Maggie Pierce

Margaret P. L. Pierce (October 24, 1931 – April 5, 2010) was an American nurse and model who then became a film and television actress. A former MGM contract player, she had a starring role on the 1965-1966 television series My Mother the Car. Early life She was born Margaret P. L. Pierce in Detroit, Michigan. Her parents were Robert Lloyd Pierce, a chartered accountant in his native Manchester and CPA in his adopted homeland, and Nellie Young, a former typist, also from Manchester, UK. Pierce was the third of four children and the only daughter for the couple. Pierce's father immigrated to the US in 1921, eventually becoming a naturalized citizen. Her mother came to the US later and the couple married in Michigan in 1923. Pierce's father was a corporate officer for the Briggs Manufacturing Company in Detroit, while the family lived in the northern suburb of Southfield, Michigan. According to an interview from 1965, as a little girl, Pierce had her own bedroom with one wall paneled in mirrors. She used to sit on her bed and make faces at her reflection by the hour. When the practice persisted, her father told her one day, "Young lady, you had better start spending your time a little more wisely. You'll never earn a living making faces." Says Maggie, "Guess I showed him." When she was ten years old, her mother died of colorectal cancer in March 1942. Her father remarried five months later to a teacher named Josephine Bordeaux. A few months after that, Pierce's older brother David, who was afflicted with spina bifida, died of pneumonia. The two bereavements, coming so close together, influenced her choice for an initial career.