Weatherford, Texas: Peter Pan Statue - Roadside Attractions on Waymarking.com

Musical theater star Mary Virginia Martin was born on December 11, 1913, in Weatherford, Texas. She died November 3, 1990. She is buried in Weatherford Cemetery.

As a child, Mary performed in local theater. Just before her seventeenth birthday she married Benjamin J. Hagman, an accountant in Weatherford, and soon left the Nashville finishing school she attended for only a few months. After their son, Larry, was born in Weatherford in September 1931, Mary opened a dance school there. In 1935, she and Benjamin were divorced.

Using her maiden name, Mary Martin began pursuing a performing career singing on radio in Dallas and in nightclubs in Los Angeles. Her performance at one club impressed a theatrical producer, and he cast her in a play in New York. That production did not open, but she got a role in Cole Porter's "Leave It To Me". In that production, she became popular on Broadway and received attention in the national media singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".

In 1939, Paramount Pictures signed her to appear in the movie "The Great Victor Herbert". Between 1939 and 1942 she starred in ten films for Paramount.

Returning to Broadway in 1949, Martin appeared in the Rodgers and Hammerstein hit "South Pacific". Critics loved her in the comic role of Ensign Nellie Forbush. She moved to London in 1951 to continue her South Pacific performance there.

During the 1950s she appeared on stage and in television performances of her roles in such productions as "In The Skin of our Teeth", "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Peter Pan". In Peter Pan, Martin became the actress still most identified with the starring role. She won Tony Awards for Peter Pan and for "The Sound of Music", in which she also played the lead as Mary Rainer. She starred in that role from 1959 to 1961.

Mary Martin is also buried nearby.