In a way, cemeteries are like libraries. They contain the final resting places of thousands of people, each with their own separate and unique story. Some of these people are famous, and their stories are well known. Most are not, but that doesn't make their life any less interesting or their stories any less worthy of being told and remembered.
From a very young age, Marjorie White was on a path to stardom. Born Marjorie Ann Guthrie in Winnipeg, Canada, she started her entertainment career when most children her age were just preparing for kindergarten. During World War I, she toured the U.S. and Canada with a troupe of child performers to raise money for wounded Canadian soldiers, then she toured the vaudeville circuit with a musical-comedy act.
White made her Broadway debut in January 1926, at the age of 21, and over the next few years, she shared the stage with performers including Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr, Elisha Cook Jr., Buddy Rogers and Lupe Velez. White could sing, dance and act, in both comedies and dramas.
When the movies started to talk, White went to Hollywood, and made her film debut with a starring role in "Happy Days" (1929), an all-star musical extravaganza featuring Janet Gaynor (shortly after she won the first Academy Award as Best Actress), Charles Farrell, Warner Baxter, Dixie Lee, Rex Bell, George Jessel, Victor McLaglen, Will Rogers, Frank Albertson and El Brendel, and also marked the film debut of Betty Grable.
During her brief 15-year film career, White appeared on screen in comedies, dramas, musicals and murder mysteries, with everyone from Bela Lugosi to Joan Crawford, Maureen O'Sullivan to Wheeler and Woolsey, and Clark Gable to the Three Stooges.
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White was born July 22, 1904, in Winnipeg, Canada, the first of five children of Robert and Nettie Guthrie. Her father worked as a grain merchant. Showing an interest in entertaining at a young age, Marjorie started to enter local talent shows when she was 4 years old. After Canada entered World War I in 1914, groups of children were formed to entertain and raise money for the returning wounded troops, and Marjorie joined a group of about a dozen children called "The Winnipeg Kiddies."
Marjorie, who sang, danced and gave patriotic recitations, quickly became one of the young stars of "The Winnipeg Kiddies," as the group toured the U.S. and Canada. By 1920, Marjorie was 16, and too old to be considered a "Kiddie," so she left the group and returned home to Winnipeg. The following year, she left Canada and headed for San Francisco, where she and Thelma Wolpa, another former member of "The Winnipeg Kiddies," came up with a musical-comedy vaudeville act.
Marjorie and Thelma were both petite blondes, so they decided to present themselves on stage as "The White Sisters" -- a surname which they both embraced for the rest of their careers.
The White Sisters toured the U.S. and Canada with their musical comedy act, and eventually added dancer Edwin Tierney to their performances. Marjorie and Edwin were married, likely while on tour, at the Pickwick Arms hotel in Greenwich, Conn., on Aug. 10, 1924, a few weeks after her 20th birthday.
Thelma White appeared in nearly 30 films from 1930 to 1948, but is best known for her role in "Tell Your Children" (1936), an anti-marijuana film that was re-released in 1972 as "Reefer Madness, and has since become a cult classic.
Marjorie made her Broadway debut in January 1926, in a featured role in "Hello Lola!," a musical-comedy which featured Jay C. Flippen and Elisha Cook Jr. in his Broadway debut, at the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre. Next, she appeared in "Ballet Moderne" at the Gallo Opera House in 1928, then "Lady Fingers" at the Liberty Theatre in 1929.
Later in 1929, Hollywood studios started coming to Broadway, searching for performers for their new "talking pictures," and Marjorie White signed a contract with Fox Studios. After appearing in the all-star revue "Happy Days" in 1929, White appeared in nearly a dozen movies in the next three years -- including "Sunny Side Up" (1929), with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell; the Oscar-nominated "Just Imagine" (1929), with El Brendel and Maureen O'Sullivan; "Oh, For a Man" (1930), with Jeanette MacDonald and Reginald Denny; "Broadminded" (1931), with Joe E. Brown; "Charlie Chan Carries On" (1931), with Warner Oland; "The Black Camel" (1931), with Oland, Sally Eilers and Bela Lugosi; "Possessed" (1931), with Joan Crawford and Clark Gable; and "Diplomaniacs" (1931), starring Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey.
Although most of her film roles were supporting roles or small, uncredited performances, White won the Photoplay award for "Best Performance of the Month" for "Sunny Side Up" (December 1929) and for "Happy Days" (May 1930).
By 1930, Marjorie and Edwin Tierney were renting a home on Manola Way in the Hollywood Hills above Hollywood Boulevard. While Marjorie was making films, her husband opened a dance school on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, Calif.
In March 1932, White returned to Broadway, appearing as "Toodles Smith" in "Hot-Cha!" at the Ziegfeld Theatre. The musical comedy, which ran for three months and 119 performances, also featured Bert Lahr, Lupe Velez, Eleanor Powell, Buddy Rogers and Dorothy Flood.
After the play, White returned to Hollywood, and co-starred in 1934 with the Three Stooges in their first comedy short without their former leader, Ted Healy -- "Woman Haters."
"Woman Haters," the first short in the Stooges' 25-year history with Columbia Pictures, was unique among the Stooges shorts, with all of the dialogue delivered in a semi-musical rhyme, and was presented as a "musical novelty," not a comedy short. Moe, Larry and Curly didn't go by their real names, as they did in their later shorts. Their characters were "Tom," "Jim" and "Jack," respectively. (White was "Mary.") And, for the first and only time in a Stooges short, Larry Fine got the starring role as the romantic lead, and White was their first "leading lady."
In the film, the Stooges join a club called the "The Women Haters," and pledge to never marry or have anything to do with women. Shortly after, Larry announces that he's met a woman (White), fallen in love, and they plan to get married, and Moe and Curly unsuccessfully try to talk him out of it. (When Marjorie asks Larry about his "WH" Women Haters pin, he tells her that it stand for "Wonderful Honeymoon.") After Larry reluctantly marries his fiance, Moe and Curly follow the newly married couple on their honeymoon trip, still trying to break up the couple.
As an early short, the Stooges haven't completely adopted their more familiar screen traits and mannerisms. There's lot of face-slapping, eye-poking and toe-biting, but Moe is just beginning to assume the role of group leader, and Curly is still speaking in a normal, masculine voice.
"Woman Haters" would be Marjorie White's final film appearance.
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Late in the evening of Monday, Aug. 19, 1935, a little more than three months after the release of "Women Haters," White was out with a small group of friends that included her husband Edwin Tierney, Marlow M. Lovell, William B. Mackey and former Ziegfeld Follies performer Gloria Gould. Initially, Mackey and Gould were riding in the car driven by Lovell, and White was in the car driven by Tierney. But Lovell was driving an open-top roadster and Gould was without a coat, so she switched places with White.
Shortly after midnight, on Aug. 20, 1935, the two cars headed south on Roosevelt Highway (now the Pacific Coast Highway), from Pacific Palisades toward Santa Monica, with Tierney and Gould driving ahead of the car driven by Lovell, with White and Mackey as his passengers.
Marchesi and his passenger, Elizabeth L. Barnett Marchesi, had gotten married less than an hour before the incident. Neither were seriously injured.
Lovell and Mackey both suffered bruises and were taken to Santa Monica Hospital, but they weren't seriously injured. White suffered a broken shoulder and three broken ribs, and was taken to Hollywood Hospital, where she was initially expected to make a full recovery. A further examination revealed that she also suffered a ruptured liver and other internal injuries. Despite emergency surgery and blood transfusions, White died from internal bleeding the following day, Aug. 21. She was 31.
White is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, with her birth date incorrectly listed as 1907.
At a coroner's inquest following her death, it was determined that White's death was caused by Lovell's reckless driving. Police officers at the inquest testified that Lovell's car was on the wrong side of the road when it collided with Marchesi's vehicle.
At the inquest, Tierney testified, "We had just passed a truck and I turned to see Lovell's car, which was following us, crash headlong into a car coming from the opposite direction."
Following the inquest, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office announced plans to file a manslaughter charge against Lovell. Tierney also announced plans to file a $50,000 damage suit against Lovell (about $1.1 million today), and also against Marchesi, and Max Lowenberg, the owner of the car Marchesi was driving.
There's no available information or documentation on whether any charges were ever filed against Lovell, or the settlement of any lawsuits related to the incident. There's also no publicly available evidence of any court proceedings. In the years following the accident, Lovell continued to be listed in public documents as living with his mother on North Highland Avenue, and working as a salesman.
The death of Marjorie White wasn't the last time that her widower, Edwin Tierney, appeared in newspapers in 1935. On Dec. 8, 1935, less than four months after his wife's death, Tierney took Evelyn Marie Flynn Riker -- the 25-year-old widow of wealthy New York City businessman and millionaire Samuel Riker -- to Palm Springs, Calif., to attend the wedding of Riker's sister -- actress and dancer Kitty O'Dare, to Franklin Stevens Jr.
After the wedding, O'Dare and Stevens chartered a plane to Ensenada, Mexico, to continue the wedding celebration.
"I was deathly afraid of flying and refused to go," Evelyn Riker said later. "So they gave me brandy to steady my nerves, and that's all I remember."
The next day, the plane returned to the United States, and landed in Yuma, Ariz., where Riker and Tierney were placed in a taxi by O'Dare, and were taken to be married, after they woke up the county clerk and justice of the peace. O'Hare later said the marriage was her idea, and a joke.
After the marriage ceremony, Riker quickly filed for an annulment in Riverside County, and Tierney did not object. The sloppy handwriting and corrections on the affidavit for a marriage license seem to support the idea of a "brandy marriage," and the annulment was approved by the court.
Edwin Joseph Tierney died on Oct. 4, 1959, in Los Angeles County, at the age of 62. He served in the U.S. Army infantry for two years during World War I, including nearly a year overseas in France and Belgium. He's buried at the Los Angeles National Cemetery.
Previous Grave Spotlights
Periodically, we'll spotlight a different Los Angeles-area grave. Every person has a story, and we will use this space to tell their story, through their final resting place.
Marjorie White
(July 22, 1904 -- Aug. 21, 1935)
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