Marguerite Churchill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marguerite Churchill (born December 25, 1910, Kansas City, Missouri - d. January 9, 2000) was an early movie actress with a film career spanning from 1929 to 1952, and played leading lady to 23-year-old John Wayne in The Big Trail (1930), an early widescreen epic featuring Wayne's first leading role.
She also appeared opposite Spencer Tracy in Quick Millions (1931), George O'Brien in Riders of the Purple Sage (1931), Charles Farrell in Girl Without a Room (1933), and Boris Karloff in The Walking Dead (1936).
Churchill appeared in more than 25 films and was married to her one-time costar George O'Brien from July 15, 1933 until their divorce in 1948; they had three children, one of whom was novelist Darcy O'Brien, whom she outlived by two years. Her daughter Orin O'Brien has played double bass for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra since 1966. A third child, Brian, died in infancy in 1934.
After her divorce from O'Brien, she appeared in one movie and a few television plays. In 1954, she announced her engagement to Peter Ganine, a sculptor. It is unclear whether they ever married.
In 1960, she moved to Rome, Italy and in 1970 to Lisbon, Portugal. She came back to the United States in the 1990s to live near her son, Darcy.
She died in 2000, aged 89, on January 9, 2000 of natural causes in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
