Cecilia Parker (April 26, 1914 – July 25, 1993) was a Canadian-American film actress. She was best known for portraying Marian Hardy, the sister of Andy Hardy, in twelve films of the Andy Hardy series.
Early life and career
Cecilia Parker was born in Fort William, Ontario, Canada on April 26, 1914, to parents Naudy Anna and Thomas J. Parker. Her father was from England, where he had served in the British Army. The family moved to Los Angeles, California when she was a child, and Parker graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in 1931. Parker was selected from among a group of extras to attend the Fox Film studio training school for younger players.
After playing the sister of Greta Garbo in 1934's The Painted Veil, Parker signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio wanted a blonde who resembled Garbo as a young girl. Her new contract called for a starting salary of US$75 (equivalent to $1,700 in 2023) a week and scaled up to $1,000 (equivalent to $20,700 in 2023) a week for the seventh year.
In November 1935, Parker purchased a new home in Beverly Hills, California. The following year she joined the ballet school of Dave Gould at MGM, along with Maureen O'Sullivan. By the fall of 1936, Parker was studying singing.
Parker was best known for playing Marian Hardy in the extremely popular Andy Hardy film series in the late 1930s and early 1940s.[1] She was in the original Hardy film, A Family Affair, in 1937. Mickey Rooney played Andy Hardy in the series, supported by Lewis Stone, Fay Holden and Parker portraying his family members, with Ann Rutherford as his sweetheart. Parker's character appeared in 12 of the 16 films, and her romances were a recurring feature of the series.
Though her Marian Hardy character was absent from the last two Andy Hardy films of the 1940s, Parker briefly returned to acting for the last Andy Hardy movie, 1958's Andy Hardy Comes Home; the attempt to revive and update the series was not a success. She made one last screen appearance, in a 1984 television adaptation of the novel Pudd'nhead Wilson, on the anthology seriesAmerican Playhouse.
Personal life
Parker's sister, Linda, was an actress who appeared in a number of uncredited roles in the early 1930s. Both sisters once tested for the same part in David Copperfield. Parker was a close friend of actress Anne Shirley; during the mid-1930s the two kept a standing dinner date on Thursday nights.
In 1938 she married actor Robert Baldwin,[3] who helped her to become a naturalized American citizen in 1940. The couple had three children together, a daughter and two sons.[4]
Death
On July 25, 1993, Parker died age of 79, after what The New York Times called "a long illness".[4]
