Marjorie Bentley

Marjorie Bentley was an American dancer and Broadway performer born in the 1890s, with roots in Philadelphia and Brooklyn, where she was raised. She began dancing on the recommendation of a doctor who prescribed more exercise, and went on to train at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School under ballet teacher Malvina Cavallazzi, whose favorite pupil she was considered to be.

Bentley worked as a professional dancer from her teenage years. In 1913, Boston artist Louis Kronberg created a pastel portrait of her. By 1914, she had begun appearing on the New York stage, with a role in the musical Chin Chin, which ran through 1915. That same year, she served as premiere danseuse at the New York Hippodrome, where she appeared in Hip-Hip-Hooray. In 1916, she modeled a dress made of net flouncing for a garment industry magazine, and during World War I she contributed a recipe for welsh rarebit au gratin to a charity cookbook compiled by Mabel Rowland.

Bentley continued building her Broadway career with an appearance in The Riviera Girl in 1917, followed by Oh, My Dear! in 1918. Her final Broadway credit of the decade was La, La, Lucille in 1919, in which she played the role of Mademoiselle Victorine. Critic Dorothy Parker noted her performance in that production, writing that the comedy introduced a charming new dancer in Bentley and that audiences could endure even another bedroom farce for the sake of seeing her. Bentley subsequently toured in La, La, Lucille through 1919 and into 1920, capping a Broadway career that had spanned from 1914 to 1919.