Eleanor Lynn (Who’s Who at MGM, 1937) 🇺🇸
Winsome Eleanor Lynn always dreamed of becoming a great actress. When she was a grammar school student at Borough Park, Brooklyn, she enacted plays in front of a mirror.
“I pretended I was a policeman and arrested myself,” she laughs.
After leaving Borough Park school, the daughter of Max and Vera Lin went to Pershing High school. Graduating, she “sat in” on classes at New York University as an unaccredited student, selecting studies she liked.
Miss Lynn always had wanted to be an actress, she says. One day her sister, Thelma, who appeared on the stage in Mädchen In Uniform, read in a newspaper that Reginald Goode wanted amateurs for the Provincetown (Mass.) Theatre.
Her First Appearance
Thelma went to see him about a job, taking with her a picture of Eleanor, 12. Goode sent for Eleanor. He was impressed when she corrected Thelma in her lines and accepted her as a “tuition-paying student.” However, her work was so outstanding, that she won a scholarship with the theatre-school and remained there two years.
From Provincetown Miss Lynn went to Civic Repertory, New York. She was there two weeks when the Theatre Guild asked her to play the idiot in The Good Earth. It turned out she wasn’t the type, but she got the role of Tiger Lily instead.
After The Good Earth Miss Lynn went into Vera Murray’s Bridal Quilt as Minnie Ella, co-featured with Claudia Morgan and Lester Vail. In 1935 she was co-featured with Elisha Cook, Jr., in Shubert’s Come Angel Band.
While appearing in The Golden Journey, another Shubert production, with Allan Bunce, in 1936, she attracted the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film scouts. In the summer of 1937, she capitulated to the lure of the screen and flew to Hollywood from New York. She was signed to a featured player contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Miss Lynn, born on October 27, comes from a family of eight. She has four sisters, Shirley, Frances, Mary and Thelma, and three brothers, Irving, Semune and Jackie, a talented pianist. Her father is a retired musician. She was married December 23, 1935, to Oliver Edel, member of the Manhattan String Quartette.
Miss Lynn is five feet, two inches tall, weighs 101 pounds, has dark brown hair and flashing dark eyes. She has lived in New York most of her life, but has traveled all over the United States and Europe. Her youthful ambition was “to be a great actress, and still is.”
She likes gardenias. Her favorite classical author is Shakespeare, favorite classical playwright Ibsen, and Beethoven’s Opus 132 Quartette her choice orchestration. She likes the paintings of Rembrandt, Holbein and numerous Italian artists.
Eleanor’s Favorites
She lists favorites as follows: Modern author, Thomas Woolf; modern playwright, Maxwell Anderson; modern painter, Picasso; historical character, Daniel Boone; orchestra. New York Philharmonic when Arturo Toscanini conducts; illustrator, McClelland Barclay.
Miss Lynn’s favorite exercise is tennis. She loves dogs, but never has owned one. She likes to read biographies and she plays the piano “badly.” For recreation she goes to the movies and dances, but refuses to play bridge.
Collection: Who’s Who at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1937)