Mary Duncan

Mary Duncan (August 13, 1894 – May 9, 1993) was an American stage and film actress born in Luttrellville, Virginia, the sixth of eight children of Captain William S. Duncan and his wife. She attended Cornell University for one to two years before committing to an acting career, subsequently studying the craft under Yvette Guilbert.

Duncan began performing on Broadway as a child in 1910 and remained active on the stage through 1926. Her Broadway credits include Welcome to Our City (1919), Face Value (1921), The Egotist (1922), New Toys (1924), Human Nature (1925), and All Wet (1925). Her final Broadway appearance came in 1926, when she took on the role of Poppy in The Shanghai Gesture, a commercially successful and controversial production in which Florence Reed portrayed her mother, a character known as Mother Goddam, who kills her daughter in the play's climactic conclusion. The Shanghai Gesture was later adapted into a film in 1941, starring Gene Tierney, in a considerably sanitized version.

Duncan subsequently pursued a film career, appearing in director F. W. Murnau's City Girl in 1930. The years that followed proved difficult professionally; a 1931 article by Florabel Muir in the New York Daily News noted that Duncan had spent much of the previous year in Hollywood seeking work without success, and had even undergone changes to her appearance in pursuit of roles. Her final film credit was Morning Glory (1933), which starred Katharine Hepburn.

On September 1, 1933, Duncan married Stephen "Laddie" Sanford, an international polo player and director of the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, and retired from performing. The couple remained married until Sanford's death in 1977. Duncan spent her later years engaged in charitable work and became known as a socialite in Palm Beach, Florida. She died in her sleep at the age of 98 and was survived by a niece and a great-niece. Duncan was the last known person to have held a copy of Murnau's lost film 4 Devils, and Martin Koerber, curator of Deutsche Kinemathek, has speculated that her heirs may still possess the print.