Fay McKenzie

Eunice Fay McKenzie (February 19, 1918 – April 16, 2019) was an American actress and singer. She starred in silent films as a child, and then sound films as an adult, but perhaps she is best known for her leading roles opposite Gene Autry in the early 1940s in five horse opera features. She was also known for her collaborations with director Blake Edwards on five occasions. She also appeared on Broadway, radio, and television, having appeared on screen at ten weeks old in 1918. She was still appearing on screen at the time of her death, with her latest project opposite her son Tom Waldman Jr. in the comedy Kill a Better Mousetrap, based on a play by Scott K. Ratner, filmed in the summer of 2018 and not yet released at the time of her death. She was briefly billed as Fay Shannon. Biography Early life and silent film McKenzie was born on February 19, 1918, in Hollywood, California, to show business parents, film actor Eva (née Heazlitt) and Irish American actor/director Robert McKenzie. Her father had a stock company called the McKenzie Merry Makers, and was both an actor and director in stage productions and films. His company included such actors as Broncho Billy Anderson, Ben Turpin, and Victor Potel. When she was ten weeks old, she appeared in an uncredited part in the film Station Content (1918) as Kitty's baby (played by Gloria Swanson). She appeared in four other silent films as a child: A Knight of the West (1921) as Fray Murten, When Love Comes (1922) as Ruth, The Judgment of the Storm (1924) as a Heath Twin, and The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924) as a young Sarah Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln's stepmother). Fay's sister Ida Mae McKenzie, cousin Ella McKenzie, and brother-in-law Billy Gilbert, were also actors. Ida Mae also played the character of Sarah Lincoln in The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln, in the part of the film where she had become a teenager.