Honoring the memory of actress Marie "The Body" McDonald who was born this day, July 6, 1923.
Marie McDonald, born Cora Marie Frye, in 1923 in Kentucky. Blessed with striking beauty and it only seemed natural that she would opt for a career in entertainment as her mother was a former Ziegfeld Follies performer, and her grandmother had been an opera singer. Her parents divorced when she was just six years old, and after her mother remarried, the family relocated to Yonkers, New York.
In Yonkers, Marie attended Roosevelt High School, where she developed her talents in piano and wrote for the school newspaper. Her academic promise even earned her a journalism scholarship offer from Columbia University, but her attention was focused on show business and at age15, she began working as a model for the prestigious Powers agency, lying about her age to get the job. She left high school and threw herself into the world of beauty pageants, winning titles such as “Miss Yonkers” and “The Queen of Coney Island.” By 1939, she had secured the title “Miss New York,” though she fell short at the “Miss America” competition.
The accolades from these pageants opened the door to Broadway, where Marie joined the cast of George White’s Scandals of 1939. This, in turn, led her to Los Angeles, where she pursued work in film and singing. She landed chorus line jobs and even performed on Tommy Dorsey’s radio show, later joining other orchestras as well. Universal Studios eventually signed her to a contract, but her roles were disappointingly minor, often limited to line or two. Determined to gain attention, Marie leaned heavily on publicity stunts to keep herself in the spotlight.
Nicknamed “The Body” by press agents—a moniker that stuck—Marie became known for her striking physicality, even though her acting talent failed to make a lasting impression. She landed a few film roles, including parts in "Guest in the House" (1944), Living in a Big Way (1947) alongside Gene Kelly, and "Tell It to the Judge" (1949). One notable missed opportunity was the lead role of Billie Dawn in "Born Yesterday", a career-defining part that ultimately went to Judy Holliday. Unfortunately, Marie struggled to connect with audiences, and her film career never gained sustained traction and her career stagnated.
Marie’s personal life garnered more attention than her professional endeavors. Her seven marriages, multiple scandals, and relentless attempts to stay in the headlines kept her firmly in the public eye, though not always for the right reasons. Her tumultuous life took a darker turn as she descended into alcohol and drug addiction. Legal troubles and frequent mental health crises followed, painting a picture of a woman besieged by internal and external struggles.
Her final notable screen appearance came in Jerry Lewis’s 1958 comedy "The Geisha Boy", where she played a haughty movie star caught up in slapstick antics. By the 1960s, however, her career had largely faded. Tragically Marie died in 1965 at the age of 42.
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