Martin, Mary (Virginia)

Martin, Mary [Virginia] (1913–90), actress and singer. One of the most popular of all contemporary performers, she was born in Weatherford, Texas, and worked as a dance instructor and nightclub entertainer before making her show‐stopping New York debut singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in Leave It to Me! (1938). After a brief but successful career in films, she returned to Broadway in One Touch of Venus (1943) and Lute Song (1946). One of her most memorable roles was the spirited Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1949), about which Brooks Atkinson recalled, “Miss Martin acted. . .with insight and relish; and as a musical‐stage virtuoso she made the songs express the subtle qualities of a disarming human being.” Turning to comedy, she played the actress Jane Kimball in Kind Sir (1953). Martin then triumphed in a series of hit musicals: Peter Pan (1954), the governess Maria in The Sound of Music (1959), Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! on tour and in London, and the wife Agnes in I Do! I Do! (1966). Her rare Broadway flops were as the actress Jennie (1963) and the elderly Lidya Vasilyevna in Do You Turn Somersaults? (1978). Stanley Green wrote that the attractive, wholesome performer “combined naive charm and buoyant enthusiasm with a warm and rangy soprano.” Autobiography: My Heart Belongs, 1976.