Born Today August 13: Mary Duncan

1895-1993

Stage and silent screen actress Mary Duncan was born Mary Annie Dungan on this day in Luttrellville, Virginia. She studied acting as a young child and actually made her Broadway debut in 1910 at the age of 15! She then went on to study for a time at Cornell, and would further go on to study acting with the famed French Cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert of Moulin Rouge fame. Though she is known for her roles in Hollywood films by people who follow talkies and pre-code films, she actually started in films in the late 1920's. While she may not be well known on lists of silent actors, she made quite the mark when first arriving in Hollywood. Her first film was in the Fox romantic comedy Very Confidential  starring Madge Bellamy in 1927.  She next turned up in another Bellamy comedy in the lead supporting of Loran Estabrook in Soft Living, also starring Johnny Mack Brown. Without a doubt her most famous turn in a silent film came in the first of two F. W. Murnau films that she would act it.  Duncan was cast in the now famously lost 4 Devils (1928); she is not famously attatched to this title because she took the lead--that went to Janet Gaynor. Duncan has been famously associated with the film ever since film historian and archivist William K. Everson claimed in 1974 that she was solely responsible for the lose of the film. She supposedly convinced the studio, years after it's release, to allow her to have a copy of the film to show to her friends at her palatial Florida home--it was, Everson said, the only copy of the film and, of course, it was nitrate. The story is that for some reason she threw it in the ocean (why??). In any case, how true every detail is to this account, no really knows, what is known is that it is one of the more famous lost Murnau and Fox films. She went on to appear in three more films before the end of the decade--all of them partial or full sound movies.  She had top bill starring roles in both The River (1928) and Thru Different Eyes (1929). The last of her 1920's films was the romantic western Romance of the Rio Grande directed by Alfred Santell.  Probably the best known film that she appeared in was another Murnau film and the first one of the 1930's (one of only two):  City Girl.  It would be her last starring role in what would turn out to be the short rest of her career. Despite that she was hailed as a super talent on the stage at such an early age, her talents did not translate well in Hollywood at all.  Her roles slowly diminished in importance and screen time and after her last film appearance in 1933, she gave up the profession altogether to marry a wealthy man and international polo star and become a socialite in Palm Beach, Florida.  Her last film appearance was in a very early Katherine Hepburn film Morning Glory (released August 1933).  She died there many, many years later at the age of 98 on the 9th of May at her Florida home. She is interred in a unique family plot at Green Hill Cemetery in Amsterdam, New York.

[Source: Emma Headstone (Find A Grave)]

[Source: Emma Headstone (Find A Grave)]

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