Marta Linden

Marta Linden, born Marta Leffler on October 24, 1903, in New York City, was an American actress whose career spanned film, television, and Broadway. The daughter of Swedish parents, she appeared on the New York stage from 1946 to 1954. She died on December 13, 1990, of pneumonia at Lenox Hill Hospital at the age of 87.

Linden's path to acting was not direct. In the 1920s she married Alfred Schmid, a businessman whose fortune was lost during the Great Depression. Following that financial reversal, she took work at a candy counter before concluding that Hollywood offered greater prospects. The family relocated to California, where Linden developed her skills at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, eventually taking on female lead roles. That stage work attracted the attention of film executives, and in 1942 she signed a long-term contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her MGM films included A Yank at Eton (1942), for which she became particularly well known through her appearance alongside Mickey Rooney, as well as Stand By for Action (1942), The Youngest Profession (1943), and Maisie Goes to Reno (1944).

Linden subsequently built a Broadway career, making her first appearance on the New York stage in the Noël Coward comedy Present Laughter in 1946, a production she also performed in its touring version. She returned to Broadway in The Men We Marry in 1948, followed by both The Curious Savage and Cry of the Peacock in 1950. Her final Broadway credit was The Starcross Story in 1954. That same year she appeared on the CBS television soap opera Woman with a Past.