Biography

Margo

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The daughter of a Mexican surgeon, Maria Margarita Guadalupe Teresa Estella Castilla Bolado y O'Donnell was born in Mexico City. As a niece to famous bandleader Xavier Cugat, she performed with his orchestra from the age of nine as a specialty dancer in nightclubs, and, later, on the Starlight Roof of the hotel Waldorf Astoria in New York. When she was fifteen years old, she was head-hunted by writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who saw her dance and cast her in the Claude Rains drama Crime Without Passion (1934). Her debut as Rains' ex-lover who ends up being murdered by him, was well-received, critic Mordaunt Hall describing her performance as 'excellent'. Margo was best-known, however, for her role as the slum girl Miriamne Esdras in both stage and screen version of Maxwell Anderson's play Winterset (1936) and for her poignant performance as the young girl leaving Shangri-La (to her detriment) in Lost Horizon (1937). She also appeared on Broadway in 'Masque of Kings' (1937) and 'The World We Make' (1939) and had another small screen role in The Leopard Man (1943).

Margo was married for 39 years to the actor Eddie Albert, residing in Pacific Palisades, California. In later years, she became involved in the public sector, in 1974 becoming Commissioner for Social Services in Los Angeles.
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis

Mother of actor Edward Albert and Maria Albert Zucht.
She was a victim of the 1950s Hollywood Blacklist, after her name was listed in the anti-communist pamphlet, Red Channels, even though she was not a Communist.
She died of a brain tumor, at the home she shared with husband Eddie Albert, in her own bed.
Due to her birth name being exceptionally, extremely long (at least by American convention), she needed to choose a much shorter, and more memorable name for a professional name to be seen on movie screens and theater marquees. By choice, she went from six given names and two family names, or eight names in total, down to just her one stage name. Her chosen professional stage name of Margo, is an acronym (of sorts) of part of her birth name, María Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell. Her first two names each beginning with "Mar", her second middle name beginning with "G", and her last last name (by Spanish naming convention her mother's family name, O'Donnell, comes after her father's family name of Castilla) beginning with "O," therefore forming Mar.g.o., in the same order as her birth names appear, or Margo.
Ex-niece-in-law of Xavier Cugat.

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