Marjorie Steele, a pert blonde actress, had a short-lived film career, appearing in only four movies. Born on August 27, 1930, in Reno, Nevada, she was the daughter of a contractor who built a log cabin where she was raised.
Her family relocated to San Francisco when Marjorie was nine years old, and it was there that she developed an interest in acting. She began taking acting lessons and eventually won a scholarship to the Actors Lab in Hollywood.
To support herself during her early days, Marjorie worked as a cigarette girl at Ciro's, a top nightclub in Los Angeles. Her Cinderella story began when she caught the attention of multimillionaire Huntington Hartford, who not only signed her to a contract with his motion picture company but also married her in 1949, shortly after her 19th birthday.
Marjorie built her reputation on stage and appeared in two films produced by her husband: Hello Out There (1949) and Face to Face (1952). She also starred in two "B" films: Tough Assignment (1949) and No Escape (1953).
Marjorie's theater assignments earned her critical acclaim, particularly in her title role in "Sabrina Fair" in 1954, which played in London and on Broadway. She replaced Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie the Cat in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" before suddenly losing interest in her career and deciding to retire to raise a family.
Marjorie married British actor Dudley Sutton after her 1961 divorce from Hartford, with whom she had two children. However, this marriage lasted only a few years. Her daughter, who died of a drug overdose at the age of 28, predeceased her mother.
Marjorie's third husband was Irish author Major Constantine Robert Louis Lee-Dillon FitzGibbon, who wrote "When the Kissing Had to Stop" and "The Irish in Ireland," as well as being the biographer of friend Dylan Thomas. Together, they co-authored "Teddy in the Tree." FitzGibbon died of cancer in 1983, and Marjorie never remarried.
In her later years, Marjorie lived in Ireland, where she pursued her passion for painting and sculpting, earning commissions for her work. She passed away on January 19, 2018, in Dublin.
