Marion Byron

Marion Byron

Born: March 16, 1911
Died: July 5, 1985
in Dayton, Ohio, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marion Byron (born Miriam Bilenkin; March 16, 1911, Dayton, Ohio – July 5, 1985, Santa Monica, California) was an American movie comedian. After following her sister into a short stage career as a singer/dancer, she was given her first movie role as Buster Keaton's leading lady in the film Steamboat Bill, Jr. in 1928. From there she was hired by Hal Roach to co-star in short subjects with Max Davidson, Edgar Kennedy, and Charley Chase, but most significantly with Anita Garvin, where tiny (4'11" in high heels) Marion was teamed with the 6' Anita for a brief three-film series as a "female Laurel & Hardy" in 1928–1929.

She left Roach before they made talkies, but she went on working, now in musical features, like the Vitaphone film Broadway Babies (1929) with Alice White, and the early Technicolor feature, Golden Dawn (1930).

Her parts slowly got smaller until they were unbilled walk-ons in films like Meet the Baron (1933), starring Jack Pearl and Hips Hips Hooray (1934) with Wheeler & Woolsey. Her final screen appearance was as a baby nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets in their film, Five of a Kind (1938).

Movies for Marion Byron...

Swellhead
Title: Swellhead
Character: Bessie
Released: May 4, 1935
Type: Movie
Baseball player Terry McCall is a very good baseball player, who doesn't mind bragging about his skills on the baseball diamond and also his off-the-field skills at wooing and winning women. An accident causes his luck to turn bad and results in him turning blind, but he later regains his sight after being instrumental in saving the life of Mickey Malone, the team's young mascot. He then promises Mary Malone, Mickey's sister, for whose affection he has been competing with a teammate, that he is through showing off and bragging. But, in the end, he is still blowing smoke.
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Gift of Gab
Title: Gift of Gab
Character: Telephone Girl (as Marian Byron)
Released: September 1, 1934
Type: Movie
Conceited radio announcer irritates everyone else at the station.
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It Happened One Day
Title: It Happened One Day
Character: Girl on Train
Released: July 7, 1934
Type: Movie
Charley meets his new boss--who has a lovely daughter.
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Susie's Affairs
Title: Susie's Affairs
Character: Virginia
Released: June 1, 1934
Type: Movie
Susie and her pals pretend they're society swells.
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Only Yesterday
Title: Only Yesterday
Character: Grace (Uncredited)
Released: November 1, 1933
Type: Movie
On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young business man is about to commit suicide. With the note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices a thick envelope addressed to him at the desk. As he begin to read, we're taken back to the days of WW1 and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.
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Meet the Baron
Title: Meet the Baron
Character: College Girl (uncredited)
Released: October 20, 1933
Type: Movie
A charlatan posing as Baron Munchhausen is invited to be guest speaker at a girls' school.
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College Humor
Title: College Humor
Character: Student
Released: July 5, 1933
Type: Movie
A college professor and the school's star football player are both rivals for the same beautiful coed.
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Breed of the Border
Title: Breed of the Border
Character: Sonia
Released: March 1, 1933
Type: Movie
Joe has Cowboy-Race Driver Brent drive him to the border where his men slug Brent, and he shoots Stafford and takes his bonds. Brent's old friend Chuck arrives and the two head out to find the gang and recover the bonds.
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The Crime of the Century
Title: The Crime of the Century
Released: February 18, 1933
Type: Movie
A doctor who is also a “mentalist” confesses to a murder. The only problem is that the murder he’s confessed to hasn’t happened yet – although dead bodies are now starting to turn up all over the place. A reporter sets out to solve the “mystery”.
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The Curse of a Broken Heart
Title: The Curse of a Broken Heart
Character: Little Ivy
Released: February 4, 1933
Type: Movie
Columbia Pictures short.
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They Call It Sin
Title: They Call It Sin
Character: Soda Jerk (uncredited)
Released: November 5, 1932
Type: Movie
An innocent, young, small-town church organist is thrown out of her home, told she was adopted, and that her mother was an evil woman. She follows a crush to the big city and is left fending for herself.
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Trouble in Paradise
Title: Trouble in Paradise
Character: Maid (uncredited)
Released: October 30, 1932
Type: Movie
Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.
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Love Me Tonight
Title: Love Me Tonight
Character: Bakery Girl (uncredited)
Released: August 18, 1932
Type: Movie
A Parisian tailor finds himself posing as a baron in order to collect a sizeable bill from an aristocrat, only to fall in love with an aloof young princess.
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The Tenderfoot
Title: The Tenderfoot
Character: Kitty
Released: May 23, 1932
Type: Movie
Calvin Jones is a cowboy who wants to invest in a Broadway play. Joe Lehman's secretary Ruth learns that her boss is attempting to swindle Jones and pulls a successful coup d'etat producing a play that she stars in.
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The Heart of New York
Title: The Heart of New York
Character: Mimi
Released: March 26, 1932
Type: Movie
A poor New York plumber's wife and children hope to move "uptown" from their lower East Side neighborhood after he sells his new invention.
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Running Hollywood
Title: Running Hollywood
Character: Marion Byron
Released: January 27, 1932
Type: Movie
Running Hollywood is a comedy short.
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Working Girls
Title: Working Girls
Character: Ellen
Released: December 12, 1931
Type: Movie
Two sisters from Indiana, the wide-eyed and innocent Mae Thorpe, and her more streetwise sister June, move into the Rolf House for Homeless Girls in New York. With June's help, Mae obtains a job as a stenographer for the scientist Joseph von Schraeder, while June gets work as a telegraph operator at Western Union.
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Children of Dreams
Title: Children of Dreams
Character: Gertie
Released: June 25, 1931
Type: Movie
One day, Molly Standing is picking apples in her father's apple orchard in California, with her friend Gertie (Marion Byron), when they meet two boys, Tommy Melville and Gus Schultz. Molly falls in love with Tommy while Gertie falls in love with Gus. They plan a double wedding.
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Girls Demand Excitement
Title: Girls Demand Excitement
Character: Margery
Released: February 8, 1931
Type: Movie
Peter Brooks is a hard-working, hard-up college student whose dislike of women attending college weakens under the amorous advances of spoiled socialite coed Joan Madison.
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The Bad Man
Title: The Bad Man
Character: Angela Hardy
Released: September 11, 1930
Type: Movie
Film version of a play about a Mexican bandit.
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The Matrimonial Bed
Title: The Matrimonial Bed
Character: Marrieanne
Released: August 1, 1930
Type: Movie
Five years after Adolphe's death in a train wreck, he is discovered very much alive and with amnesia. Unfortunately he and his first wife are remarried and with children.
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Golden Dawn
Title: Golden Dawn
Character: Joanna
Released: June 14, 1930
Type: Movie
Dawn, a young white girl who has been kidnapped in infancy and reared by Mooda, an African woman who operates a canteen in the German cantonment, meets and falls in love with Tom Allen, an English rubber planter who is a prisoner of war. Shep Keyes, who has joined the German troops, covets her but realizes he cannot possess her because she is betrothed to the tribal god, Mulunghu. On the eve of the ceremony, he learns of her love for Tom. Tom, meanwhile, is sent back to England, and when the English take the territory from the Germans, Shep tries to incite the natives, who are experiencing a drought, against Dawn because of her love of a mortal. Tom learns from Mooda that Dawn was stolen from a white trader and finds her seeking refuge in a convent. Shep arouses the natives, but Dawn declares her faith in the white man's God, and a thunderstorm brings relief to the parched land, after which Tom claims her for his bride.
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Song of the West
Title: Song of the West
Character: Penny
Released: March 15, 1930
Type: Movie
Captain Stanton, who because of a misunderstanding over a woman with Major Davolo, has been cited for a court martial. As a scout, he is sent to escort a wagon train which is under military escort. It turns out that this escort is his own former regiment. When he meet Davolo, there is another fight and between Stanton and Davolo in which Davolo is killed.
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Playing Around
Title: Playing Around
Character: Maude
Released: January 10, 1930
Type: Movie
New York girl has a dull boyfriend and seems destined for a dull marriage when she meets a rich playboy who has money to burn and places to go.
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Show of Shows
Title: Show of Shows
Character: Performer in 'Meet My Sister' Number
Released: November 21, 1929
Type: Movie
Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!
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The Forward Pass
Title: The Forward Pass
Character: Mazie
Released: November 10, 1929
Type: Movie
Marty Reid, the star quarterback at Sanford College, is constantly singled out by the opposition for punishment, and he swears to his pal, Honey Smith, and to Coach Wilson that he will quit the game forever. Ed Kirby, who dislikes Reid, calls him yellow, and Wilson gets Patricia Carlyle, the college vamp, to induce Reid to play. At a sorority dance, where only football players can cut in, Kirby persecutes Reid by dancing with Pat, and as a result Reid does apply to play in the game.
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So Long Letty
Title: So Long Letty
Character: Ruth Davis
Released: October 16, 1929
Type: Movie
Uncle Claude comes to the Ardmore Beach Hotel to see Tommy and his wife. At the hotel, with his two granddaughters Ruth and Sally, Uncle Claude meets a wise talking employee named Letty, which causes him to leave the hotel. When he finds Tommy, he mistakes Grace for his wife and likes her and the way she keeps a clean house. To get a big check from Uncle Claude and to see how life is with the other, the two couples switch spouses for a week.
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Broadway Babies
Title: Broadway Babies
Character: Florine Chanler
Released: June 30, 1929
Type: Movie
Dee is a naive chorus girl living in a boarding house full of low-paid actors. Dee and Billy are in love and he helps her to move from chorus girl to star. Things run afoul when jealousy, misunderstandings and sleazy men enter the picture.
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The Unkissed Man
Title: The Unkissed Man
Released: April 27, 1929
Type: Movie
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A Pair of Tights
Title: A Pair of Tights
Character: Marion
Released: February 3, 1929
Type: Movie
Two girls are invited by one of the girls boy-friend's tight boss for dinner. On the way they stop for a cheap ice-cream. But swinging doors, ventilators, cops and a brat make it nearly impossible to get the ice cream even close to the car where the rest are waiting.
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His Captive Woman
Title: His Captive Woman
Released: February 3, 1929
Type: Movie
Cabaret dancer Anna Janssen kills her sugardaddy and escapes to a South Seas island on the yacht of a wealthy admirer. Stolid, conscientious Tom McCarthy, a New York detective, is sent after Anna and arrests her, chartering a steamer to bring her back to the United States. The steamer sinks, and Anna and Tom are stranded on a small island. They fall in love, and Tom's influence brings about a benign change in Anna's character. They are rescued, however, and Anna is placed on trial for her life. Tom takes the stand in her defense and informs the judge of Anna's conversion in the solitude of the island. The judge instructs Tom to marry Anna and then sentences them to life--on the island where they found happiness together.
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Going Ga-Ga
Title: Going Ga-Ga
Character: Marion
Released: January 5, 1929
Type: Movie
Anita and Marion realize that an abandoned baby they sneaked into an orphanage was kidnapped from a millionaire. For the reward, they proceed to break into the institution at night, dressed as men to beat curfew, to get the kid out again. This film survives only in very fragmentary form.
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Feed 'em and Weep
Title: Feed 'em and Weep
Released: December 8, 1928
Type: Movie
Anita and Marion take a temporary job as waitresses in Max's diner, next to a train station. When the train stops off, pandemonium erupts when the passengers fill the diner and all want meals immediately. This film only survived in parts.
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The Boy Friend
Title: The Boy Friend
Character: Marion Davidson
Released: November 10, 1928
Type: Movie
The pretty daughter of a bank clerk meets a handsome college student who attempts to romance her. Due to the comical nature of the two kids meeting, the father suspects the student to be of ill repute and he and his wife conspire to scare him away by acting crazy.
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Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Title: Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Character: J.J. King's Daughter Kitty
Released: May 9, 1928
Type: Movie
The just-out-of-college, effete son of a no-nonsense steamboat captain comes to visit his father whom he's not seen since he was a child.