Marianne demurely replied, "No, sir, you mistake me for my mamma, Mae O'Brien, who danced in your chorus at the Silver Slipper a few years ago."
Mae O'Brien, still beautiful and redheaded, was then selling programs and cigarettes at Jimmy Kelly's Greenwich Village bistro.
Marianne missed out on her millionaire, but soon the public prints linked her with many other men. She was pursued like the rabbit in a greyhound race. She was in demand as a photographers' model and finally won a speaking role in a road show of a Broadway hit.
A talent scout from Warners saw her, signed her to a $750 a week contract. She sat in Hollywood a year, on the payroll but not on a work-sheet. She was credited with romances in dizzy dozens, yet none with millionaires.
Then her film "career" faded and Marianne returned to New York. They said she was "through," though she was 22.
In the meantime, her mother, Mae, a widow, had wed. Her husband was no millionaire, but he got by. His name is Abe Attell, and three decades ago he was the world's featherweight champion, called by many the greatest boxer ever.
He had achieved fame of another sort by being named as the go-between in the Black Sox baseball scandal.
One night at El Morocco, Marianne was introduced to a good-looking, youngish fellow, who wanted to dance with her. He asked for a date. It grew into a romance.
The man, Richard Reynolds, Jr., heir to the $30,000,000 tobacco fortune, settled with his wife for $3,000,000—to be free to marry Marianne.