Mary Martin

The star of many classic stage musicals - including South Pacific, The Sound Of Music and Hello Dolly - Mary Martin was one of the best-loved American actresses and singers. The daughter of a lawyer and a violin teacher from Texas, Martin displayed her musical talents early in a trio of schoolgirls who sang on the bandstand with the local town band. Copying the singing technique of Bing Crosby and the dancing style of Ruby Keeler, she went to dance and theatre school in California and, after accidentally stumbling into an audition, was hired to sing at theatres in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Performing in night clubs in LA, she was spotted by the great songwriter Oscar Hammerstein and broke into the Broadway theatre in Cole Porter's Leave It To Me in 1938, stopping the show with her performance of My Heart Belongs To Daddy. Martin's subsequent Broadway stage successes included South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Hello Dolly and Peter Pan but, while she starred in nine films (including Birth Of The Blues (1941), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Night and Day (1946)), she professed not to enjoy making movies. She was married once at 17 and was the mother of the actor Larry Hagman (JR in the TV series Dallas) though she divorced following her move to California.

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