Muriel Kirkland

Muriel Kirkland (August 19, 1903 – September 26, 1971) was an American actress.

Early years Kirkland was born on August 19, 1903, the daughter of advertising executive Charles B. Kirkland and Margaret (Keith) Kirkland. As a teenager, Kirkland had "an inferiority complex of horrible proportions," accompanied by "a state of shyness and self-consciousness".

When she was 16 and had just finished convent school, her parents decided that she could best overcome her self-concerns by attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Kirkland resisted, saying that she did not want to become an actress, but her parents were firm, and she enrolled. When Kirkland had been at the academy six months, she was dropped from the school and told, "You will never be an actress. We are sorry". and he made her the leading lady of his Huntington, West Virginia, company. Walker taught her how to use her voice and her eyes and, in the process, increased her self-confidence. She acted in the Broadway production of Strictly Dishonorable (1929) Her other Broadway credits included Brass Buttons (1927), Cock Robin (1928), The Greeks Had a Word for It (1930), I Love an Actress (1931), Fast Service (1931), Lady of Letters (1935), Stop-over (1938), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938), Inherit the Wind (1955) and The Legend of Lizzie (1959).

Kirkland acted with the Orpheum Players in Kansas City and the All-Star Jefferson Players in Birmingham, Alabama, and performed in summer theater in Westchester County, New York; Magnolia, Massachusetts; and New Rochelle, New York. She also was the "unknown ingenue" in a company that Blanche Bates headed.

Radio Kirkland was the fourth actress to have the title role in the radio soap opera The Story of Mary Marlin. During her tenure as Marlin, she re-enacted some of the program's critical moments in photographs that accompanied an article in the September 11, 1944, issue of Life magazine.

Film Kirkland's family's financial problems in the Depression caused her to try acting in films. the studio was not satisfied with the way she looked when she was photographed, with the result that she received no parts and "entered a six-month period of nothingness". She died on September 26, 1971, of emphysema and complications, in Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, aged 68.