Mary Brian: Silent Film Star Who Transitioned to Talkies (1906–2002)

Mary Brian, a silent movie star who made a successful transition to “talkies” and continued working in movies through 1947, was born Louise Byrdie Dantzler on February 17, 1906, in Corsicana, Texas. Some references give 1908 as the year of her birth, but this is likely because Paramount Pictures shaved two years off her age to make her appear more age-appropriate for the role she played in her motion picture debut (she was eighteen years old, but promotional materials claimed that she was sixteen). Her father, Taurrence J. Dantzler, was a jeweler, who died of heart failure one month after she was born (he is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana). Her mother, Louise Byrd (Greene) Dantzler, moved with Louise and her older brother, Taurrence Jr., to Dallas, where Louise attended Bryan Street High School (later known as Crozier Technical High School, among other names). In the early 1920s the family moved to Southern California.

Silent Film Career

Soon after the move, Louise Dantzler participated in a beauty contest. One of the judges, actress Esther Ralston, was only four years older than her but was already working steadily in films. Shortly thereafter, Ralston and Louise performed alongside each other in Peter Pan (1924), the first film version of James M. Barrie’s play, which had premiered on the stage twenty years earlier.

Having interviewed a number of ingénue hopefuls for the role of Wendy Darling, the film’s director, Herbert Brenon, chose Louise, not just because she was appropriate for the part but also because he wanted to cast an unknown. Paramount Pictures gave her the screen name Mary Brian and signed her to a long-term contract. Ralston portrayed Wendy’s mother, and the two actresses became lifelong friends. Peter Pan, noted for its special effects, was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and placed in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2000.

Paramount promoted Brian as “the sweetest girl in pictures,” and she appeared regularly on the covers of magazines and did advertisements for Lux soap. Brian played the ingénue through the silent era and appeared in many features (four in 1925, eight in 1926, seven in 1927, and seven in 1928). Many of the films are lost (meaning there are no prints known to exist), as is the case with most movies made during the silent era. Some, however, have survived. Perhaps the best-known is Beau Geste (1926, also directed by Brenon) with Ronald Colman in the title role. Another is Forgotten Faces (1928), directed by Victor Schertzinger. Also available is Running Wild (1927), a comedy in which Brian played the daughter of W. C. Fields. This proved to be the first of three films in which she played Fields’s daughter. However, the second, Two Flaming Youths (1927), is lost.

In 1926 Brian was named one of the WAMPAS (Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers) Baby Stars. It was an annual promotional campaign designed to draw attention to contract players who were adjudged rising stars. Few such prospects panned out. The 1926 WAMPAS roster was the exception, as it also included Fay Wray, Joan Crawford, Dolores Costello, Dolores del Río, Mary Astor, and Janet Gaynor.

Transition to Sound

Brian made her sound film debut in the part-talkie Varsity (1928) opposite Buddy Rogers. She made a strong impression during the sound era when she played Molly Stark Wood, the schoolteacher courted by Gary Cooper, who played the titular lead in The Virginian (1929). In 1930 she appeared in The Royal Family of Broadway, based on a play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman. Loosely based on the famed Barrymore family, the film was directed by George Cukor and Cyril Gardner.

Like other studios, Paramount occasionally “loaned out” its contract players to other studios. One example was Brian’s appearance in The Front Page (1931) for producer Howard Hughes, who released the film through United Artists. Based on the Ben Hecht–Charles MacArthur Broadway hit, the film was directed by Lewis Milestone and placed in the National Film Registry in 2010.

In 1932 Paramount chose not to renew Brian’s contract. One factor was the Great Depression, as the film industry was not immune to the effects of the economic downturn. (Paramount filed for bankruptcy in 1933). Though Brian’s ingenue years were over, she continued her career as a freelance talent in more mature roles opposite many of the leading men of the day. She worked with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in It’s Tough to Be Famous (1932); Dick Powell in Blessed Event (1932); James Cagney in Hard to Handle (1933); Pat O’Brien in The World Gone Mad (1933); Henry Fonda in Spendthrift (1936); and Cary Grant in The Amazing Adventure, one of three films that Brian made in England in 1936 (the others were Once in a Million and Two’s Company). During her post-Paramount period, she also appeared in vaudeville revues with Ken Murray.

Of all the films Brian made during her freelance period, perhaps the best-known is The Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935), the third film in which she played the daughter of W. C. Fields. The film is widely considered one of Fields’s better features. By then Brian had become one of Fields’s neighbors in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was an early member of the Screen Actors Guild, founded in 1933. In 1937 she made two movies for Republic Pictures, Navy Blues and Affairs of Cappy Ricks, before temporarily retiring from film.

Later Career and Personal Life

In gossip columns, Brian was often rumored to be involved with any number of leading men (including Dick Powell, Cary Grant, and Buddy Rogers), yet she remained single through the height of her career. On May 4, 1941, she married Jon Whitcomb, a magazine illustrator, in Hollywood. Whitcomb had met her in New York. They took up residence in Darien, Connecticut, but on August 7, Brian was granted a divorce from Whitcomb on grounds of mental cruelty.

Returning to the screen, Brian made occasional (five) film appearances in the 1940s. During World War II she entertained troops on USO tours in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. She spent Christmas 1944 with soldiers who were fighting the battle of the Bulge. In the South Pacific in 1945, she toured on the Enola Gay, the B-29 that had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Brian’s last feature film was Dragnet in 1947. On June 26 of that year she married George Tomasini, a highly regarded film editor. Among his credits were Stalag 17 (1953), The Time Machine (1960), The Misfits (1961), and Cape Fear (1962). He was best-known for his work for Alfred Hitchcock—Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). Though Brian did not appear in any of Hitchcock’s films, he allowed her to paint his portrait—Brian dedicated much of her time to painting after she retired from films and television. She made occasional appearances on television shows in the 1950s. Her most prominent role was as a regular cast member (the mother of the title character) in the sitcom Meet Corliss Archer (1954).

In 1960 Brian was awarded a star (located at 1559 Vine Street) on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Brian and Tomasini remained married until he died of a heart attack while on a camping trip in 1964. Mary Brian died at the age of ninety-six on December 30, 2002, at a retirement home in Del Mar, California. She was buried next to Tomasini at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. She had no children but was the godmother of Stuart Erwin, Jr., son of actors Stu Erwin and June Collyer.