Mary Eaton - Success Onstage and Onscreen

Success Onstage and Onscreen

Of all of the Eatons, Mary was perhaps the most famous and the most popular. An exceptionally talented dancer, she earned raves in a production of Intime in Washington DC in 1917. The same year, she made her Broadway debut in the Shubert Brothers' Over the Top with Fred and Adele Astaire. Throughout the 1920s, Eaton was a constant presence on Broadway, appearing in eight different productions.

She was featured in three editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, those of 1920, 1921, and 1922. Eaton's trademark dance routine, which she performed in the Follies, involved a complicated sequence of pirouettes around the stage en pointe.

Eaton also had a brief film career, appearing in two important early talkies: The Cocoanuts (1929) with the Marx Brothers (in which she reprised her role from the Broadway version) and Glorifying the American Girl (1929), which included a brief Technicolor sequence, was produced by Flo Ziegfeld, included a cast of stage notables, and was shot on location in New York. Eaton's singing and dance routines, including her signature pirouette sequence, were featured. The film's commercial failure, however, signaled the end of Eaton's starring career onscreen.