Ex-Member of Ziegfeld Follies Group Dies at 87

Marion Pauline Moore, who danced with the famed Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s when she was just a teenager, died Friday at home in her sleep. She was 87.

Using the stage name Marion Wellman, Moore danced with the troupe before the bright lights of Broadway and toured the country in musical revues before settling in California, where she also appeared with the Follies in several movies, her sister, Marjorie Colombo of Fullerton, said.

“Ever since she was a little girl, she knew she wanted to be a dancer,” Colombo recalled. “She was very happy dancing on stage.”

When theatrical producer Florenz Ziegfeld introduced his Follies in 1907, the lavish musical revues were billed with the slogan “Glorifying the American Girl.”

Featuring stunning young women in revealing costumes and towering headdresses, the Follies helped create a new ideal for feminine beauty that emphasized the dancers’ slender, graceful build.

Ziegfeld’s annual shows, which also featured the work of popular composers, librettists and comedians, ran through the early 1930s.

Moore retired from dancing in the 1930s after she married and had a son, but she continued to regale her friends and her four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren with tales of her glamorous stage days, Colombo said.

She kept her dancing outfits, shoes, yellowed newspaper articles about the shows and dozens of photos as cherished mementos from her dancing days, Colombo said.

“She enjoyed it when the grandkids asked her about it. She liked to talk about it,” said Diane Moore, Marion Moore’s daughter-in-law.

When Moore was just a teenager, however, her parents had different ideas about their daughter’s future, Colombo recalled. Her father forced the girl to attend a stenographer’s class and take a job as a secretary, Colombo said.

It was a disaster.

“All she wanted to do was work with her feet, not her hands,” Colombo said, laughing at the memory.

Moore later auditioned and got her dream job as a precision toe dancer with the Follies when she was about 15 or 16 years old, Colombo said. A blind double date with a fellow showgirl introduced Moore to her future husband, Stanley Moore, her sister said. Stanley Moore died in 1968, she said.

Shortly before last Christmas Moore decided to begin writing her memoirs to pass on to her youngest relatives, Colombo said.

“There aren’t too many of the Ziegfeld girls left anymore, and she knew that,” Colombo said. “I really enjoyed watching her dance. It was fun to pick her out.”

A memorial service is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Monday at the McAulay & Wallace funeral home in Fullerton.

Moore also is survived by a son, Stanley.