I became intrigued with Laura Lee (1910-1981) on account of her fetching appearance in three Joe E. Brown comedies, all made in 1930: Top Speed, Maybe It’s Love, and Going Wild. IMDB to the contrary, this is the sum of her cinematic output. Prior to that, she appeared in three Broadway shows: The Greenwich Village Follies (1928), A Night in Venice (1929), and Broadway Nights (1929).
Before this, things get sketchy. She was from Brooklyn. According to a cousin, her full name was Laura Lee Marks or Marx, and she started out in vaudeville in a quartet with her sisters Blanche, Frances, and Kitty. Her life other than this was the subject of speculation by the gang at Nitrateville, accessible here. She appears to have retired to get married in the early thirties. Her later life is less interesting to me, but if I come across more information on her earlier years, I will share it. She was all of 18 when she went on the Broadway stage ; it’s entirely plausible that the vaudeville phase of her career was very short.
To learn more about vaudeville history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy film, please read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube
(Travalanche) 
You must be logged in to post a comment.