Marion Ross Stars In Dinner Theater

Marion Ross, will be starring in the production "My Daughter, Your Son" opening Monday at Tiffany's Attic, Salt Lake City's new theatre restaurant, in Arrow Press Square, for four weeks only.

"Don't let anyone tell you about the short careers of movie and television performers, who sometimes complain that they may seem to hit it big, but that after all, a career doesn't really last forever so they have to make it while they can," says Tiffany's managers.

There are a great many talented actors and actresses who have had successful careers for continuing decades, through good times and bad, who wouldn't trade their show business years for all the stocks and bonds on wall street.

Such a performer is "Happy Days" star Marion Ross, veteran of dozens of major motion picture roles and hundreds of starring roles on television, who after twenty years as a "working actress" is not only still going strong, is vibrantly youthful, and feels she's only just begun. Furthermore, she intends to keep right on acting until she's at least 80 or so.

Marion's impressive list of film credits goes from "Operation Petticoat," "Teacher's Pet' and "Lust for Life" in the late fifties to more recent movies such as "Collossus," "The Forbin Project," "Airport," and "Honkey."

Her motion picture career has given her key roles with practically every male star in the movies, including Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, William Holden, Kirk Douglas, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis and Cary Grant.

But her greatest prominence has been achieved as a result of television, where she has guest starred on more than 900 shows, from "The Untouchables" and "Perry Mason" and "Lbretta Young" to her more recent appearances on "Petrocelli," "Love, American Style," "Ironside," "Hawaii Five-O" and "Marcus Welby."

Her first major break was winning a network contract and a major role as the winsome Irish maid of "Life With Father," a live CBS series which ran for three years. Later she co-starred for a year with Keith Andes, in "Paradise Bay," an NBC daytime series.

Her current co-starring stint as Ronnie Howard's mother on "Happy Days," is now in its fourth season on ABC.

Marion touches all the show business bases as successfully, having starred on broadway in "Edwin Booth," she has also done a multitude of major commercials for such products and companies as Max Factor, United Airlines, Mr. Clean, Ford Motor Company and the American Dairy Association.. Currently she is TV spokeswoman for the Mountain Bell Telephone Company in eight western states.

A green-eyed brunette with a warm, outgoing personality, Marion is five-feet, five-inches, and weighs 120 pounds. She's originally a small town girl, out of Alberta Lea, Minnesota. Long before her pigtails were ready to be cut, she moved to Minneapolis where she trespassed on the campus of the University of Minnesota by lounging around the school's theatre stage. She was far too young to enroll as a student, but somehow the drama majors accepted the elf - like creature and she was soon working as a stagehand, avidly soaking up stage background and reading books about "Theatre" in a quiet corner between
calls for her services.

When her family moved to San Diego, she was heartbroken ... but only temporarily, because even before she learned the names of the main streets in the new city, she had located the threatre on the Campus of San Diego State College. This time, in a rather convential gesture for the Eager Miss Ross, she enrolled. In her first year. she established the remarkable feat, for a freshman, of winning the title of outstanding actress at the college.

And she kept it throughout her college years. playing lead roles of every variety, from sophisticated to classic drama.

From college, Marion moved on to San Diego's famed globe theatre, where Faye Emerson and Marla English also launched their dramatic careers. Soon sLorettathe city's annual newspaper award as the best actress in San Diego, and promptly took the short jump to La Jolla's summer theatre where director Mel Ferrer, impressed with her work, urged her to follow her performances there with a try at Hollywood. There she was promptly signed by Paramount and made her movie debut as Pat Crowley's roommate in "Forever Female."

The studio thereupon dropped her contract, which didn't surprise Marion too much. "I couldn't even find myself in the picture," she recalls frankly. "No wonder they couldn't." Undaunted, she moved on to Universal - International to play the bank manager's wife in "The Glenn Miller Story," and then Paramount called her back again and again for good roles in the "Legend of the Incas" and "Sabrina" and "The Proud and the Profane."

Then came the "Life With Father" break and the prestigious Margaret Sullivan Role in the highly acclaimed dramatic special, "Dinner at Eight," and Marion was in top demand for television, where she has been one of the medium's busiest performers ever since.

On the personal side, Marion, now divorced, lives in a comfortable Tarzana ranch home with her two children, Jim 17, and Ellen, 14.