Mayo said her success came not only with the attention Goldwyn lavished on her but the grooming in poise, wardrobe and makeup that each actress received - something that ended with the demise of the studio system. “He kept working on me and it did take with the public because I had a very successful career.” I want to show you the screen test you did.’ And he’d drag me into the projection room. “He himself was so interested in developing me as a star that he used to call me every day and say, ‘I want to talk to you about what you did on the screen. “He guided my career so beautifully,” Mayo said of Goldwyn in 1981. Mayo was brought to the attention of Goldwyn, who signed her to a long-term contract, although her singing in movies was always dubbed by someone else. “I got my first chance on Broadway to really sing and dance.” “It was exciting,” Mayo recalled in 1981. Showman Billy Rose caught their act and put them into the revue at his Diamond Horseshoe nightclub. “After that, I began to sing in the act, too, using the same number.” Cantor used to sing a song to the horse, who appeared in a dream sequence in that musical version of ‘Three Men on a Horse,’ ” Mayo told The Times in 1944. In New York City in 1941, the act joined Eddie Cantor in his Broadway musical “Banjo Eyes.” She worked as the duo’s beautifully attired foil for five years, touring the country and taking her stage name, Mayo, from one of the comics. When a vaudeville act called “Pansy the Horse” came to town, the two comics who wore the horse costume asked Mayo to join them as the girl in the act. “I fell in love with the whole idea of being up there on stage, of wearing all those wonderful, beautiful costumes,” she told The Times in 1981.Īfter graduating from high school in 1937, Mayo broke into show business as a dancer with the St. She showed an early interest in show business and took drama, dance and elocution lessons at her aunt’s acting school. 30, 1920, Mayo was the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. “She played with all the big names of her era, in both comedies and dramas.”īasinger, author of the 1993 book “A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women,” said Mayo appeared in “films that guarantee her place in film history,” including “White Heat” and “The Best Years of Our Lives.” But she also “was a great foil for comedians, and that’s a difficult role to play, and she did it well,” Basinger said.īorn Virginia Clara Jones in St. “Virginia Mayo was one of the truly great beauties of her era, and I think that people forget what a big star she really was,” said Jeanine Basinger, head of the film studies program at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. issued an effusive press release that concluded: “At 115 pounds she is potentially as valuable as an acre of land in downtown Los Angeles - and at least several times more desirable.During the 1940s and ‘50s, Mayo appeared in more than 40 films, including “The Girl From Jones Beach” with Ronald Reagan, “Captain Horatio Hornblower” with Gregory Peck, “The Silver Chalice” with Paul Newman, “The Flame and the Arrow” with Burt Lancaster, “Along the Great Divide” with Kirk Douglas and “Colorado Territory” with Joel McCrea. When she signed the contract, Warner Bros. 17, 2005 at a nursing home in suburban Thousand Oaks, Calif. ** FILE ** Ronald Reagan appears with Virginia Mayo in a scene from the 1952 film \"She's Working Her Way Through College.\" Mayo, the stunning blonde actress who brought beauty and romance to films of 1940s and 1950s with such co-stars as James Cagney, Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Danny Kaye and Reagan, died Monday Jan. She went on to make five films with Kaye before signing a contract with Warner Bros., where she became one of the studio’s biggest stars. Starting as a chorus girl, she quickly advanced to co-star status, appearing opposite Hope in “The Princess and the Pirate” in 1944. “I really wanted to be a dancer, but I ended up as an actress, and I got to perform next to some of the greatest actors of our time,” she recalled in 2001. Her honey blonde hair and creamy, flawless face made Mayo ideal for the Technicolor musicals, westerns and adventures that were the rage in Hollywood in the 1940s and ’50s. “She passed away this afternoon,” longtime friend Mary Walsh told The Associated Press.
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