Marilyn Buferd Profile

Marilyn Buferd

30 January 25	is born in Detroit, Michigan
?	is an Earl Carroll's nightclub performer
22 August 46	is crowned "Miss California" by actor Gig Young after winning the title over 21 competitors in Hollywood. She's the entry of the Los Angeles Wilshire Boulevard district.
2 September 46	only her parents and a few of her former UCLA classmates are on hand to wish her well when she departs by plane for the "Miss America" pageant held in Atlantic City. Despite receiving the cold shoulder she says: "I want to win just to prove that even professional dancers can be beautiful, typical American girls."
7 September 46	is crowned "Miss America" in Atlantic City, New Jersey, winning a $5,000 dramatics scholarship. Runners-up are Rebecca Jane "Becky" McCall, "Miss Arkansas"; Jancy Miller, "Miss Atlanta"; Marguerite Eileen McClelland, "Miss Louisiana"; and Armelia Carol Ohmart, "Miss Utah."
6 October 46	awards the winner's cup at the 100-mile National AAA championship race to Tony Bettenhausen of Chicago
October 46	visits Republic Studios and meets all the stars she didn't meet when she was a showgirl in Republic’s Earl Carroll Vanities
May 47	columnist Harrison Carroll reports "now that MGM has decided to take no more cheesecake art of Marilyn Buferd, she has received a gross of bathing suits from a prominent manufacturer"
August 47	leaves MGM, but is expected to be the second lead in Seymour Nebenzal's Dream of Butterfly
September 47	is in Atlantic City again to pose at the "Miss America" pageant and to crown Barbara Jo Walker, the former "Miss Memphis"
October 47	Jay Rossbach, son of couturiere Sophie Rossbach, swoons over her and vice versa
	actor Peter Lawford is reported calling her all week in New York
February 48	is off to New York with "ideas for television"
May 48	is en route to France to model fashion layouts for a national magazine
June 48	is in Paris to compete for the title of "Miss Europe"
September 48	is pictured on the waterfront of ancient Amalfi, Italy, filming an Italian movie
October 48	Orson Welles signs her for his upcoming movie to be shot in Italy, "so he can keep an eye on her"
	Lazlo Willinger, well-known photographer, is reported driving East to meet her when she gets off the boat from Europe in a few days. “He plans to marry the gal in Gotham.”
November 48	models for Moschini, leading Italian designer, in Rome, Italy
June 49	columnist Walter Winchell thinks that she's Paul LePere's "very special American in Italy"
July 49	is pictured at a party in Rome with Marcel Cerdan, former middleweight champion of France
September 49	Winchell reports that Prince Rainier III of Monaco has fallen hard for her
July 50	is reported the adored of Franco Barbaro, commander in the Italian army
October 50	is expected to become "the bride of Italy's famous clown Totò"
27 June 51	secretly marries Italian movie agent and producer Count Francesco Barbaro in Italy. He's a former submarine commander under Mussolini.
July 51	Winchell expects her to wed Barbaro. "She's been betrothed 6 times in 2 years - always to famed Italians - not counting Orson."
August 51	tells the press she married Barbaro in March
September 51	she and Barbaro expect the stork
c. early 52	her son, Nicolo Rafael, is born
?	returns to Los Angeles
13 August 54	obtains a divorce from Barbaro in a Reno, Nevada, district court on grounds of extreme mental cruelty. Barbaro is ordered to pay $350 monthly support for her and their child. Richard Blakely of the legal firm of McCarran, Wedge, Blakely and Gabrielli, represents the plaintiff.
April 55	dates jeweller Claude Cartier in Rome
September 56	is reported back in Hollywood aiming for a career as a television actress
58	marries Hans E. Orton, restaurant chain owner and operator of the Villa Frascati
November 58	columnist Harrison Carroll reports that her "once troubled marriage to Hans Orton is sailing smoothly. They'll go to Acapulco for a second honeymoon."
April 59	files for divorce from Orton after ten months
4 August 59	divorces Orton in Santa Monica, California, after a 10- / 15-month marriage. He's 50; she's 33. She claims he beat her "so badly she suffered a broken ear drum."
January 60	columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reports that "Milt Stevens reigns supreme in the romantic life of Marilyn Buferd"
March 60	attends the Moulin Rouge opening of Louis Prima and Keely Smith with her fiancé, Milton Stevens
June 60	columnist Harrison Carroll reports that the big cocktail party given by her and Milton Stevens at Romanoff's will not be an engagement announcement. "Stevens assured me, 'I'm going to marry Marilyn as soon as we both are free,' he said, ' but I think an engagement announcement would be in bad taste. We won't be free to wed until after November 22.'"
18 November 60	marries New York industrialist and plumbing magnate Milton J. Stevens in Beverly Hills, California. He's 46; she's 35. The press reports that it's the fourth marriage for each.
?	becomes the widow of Stevens
88	is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and moves to Austin, Texas, to live with her son, Nick, and his wife Susan
27 March 90	as Marilyn Buferd Stevens, she dies at age 65 in Austin, Texas. She's survived by her son, her daughter-in-law Susan Emerson Moffat, and grandson Zeke.

Sources: Oakland Tribune, The Lima News, Middletown Times Herald, The Newark Advocate and American Tribune, The Era, The Progress, Syracuse Herald-Journal, Pottstown Mercury, The Times Recorder, Joplin Globe, The Zanesville Signal, Indiana Evening Gazette, Council Bluffs Iowa Nonpareil, The Daily Register, The Bridgeport Telegram, Dixon Evening Telegraph, Reno Evening Gazette, The Daily Gleaner, The Palladium-Times, Mansfield News-Journal, The Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, The Vidette-Messenger, The Post, www.Ancestry.com, www.missamerica.com
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Links: Filmography