Natalie Moorhead


Natalie Moorhead was an American film and stage actress. As a performer, she was known for her distinctive short platinum blond hair.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Moorhead gained an appreciation for theater and the opera from her father during her adolescence. After enrolling in a business school to pursue being a secretary for the government during World War I, Moorhead was discovered during a shopping trip on Fifth Avenue; thus beginning her career in theater. A 1927 production of Baby Cyclone, with her starring alongside a young Spencer Tracy, landed her in Hollywood. She began obtaining small film roles in the late 1920s, and was typically typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or "the other woman".
Her performances peaked in the 1930s, with films like The Benson Murder Case (1930), Shadow of the Law (1930), Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931), and The Thin Man (1934). However, she retired from acting in the early 1940s after marrying her third husband, Chicago-based millionaire Robert J. Dunham. After his death in 1948, she remarried in 1957 to famed soccer champion and actor, Juan Garchitorena, and remained married until his death in 1983. Moorhead privately died in October 1992 in Montecito, California, at age 91.

Early years

Moorhead was born Nathalian Moorhead on July 27, 1901 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the second daughter to Anna Catherine and James Vincent Moorhead. A tomboy from a young age, she was likely nicknamed 'Natalie' by the boy-filled gangs she frequented. Natalie gained an appreciation for theatre and the opera from her father, a steelworker who tragically died when she was around thirteen.
During the First World War, secretarial government jobs for women were becoming hugely popular, as the men who originally occupied them were drafted. Upon graduating from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh, Natalie enrolled in a business school to study shorthand and typewriting, but secretly yearned for a career on-stage. Upon taking a trip with friends to New York City to see a football game, she was scouted by a theatre executive while shopping on Fifth Avenue, and leapt at the opportunity.

Career

She began her theatre career on Broadway at the Fulton Theatre; playing a bridesmaid in the 1922 play, Abie's Irish Rose, which broke viewership records for the run of the play; finally closing at the Theatre Republic on October 1, 1927. She then played alongside Sydney Greenstreet in A Lady in Love at the Lyceum Theatre, and with a young Spencer Tracy in George M. Cohan's 1927 farce Baby Cyclone at Henry Miller's Theatre.
Baby Cyclone caught the attention of Hollywood, with Moorhead making her silver screen debut in Thru Different Eyes (1929); a courtroom drama that also served as fellow actress Sylvia Sidney's debut. Throughout her 12-year career in Hollywood, Moorhead averaged six movies a year. Known for her distinctive short platinum blond hair and frequent casting as "the other woman", she is arguably best remembered for her minor role in the beginning of The Thin Man (1934). It was the first of two Best Picture nominees that she starred in; the other being All This, and Heaven Too (1940).

Personal life

On December 21, 1930, Moorhead married director Alan Crosland in Yosemite National Park. She sued him for divorce on July 2, 1935. Upon stepping away from the spotlight, Moorhead married millionaire Robert J. Dunham; then-sixty-six year old president of the Chicago Park District, on March 28, 1942, in Maricopa, Arizona. He died in 1948. Moorhead's fourth husband was Juan Garchitorena, an actor and former soccer player. They wed on July 27, 1957, in Beverly Hills, and remained married until his death in 1983.
On October 6, 1992, Moorhead died in Montecito, California.

Selected filmography