Marjorie Montgomery is an American former child dancer and actress. She appeared in vaudeville and later in motion pictures, before becoming a noted fashion designer.
Career
Montgomery was born in Sikeston, Missouri, on 27 May 1912. As a young girl she was in a group of traveling vaudeville players of the Junior Times Club in Los Angeles, California. Accompanied by truckloads of ice cream, Montgomery and the others entertained children at hospitals. In May 1924 she performed as an eccentric dancer at the Orthopedic and Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. In 1925 Montgomery entered the Mary Pickfordsilhouettecontest which selected a lookalike of America's sweetheart. Other aspiring young actresses like Virginia Davis, Cecilia Parker, and Mary Kestner, also submitted photos. As a seventeen-year-old Hollywood High School student, Montgomery acted the part of a maid in the stage playBad Babies. An attorney for the California StateDepartment of Industrial Relations ruled that the theme of the production was too risque for a minor actress to appear in. Montgomery was required to wait until her eighteenth birthday in 1930 to participate. She became upset over the ruling. Her mother, Mrs. Marie Cleveland, hired a private tutor so that Montgomery would comply with the Los Angeles, California compulsory school laws. An understudy, Dorothy Gould, took over the role. Montgomery's film career as an actress was quite brief. She has an uncredited role as a student in Freshman Year.
Designing
Montgomery started out designing and manufacturing attractive cotton dresses in the mid-1920s. By 1940 she was noted for her designs in cotton and for having promoted bare-midriff beachwear and bathing costumes for several seasons. In 1953 Montgomery stated that she had 28 years of experience to her name. In 1965 she was described as one of the "great" and "traditional" Californian designers. Montgomery was a costume designer for the Republic Pictures movie Outside of Paradise.
