Mary Carlisle, who enjoyed some popularity as an actress in the 1930s and was known to be the last of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932, has died. She was among the longest lived of all Hollywood performers, but she felt it wasn't anybody business how old she was.
Her age was generally regarded as 104, but I have seen her birthdate going as far back as 1910. In any case, it was an impressive, long life.
As noted in the obituary, she appeared in 60 films over a period of a dozen years before retiring from the screen. She had a long marriage of some 65 years before her husband died in 2007.
She was in films like 1934's Palooka, which starred Jimmy Durante. I saw the film a few years ago, and I was shocked to find out Mary Carlisle was still alive.
There is nothing like family connections to get started in a career:
Gwendolyn Witter was born in Stockton, Calif., likely on Feb. 3, 1914, but some sources say 1912. She grew up with her mother in Los Angeles.
Thanks to a family connection — her uncle Robert Carlisle was a film editor and producer — she learned of a casting call for chorus girls at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. With more ambition than dancing experience, she raced to find a dancing instructor and barely mustered a rudimentary time step before her tryout.
She was astounded to find herself hired. “Of course, they soon found out I couldn’t dance, so I was made a substitute,” she told a reporter a few years later. “The girls were always deviling me by saying they’d turn an ankle and that I’d have to go on for them. I was petrified, but I only had to dance in once picture, and that was just a flash.”
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