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‘Make Room for Daddy’ star Marjorie Lord dies at 97

According to the Hollywood Reporter, she passed away from natural causes in her home in Beverly Hills. The family did not publicly announce her death until Friday in an obituary for the Los Angeles Times.

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Lord died at her home in Beverly Hills, and was on hospice care the last few weeks of her life.

I went on tour with the show, thus we fibbed about my age, adding two years. She made her Broadway debut at 16 in The Old Maid and later signed contracts with movie studios RKO and Universal. Though she was most successful on television, she considered herself a stage actress first, and continued to act on the stage through the 1970s. Among the films she appeared in through the 1930s and 40s were The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack, High Flyers, Sherlock Holmes in Washington, Escape from Hong Kong, and Chain Gang. But her big break came in 1957 when Danny Thomas handpicked her to replace the departing Jean Hagen as his wife on Make Room for Daddy. She portrayed a widow with one daughter who quickly fell for titular character Danny, additionally a widow with one child.In her personal life, Marjorie was married to show star of White Heat, John Archer, with whom she’d two kids, together with actress Anne.

Lord married producer Randolph Hale in 1958 and was widowed when Hale died in 1974.

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Marjorie had one grandson and a son, Gregg Archer, four other grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She served on various boards over the years, including the Joffrey Ballet and Friends of USC Library, where she helped found the Scripter Award for promising screenwriters.

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