Dixie Dunbar

Christina Elizabeth Dunbar, known professionally as Dixie Dunbar, was born on January 19, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama, and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. A singer, dancer, and film actress, she began her training in dance during childhood and built her early performance experience singing and dancing in nightclubs.

Dunbar's Broadway career spanned from 1934 to 1939 and included three productions. She appeared in George White's Scandals in 1934, the same year she served as Ray Bolger's dancing partner in the revue Life Begins at 8:40, which played Boston before transferring to Broadway for a run through 1935. Her final Broadway credit was Yokel Boy, which ran from 1939 into 1940.

Her film debut came through George White's Scandals in 1934, the same production that marked her stage work that year. Throughout the 1930s, Dunbar appeared in multiple Twentieth Century Fox films, among them two entries in the Jones Family series.

Following her departure from Broadway and film, Dunbar returned to performing in nightclubs before eventually retiring from the stage. In the early 1950s she appeared in television commercials for Old Gold cigarettes, dancing inside a representation of a cigarette pack with only her legs visible to the camera.

Dunbar was married three times. Her first marriage, to choreographer Gene Snyder, lasted from 1941 to 1952. She was subsequently married to Robert M. Herndon from 1954 to 1957, and later to Jack L. King beginning in October 1958, a marriage that continued until his death. Dunbar died on August 29, 1991, in Miami Beach, Florida, at the age of 72, following a series of heart attacks.