“I charge here and now that the exotic and strip artists have been abandoned and made outcasts by the very union to which they pay dues for representation and protection,” – Penny Singleton testifying before a United States Senate Subcommittee.
Mariana Dorothy McNulty was born in Philadelphia, PA, to Mary Dorothy (Hasson) and Bernard Joseph McNulty.
In the 1910 census of Philadelphia, we find a very young household at 1825 Watts Street. Bernard McNulty (21) and his wife Mary (18) live with their 1-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and Bernard’s 17-year-old brother Joseph. They also have lodgers Annie and Frances Cook who are 20 and 16 years of age.
Bernard is a linotype operator. Annie is a forelady and Frances is a skin wrapper, both at a chemist factory. Neighbor’s jobs include waiter, hatter, detective, and tin box maker. There are immigrants from Switzerland, Ireland, and Germany. The McNulty’s rent their home as do nine of the eleven households listed on the page.
Later life
Dorothy only stayed in school as far as the sixth grade when she began singing in a silent movie theater and touring in a vaudeville act called The Kiddie Kaberet. She danced with Milton Berle whom she knew since childhood and performed on Broadway in Jack Benny’s The Great Temptations.
She appeared in the film After the Thin Man as Dorothy McNulty, but soon changed her name to Penny Singleton, the last name coming from her husband Laurence Singleton to whom she was married from 1937 to 1939.
In 1938, she was cast as the lead in the film Blondie based on the comic strip by Chic Young. Arthur Lake was cast as Dagwood. In addition to the film, the two starred in a radio Blondie show. Blondie became a sensation by 1950, they had made 27 sequels. The films and radio show ended that year. Singleton appeared in a few television shows but in 1962 began voicing Jane Jetson in the animated series The Jetsons. She appeared in 75 episodes and four Jetson films. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for radio and one for film.
When she was done with performing regularly she became heavily involved in show business unions. Singleton was the first woman to serve as president of an AFL-CIO union. She testified before a Senate subcommittee and led a strike by the Radio City Rockettes and a labor action against the Disney on Parade show.
She died of respiratory failure in 2003 at age 95.
Other happenings on September 15, 1908
Born: Gerd Gaiser, German writer (Ship in the Mountain), born in Oberriexingen, Germany (d. 1976).
Tomorrow – He’s not a Doctor but he played one on TV (21 times)
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Sources
- Wikipedia.org
- Ancestry.com
- Onthisday.com
- Picryl.com
- Youtube.com
Famous People and Their First Census 