The Prehistoric Women • Mara Lynn - Arva

Who were the “Prehistoric Women” who made cinematic history with just 17 days of footage shot mainly on a studio sound stage?

Mara Lynn - Arva

 

Born Marilyn Moiser, a Muncie, Ind. dancer who started studying age nine, by 15 she had adopted the stage name Mara Lynn and did a stint with the Detroit Opera Company — found time to graduate from Muncie’s Central High School — and then went on the road with her hometown mentor and instructor Marjorie Jeanne Field (“Marjorie Jeanne’s School of Dance”) to New York City in the fall of 1947.

Mara Lynn appeared in Lou Walters’ Latin Quarter production of “The Harem” (“Every Girl a Dream of Luscious Loveliness”) signed with Connover to do some modeling and returned for the Broadway production of “Inside U.S.A.,” starring Jack Haley and Beatrice Lillie.

The Connover representation seems to have paid off as Mara Lynn is featured in an Oct. 2, 1949, pictorial in the Buffalo Courier Express titled “Girdles Take the Hurdles.”   Her job was to wear a girdle and do “arabesques, leaps and entrechats” so that the manufacturer, the designer, cutter and fitter could “watch with clinical interest.”  

The piece continues, “By leaps and bounds, the dancer shows interested spectators how new foundations can follow active body motions without pinching or slipping.  Just in case some prospective girdle customer is interested in a ballet career or plans to ride the IRC.”

During her New York stay she was featured on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” was named “Miss Liberty” (her title was stripped from her two days later when they judged her to be too tall) and finished off in October of 1949 as a dancer in George Abbott’s “Touch and Go.”

Oh, and one other little thing: in 1948, while dancing at the Hurricane Club, she crossed paths with New York City reporter Harold Conrad.   He was doing a “Broadway” column for the New York Mirror at the time.  This would be a life-changing encounter for both of them.

On Wednesday, March 22, 1950, she is featured in the opening of the Leighton Brill and William Trinz musical revue “Of All Things” at the Century Theater in Los Angeles.  The reviews were solid.

And on April 4 there is a funny piece in the Los Angeles Mirror about Mara Lynn’s agent landing her a promotional tie-in with a sour cream company where she is named Miss Sour Cream of 1950!   She is quoted as saying “I’ll bathe in the stuff, if it’s good for my career, like the man says.  But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna eat it, too!”

The musical generated a lot of follow-on publicity, including her being pictured in costume in the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times on April 16 with the caption, “Dancer – Mara Lynn is creating considerable attention with her dancing in musical, ‘Of All Things,’ at Century.” 

Cohen must have seen the picture because Edwin Schallert’s “Drama” column in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday, April 20, has the news: “Mara Lynn, that dazzling dancer of the stage revue, ‘Of All Things,’ at the New Century Theater, who has been besieged with studio offers, has finally accepted one of the top assignments in Prehistoric Women, Albert J. Cohen production, with Laurette Luez, Allan Nixon and Tony Devlin.”

Remember that meeting at the Hurricane Club in New York City back in 1948 with newsman Harold Conrad?   On Oct. 2, 1950, they were married by a Beverly Hills Justice of the Peace.

Mark Jacobson’s “The Hippest Guy in the Room” tribute to Harold Conrad in Esquire Magazine in December of 1991 says it all.  It is a terrific read, which can be accessed at http://www.thestacksreader.com/the-hippest-guy-in-the-room/… 

Conrad had been a sports writer in New York City since 1935 and would branch out into writing books and promoting boxing events.  Indeed, by 1963 he’s promoting the second Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fight at the Las Vegas Convention Centre in July of 1963.  As Jacobson relates it, Conrad, his son Casey (from his first marriage), Mara Lynn and the family cat decided to make it a six-week cross-country road trip from New York to Las Vegas.   The cat, during the trip, destroyed the interior of the Ford Woody.

Conrad and Mara Lynn were divorced in 1956.  That didn’t last.  It was also in 1956 that Conrad’s life was encapsulated in the film, The Harder They Fall, starring Humphrey Bogart.

A few years later Conrad and Mara Lynn were back together again and remained so for the rest of her life.   

After Prehistoric Women, she co-starred with comedian Sid Melton in Leave It to the Marines and Sky High in 1951 (both produced by Sigmund Neufeld and distributed by Robert L. Lippert), did some uncredited dancing numbers in several films in the 1950s, was Lily Nyles in Marilyn Monroe’s 1960 release of Let’s Make Love and was Lillian in Norman Mailer’s 1968 film, Wild 90.

She peppered these return trips to Hollywood with some stage and musical productions, but for the most part she spent her time travelling with Conrad from one fight promotion to the next.  She was a “bigger than life” figure at these events.  They were inseparable.

Mara Lynn became gravely ill, battling cancer, and despite Conrad’s efforts to find a treatment the end came on April 6, 1988 … in their last hours together they were re-married, shared a joint and Conrad then said goodbye.  Arva was gone.