Born 1914 in Fort William, Ontario, Canada, Canadian-American actress Cecilia Parker was selected to play opposite George O’Brien in The Rainbow Trail (1932), and starred with Tom Tyler and Carmelita Geraghty in a 1932-1933 movie serial produced by Universal Pictures entitled Jungle Mystery. In July 1933, she was chosen to play the heroine in the Ken Maynard western, The Trail Drive (1933). That same year, she was John Wayne’s leading lady in one of the first singing cowboy movies, Riders of Destiny, and also appeared in Rainbow Ranch.
After playing the sister of Greta Garbo in 1934’s The Painted Veil, Parker signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio wanted a blonde who resembled Garbo as a young girl. Her new contract called for a starting salary of $75 a week and scales up to $1000 a week for the seventh year.
Parker was best known for portraying Marian Hardy in the extremely popular Andy Hardy film series in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She was in the original Hardy film, A Family Affair, in 1937.
Though Parker and the character she played were absent from the last two Andy Hardy films of the 1940s, she came out of retirement to play Marian Hardy in one more movie, in 1958. Andy Hardy Comes Home was an attempt to revive and update the series, but it was not a success.
Parker died in 1993 at the age of 79. Take a look at these vintage photos to see the beauty of young 1930s and 1940s.
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment