"Youth's sweet scented manuscript..."

The following information was taken from the Bridgeport Sunday Herald, or The Sunday Herald, Sunday December 9, 1956. The name of the article is Like Mother, Like Daughter, Marlane Morin Follows Tradition. Marlane Morin, (now Marlane DuBois), is my mother. (As reported by Ethel Beckwith).

Marlane Morin is a third generation of talent. As she studies voice at the New England Conservatory in Boston, she is more modern, more formal than her mother and grandfather before her, but they gave Marlane the grace and genius for show business.

At 228 Rowland Rd, Fairfield, lives Marlane's mother, Marion Thompson, a woman fully as pretty as her daughter although they're a contrast.

Marlane, who was second place winner last July in the Jenny Lind contest of the Barnum Festival, is tall and quite the stately type.

Marion is small and doll-like. Her hair is gray, but her complexion is something to be envied by a 16-year-old.

Into this mother daughter friendship it was a rare privilege for a reporter the other day to turn the pages and listen to the recollections while Marion showed me the scrapbooks--always a very personal treasure--of her career. "Youth's sweet scented manuscript," Omar would call them.

Her career started early: the daughter of George and Lillian Fox Thompson, and only child, was going to Roger Ludlowe High School. Dad, an engineer with DuPont, was a popular entertainer, though always a "benefit billing." With all of his talent and more, Marion danced and sang from the time she could walk.

Plenty of encouragement came from the sidelines, her aunt Della Fox, who with Nat Goodman invented a headliner called "The Della Fox Curl."

Pretty Marion confesses she did more homework at Dan Quilty's dance school than at Ludlowe, where she was a junior when she first heard the siren call of the big city.

The show was the hit "Fifty Million Frenchmen." The teen-aged Marion jumped into a nest of stars--Billy Gaxton, Betty Compton, Helen Broderick, Evelyn Hoey, the comics Willie and Eugene Howard, and Cole Porter music.

She loved show biz and it was mutual. She next went into the George White Scandals, dancing beside such stars as Rudy Vallee, Ethel Merman, Barbara Blair, Ray Boldger and Alice Fay.

All these Marion talked over wistfully, yet with many laughs as all former troopers do. Her memories were all gay, until the time came to tell of her husband, Robert Morin.

A bright marriage went to pieces when Morin died suddenly, leaving her with eight-month- old Marlane.

Marion carried on with night club and vaude specialties for years. Along the route one of the people especially kind to her was the late Larry Rich. She soloed with bands. One brilliant spot she likes to think about was a New Year's eve at the Scully Square Theater in Boston when she emceed.

Marlane, home last weekend from the Conservatory, looks like a natural for a musical show, and next of the Morins to furnish show-biz news.

Studying with Rand Smith, she was the only member of her class to make a special record recently.

Now she has the torch.

Mother and grandmother, members of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fairfield, are a quiet audience while the vivid Marlane waits in the wings.