2 3 Throwback Thursday and Peggy Ryan | Ballet Webb

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Throwback Thursday and Peggy Ryan



Throwback Thursday and Peggy Ryan

She was born Maragret O’Rene Ryan in Long Beach, California on August 28, 1924. She began her professional career in vaudeville in her parent’s act the Dancing Ryans. She was three years old. At age six she was featured in The Wedding of Jack and Jill playing the role of Jill; and the first Link of the Day below shows her tap dancing at age 12 in the movie Top of the Town (1937).

Over the next twenty years she appeared in more than two dozen movies, including The Grapes of Wrath (uncredited). She was frequently paired with Donald O’Conner in films such as When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1942), Mister Big (1943), and Bowery to Broadway (1944) among others. In 1953 she appeared in her last movie, All Ashore with Mickey Rooney.

She turned her attention to television, appearing in the premieres of Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town and Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater, both in 1948. By 1969 she acted in her longest TV role: playing Jenny Sherman, secretary to Jack Lord’s character Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O. She stayed until 1976.

During the last years of her life, she taught tap and produced performances in Las Vegas which she did up until just a few days before her death on October 30, 2004.

From the Big Blue Book of Ballet Secrets
Secret #292:
“Peggy Ryan was a dancer in movie musicals, who was often paired with Donald O’Conner.”

Link of the Day:

Quote of the Day:
“A person who's going to be famous usually drops a few clues by the time they're twenty-one.”
― Frank D. Gilroy, The Subject Was Roses

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