullinses have … |
| Forgotten Faces | Alice Deane | 1928-08-05 | A petty thief (Clive Brook) just robs the very rich at speakeasies, and gets away with it because the rich don’t want the bad publicity, finally is ca… |
| Peter Pan | Wendy Darling | 1924-12-29 | Peter Pan enters the nursery of the Darling children and, with the help of fairy dust, leads them off to Never Never Land, where they meet the nefario… |
| The Big Killing | Mary Beagle – Old Man Beagle’s Daughter | 1928-07-01 | The Beagles and the Hickses are two mountain families that have been feuding all their lives. The Hickses come up with a plan to get rid of their enem… |
| The Enchanted Hill | Hallie Purdy | 1926-01-18 | Based on a Peter B. Kyne novel, The Enchanted Hill featureds a triangle romance between Jack Holt, rancher’s daughter Mary Brian and jealous foreman R… |
| Beau Geste | Isabel Rivers | 1926-08-24 | Michael “Beau” Geste leaves England in disgrace and joins the infamous French Foreign Legion. He is reunited with his two brothers in North Africa, wh… |
| The Prince of Tempters | Mary | 1926-10-17 | … |
| Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove | Herself | 1934-12-01 | Several members of MGM’s ‘galaxy of stars’ attend an evening of music and a fashion show…. |
| College Rhythm | Gloria Van Dayham | 1934-11-23 | The story deals with the college rivalry of a piccolo player and an All-American halfback on the football team who both love the same co-ed. After gra… |
| Paramount on Parade | Sweetheart (Dream Girl) | 1930-04-22 | This 1930 film, a collection of songs and sketches showcasing Paramount Studios’ contract stars, credits 11 directors… |
| Galas de la Paramount | (from original version) | 1930-07-31 | Spanish-language version of PARAMOUNT ON PARADE (q.v.), with new sequences of interest to Spanish-speaking audiences mixed with original- version sequ… |
Credit: TMDB
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