Mary Martin

Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress, singer, and Broadway star. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was also the mother of actor Larry Hagman.

Early life

Martin was born in Weatherford, Texas. Her life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and happy. She had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an instinctive ear for recreating musical sounds.

Martin's father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer, and her mother, Juanita Presley, was a violin teacher. Although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy. Her birth was an event as all of the neighbors gathered around Juanita's bedroom window, waiting for the raising of a curtain to signal the baby’s arrival.

Mary Martin (missionary)

Mother Mary of the Incarnation Martin, M.M.M., (1892–1975) was the Irish foundress of the Catholic religious institute of the Medical Missionaries of Mary.

Early life

She was born Marie Helena Martin in Glenageary, County Dublin, Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, on 24 April 1892, the second of the twelve children her parents Thomas Martin and Mary Moore were to have. In 1904, while attending classes for her First Holy Communion, Martin contracted rheumatic fever, which was to affect her heart permanently. Tragedy hit the family on St. Patrick's Day 1907, as her father was killed in what was presumed to be an accidental shooting. Later her mother sent her to schools in Scotland, England and Germany, all of which she left as quickly as possible.

Upon the outbreak of the First World War, Martin joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a division of the Red Cross, and helped with the nursing of wounded soldiers brought back from the front. Her own brother, Charles, was soon sent to fight in the campaign of Gallipoli. In October 1915, she was assigned to work in Malta. Here she helped there for the thousands of soldiers being brought back from that battle. Learning that her brother had been declared missing in action, she sought to gain information about his fate from the returning soldiers. Learning little of use added to her stress and she began to long to return home. The family finally learned that Charlie had been killed in the conflict, dying of wounds received at the battle. She returned to Ireland in April 1916. While she was at sea, the Easter Uprising took place in Dublin, which was to lead to the establishment of the Republic of Ireland.

Mary Martin (artist)

Mary Adela Martin (née Balmford) (16 January 1907 in Folkestone – 9 October 1969 in London) was a British sculptor best known for her work with her husband Kenneth Martin.

Mary Balmford studied at Goldsmiths' College, London in 1925–9 and at the Royal College of Art 1929–32 where she met and married Kenneth Martin in 1930. Exhibited at the A.I.A. from 1934, mainly as a still-life and landscape painter, using her maiden name. During the war Mary taught drawing, design and weaving at Chelmsford School of Art 1941–4 but gave this up when she became pregnant with her first child. Along with her husband, Mary Martin moved towards pure abstraction in the late 1940s painting her first abstract picture in 1950, made her first reliefs in 1951 and her first free-standing construction in 1956. Kenneth and Mary collaborated on the Environment section of the seminal exhibition This Is Tomorrow. Mary Martin participated in group exhibitions of constructed art in England and abroad, notably Konkrete Kunst, Zürich 1960, and Experiment in Constructie, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1962. Martin designed a screen for the Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast (1957), reliefs for the Orient Line's S.S. Oriana (1960) and a wall construction for the University of Stirling.