Marion Burns

Marion Burns (August 9, 1907 – December 22, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television. Born in Los Angeles, California, she was the daughter of L. L. Burns, who founded Western Costume Company, a firm responsible for approximately ninety percent of film costuming in Los Angeles during the 1920s. Burns earned a bachelor's degree in dramatics from the University of California and gained early professional experience in stock theater before pursuing work on Broadway and in Hollywood.

Her Broadway appearances came in 1932 with two productions: the play Intimate Relations and the play They Don't Mean Any Harm. Burns had also been active in stock theater prior to her stage work in New York. Her film career began in 1931 with Oklahoma Jim, in which she starred opposite Bill Cody, a role that set her on a path of appearing as a heroine in Western films. That same year she appeared in The Golden West alongside George O'Brien. In 1932, she took a large supporting role in Raoul Walsh's comedy Me and My Gal, which starred Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett and afforded Burns considerable screen time.

Burns continued working steadily through the early 1930s. In 1933 she starred in Sensation Hunters opposite Preston Foster. Her busiest stretch came in 1934 and 1935, during which she appeared in six films. Among her 1934 credits was Devil Tiger, directed by Clyde E. Elliott, in which Burns performed her own scene involving a live python, physically contending with the snake to reach her co-star Kane Richmond's pistol. Also in 1934, she appeared in Born to Be Bad alongside Cary Grant and Loretta Young. Her most prominent film work came in 1935, when she starred opposite John Wayne in both The Dawn Rider and Paradise Canyon. Her final film of that period was the crime drama Rip Roaring Riley, opposite Lloyd Hughes, after which she stepped away from the screen for a decade.

Burns returned to performing on three separate occasions following 1935. In January 1936 she appeared in a stage production of Leaning on Letty at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles. In 1945 she appeared alongside her husband in the serial Brenda Starr, Reporter, which starred Kane Richmond and Joan Woodbury. Her third return came in 1961 with a single episode of the television series My Three Sons.

In her personal life, Burns married twice, both times to actors. Her first marriage, to Bruce MacFarlane, ended in divorce. She married Kane Richmond in 1934, though reports from January of that year indicated the couple had wed in secret in May 1933. Burns and Richmond had two daughters together. In her later years Burns settled in Laguna Niguel, California, where she lived until her death on December 22, 1993.