Mary's Career
Daytime Soap Stars and Fans Mourning
Mary Stuart, born in Miami, Florida, was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her birthday was July 4. Mary is best known to daytime audiences as Search for Tomorrow’s heroine Joanne (Jo) Gardner Barron Tate Vincente Tourneur, a role she played throughout the show’s entire run from 1951 to 1986. After a brief stint playing Judge Claire Webber on OLTL in 1988, Mary would not be seen on a soap again until Guiding Light wisely brought her on to play Bauer matriarch, Meta, in November of 1996; a role she played until her death.
She started her career when she was 12, singing with local bands, and working with the USO at area military bases during high school. After graduation, Mary worked briefly as a photojournalist in order to pay her way to New York to pursue her acting career. While working as a nightclub photographer and a hat check girl at the Hotel Roosevelt Grill in New York City, she began singing with the hotel band, which led to a screen test and a contract with MGM. When the studio tested leading men, Mary stood in for Bette Davis. She also posed in a bathing suit for Clark Gable’s publicity photographs. Mary appeared in over 20 movies, including The Girl from Jones Beach with Ronald Reagan; Colt 45; The Adventures of Don Juan, both with Errol Flynn and The Cariboo Trail with Randolph Scott; and The Big Punch with Gordon MacRae, just to name a few. In 1992, She also appeared in the low-budget western Thunderhoof, for which the studio had her blond hair dyed black and padded the backside of her jeans, so she would look more sultry. Mary moved back to New York and enrolled in an acting class with fellow students Cliff Robertson and Jack Lemmon. One afternoon, while having lunch with advertising executive Roy Winsor (who, unbeknownst to Mary, was developing a television serial tentatively titled Search for Happiness), Mary complained that there were no female characters with whom women could identify. Shortly after, she was cast as the lead in Search for Tomorrow.
During Mary’s tenure on Search for Tomorrow, her second pregnancy was written into the storyline, a first for live daytime television. Her run as Jo was so memorable that Jo’s apron is on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. In addition, she acted in most of the live television dramas of the 1950's, narrated the NBC news documentary Determining Force in 1977, and performed on Broadway in Marriage Go Round. Here is an interview in which Mary gave about her career and life. Mary is also a writer, singer, and composer. Her autobiography, Both of Me, was published in 1980 and was a Literary Guild selection. Her teleplay, When Angels Fly, was produced for Canadian television in 1982. A play, Squirrel Cage, is currently in workshop. She recorded an album of children’s songs, Joanne Sings, with Percy Faith in the 1950's, which is still requested today, and an album of mostly original music, Mary Stuart, with Michel Legrand in 1973.
