Biography

Toni Mannix

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Overview

Born
February 19, 1906
Died
September 2, 1983 · Beverly Hills, California, USA (complications from Alzheimer's disease)
Birth name
Camille Bernice Froomess
Nickname
- Lady

Mini bio

Toni Lanier was a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl whose lasting notoriety came not as a performer but as the wife of a high-level studio executive and the mistress of a famous television star. Lanier appeared in the film version of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s life, The Great Ziegfeld (1936), met MGM studio manager E.J. Mannix, and lived with him as mistress and later wife until his death in 1963. As Toni Mannix, she was well known for her beauty, flamboyance and sexual appetite, the latter of which was legendary. In 1951, around the time she married Mannix legally, she met George Reeves, soon to be world famous as television's "Superman". She and Reeves embarked on an affair under the approving eye of her husband, who had a new mistress of his own. Toni and Reeves were fairly public with their arrangement, but the press, out of respect for the clout Mannix wielded, never exposed the relationship outside the industry. In 1959 Reeves broke off the relationship with the eight-years-older Toni, leaving her both broken-hearted and angry. His suicide five months later shattered her and she remained devoted to his memory the remainder of her life (some have speculated that she or her husband might actually have murdered Reeves, but no credible evidence has ever arisen to support such a theory, while much evidence credibly undermines it). Mannix died in 1963, and Toni was left wealthy and lived comfortably until the onset of Alzheimer's Disease in her 70s. She died from complications of the syndrome in 1983.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

Family

Spouses
Relatives

Trivia

Portrayed by Diane Lane in Hollywoodland (2006).
Raised in Rochester, New York by a Russian-French Jewish father and a French-Canadian Catholic mother. Fourth oldest child of eleven children.
First husband Jesse Livermore Jr. was the son of infamous Wall Street speculator Jesse Livermore. The younger Livermore gained infamy in 1935 when he was nearly killed by his mother: he dared her to shoot him after she told him she would rather see him dead than see him drink to excess; both were drunk at the time. He was just 18 when he married Toni in Palm Springs, CA.
When Lanier signed her contract for the film, The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Lloyd's of London insured her legs each for $25,000.
Her eldest sibling, Emanuel Joseph Bernard Froomess, became the Hollywood comic writer, Eddie Forman.