Diminutive, blonde British actress and dancer of stage and screen, who took her professional name from the type of rose, Rosa 'Cécile Brünner'; her professional surname was also spelled Bruner. Articles that ran during 1928-29 on her role as one of the dance hall girls in the 1928 film "Waterfront" report that she was "less than five feet tall and weighs but eighty-nine pounds." One of six children, she was born in London, England, to American parents, Florence Emily (née Rogers, 1872-1934) and Christian Science practitioner/metaphysician Frank Laurence Riley (1870-1940). After a decently successful career as a dancer and actress on stage in New York and California, as well as in Hollywood films, in August 1929, she attempted suicide (thankfully, unsuccessfully) by taking poison after failing a voice test for sound pictures.
Marjorie/Cecil was married three times: Her first marriage was to Frank Robb (b. Francis Page Keller, 1892-1988) on 23 July 1923 in New York City; she filed for divorce in Los Angeles County in June 1927, and it was granted that December. She re-married on 26 May 1931 to New Jersey-born stage director and later film dialogue director William Edward Watts (1899-1991) in Pasadena, California. By 1935, Marjorie/Cecil was living in Altadena, California. By April 1940 (Census), she moved to San Francisco, California; in the 1940 Census, she is listed as married, but is living alone, while William Watts is living in New York City (stating he was living in San Francisco in 1935). She is mentioned in her father's obituaries that October as Marjorie E. Watts of San Francisco. She filed for divorce from Watts in San Francisco in March 1941, and it was granted in January 1942. Lastly, she married Ivan Jacob Harris (1912-1990) on 9 November 1943 in Salt Lake County, Utah, from whom she was divorced in the summer of 1948; a mention of their marriage license in the Salt Lake Tribune (10 Nov 1943) gives Marjorie/Cecil's age as 24 -- a whopping 20 years younger than her actual age. By the 1950 U.S. Census, Marjorie/Cecil was living in Fairfax, California, and working as a property federal clerk for the Army Engineers District.
Other online sources claim she was born on 27 July 1897 in Nebraska, USA, and died on 20 May 1959 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. This information applies to a different woman named Cecil Mildred (Brunner) Dahl (who was actually born in 1893), who doesn't seem to have had a film career nor was she in the Los Angeles area during "our" Cecil's entertainment career.
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