Mary Martin

Mary Virginia Martin, born December 1, 1913, in Weatherford, Texas, was an American actress and singer whose career on Broadway spanned several decades. She died on November 3, 1990. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman.

Martin grew up in Weatherford, where her father, Preston Martin, practiced law and her mother, Juanita Presley, taught violin. As a child she demonstrated a photographic memory and an early aptitude for performance, singing in a trio with her sister Geraldine and Marion Swofford at a bandstand near her father's courthouse on Saturday nights. She developed her skills as a mimic by watching films, winning prizes for imitating performers including Ruby Keeler and Bing Crosby. During high school she dated Benjamin Hagman, whom she married on November 3, 1930, at Grace Episcopal Church in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The marriage produced one child, Larry Hagman, before ending in divorce. Following her sister's suggestion, Martin opened a dance studio, and her desire to expand her training led her to attend the Franchon and Marco School of the Theatre in California and later to open a second studio in Mineral Wells, Texas. It was during this period that she learned to sing into a microphone and to phrase blues material. An accidental entry into an audition room resulted in her first professional engagement, and subsequent bookings at the Fox Theater in San Francisco and the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles followed. Among her early auditions, she sang "Indian Love Call" for a panel that included Oscar Hammerstein II, who told her he believed she possessed something special.

Martin made her Broadway debut in November 1938 in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me!, a production that transformed her into an overnight star through her performance of the comic striptease number "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." The song brought her widespread attention in the national media and remained personally significant throughout her life. Her Broadway credits from the period 1928 to 1942 include Johnny 2 X 4, Young Madame Conti, Achilles Had a Heel, The Well of Romance, and the play Diamond Lil, among other productions. In 1943 she starred in the Kurt Weill musical One Touch of Venus, followed by Lute Song in 1946.

Martin originated the role of nurse Nellie Forbush in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, opening on Broadway on April 7, 1949, and earning a Tony Award for the performance. She reprised the role in the West End production, which opened on November 1, 1951. In October 1954 she took on the title role in the Broadway production of Peter Pan, winning a second Tony Award. She subsequently originated the role of Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music, opening on Broadway on November 16, 1959. Over the course of her career she accumulated four Tony Awards and an Emmy Award. In 1989 she was named a Kennedy Center Honoree.

Martin's radio career began in 1939 as the vocalist on a short-lived CBS revival of The Tuesday Night Party. In 1940 she sang on NBC's Good News of 1940, which was later renamed Maxwell House Coffee Time. In 1942 she joined the cast of Kraft Music Hall on NBC, replacing Connee Boswell, and also appeared as one of the stars of Stage Door Canteen on CBS, a role she continued through 1945. She additionally appeared in the Hollywood film Night and Day, a biographical picture about Cole Porter in which she played herself auditioning for Porter, portrayed by Cary Grant, and reprised "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" in that context.