Earlier this week, I had my annual “end-of-the-year” financial portfolio meeting with Michael Kosteskie, my longtime Edward Jones financial advisor in Valparaiso.
Though I’ve known Michael for more than 20 years, he asked me a first-time Hollywood reference question during our face-to-face in his office.
“I know you write about celebrities and entertainment, so have you ever heard of the Wilde Twins, sister actresses, named Lee and Lyn,” Michael queried.
I explained I hadn’t.
“I was friends with one of them years back because she lived in Michigan City after she retired from Hollywood,” Michael said.
“The twins were most famous for being identical blondes and starring opposite Mickey Rooney as his love interest in the ‘Andy Hardy’ movie series popular in the 1940s. I would always see Lyn at the Pottawattomie Country Club in Michigan City where we were both members. She was beautiful and striking even later in life and turned every head when she walked into a room.”
Michael suggested I research the twins and give an update in my column.
The twins have both passed, but their shared legacy and story of the path they found to Hollywood and then retirement time in the Midwest is fascinating.
The twins were born a day apart, in 1922 in East St. Louis, Missouri, with Marion Lee Wilde born shortly before midnight on Oct. 10 and her sister Mary Lyn Wilde born in the early hours the next morning on Oct. 11. After graduating from East St. Louis High School in 1939, the twins pursued a singing career, including singing hymns on local radio stations around St. Louis and accepting small club dates in Illinois and as far as Kentucky, hoping to find “their break in show business.”
A short-time contracted job entertaining on a Mississippi riverboat landed them in Chicago for an opportunity to perform with Ray Noble’s orchestra at the famed Empire Room of the Palmer House Hotel where Noble’s musicians comprised the house orchestra. The twins made their Palmer House debut on New Year’s Eve 1940. They met Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother) and began to tour, performing with his orchestra.
A booked radio show starring opposite ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his partner Charlie McCarthy got the talented duo an introduction to Judy Garland, who was co-starring in a film with Bob Crosby, and Garland suggested them for small film roles in “Juke Box Jenny” in 1942. This led to screen tests at MGM where studio head Louie B. Mayer gave them a seven-year contract.
Movie magazines dreamed up many headlines about the identical twins having trouble shopping during wartime since only limited dress sizes were available, forcing the girls to compete for the same fashions. At age 18, the twins made their publicity debut starring opposite Rooney in “Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble,” which included the ladies singing the Cole Porter song “Easy to Love.” Their next film titled “Twice Blessed” in 1945 was clearly the inspiration for the original 1961 Walt Disney comedy “The Parent Trap.”
“Louie B. Mayer said he loved the idea that we were twins, and that’s why we were given our contract,” Lyn told the Associated Press entertainment writer Bob Thomas in November 1951.
“He wanted us to dress alike and wear our hair identical. Then later, he said the twin gimmick was over. We even tried dressing different and changing our hair to be one blonde and myself as a redhead, but our contract wasn’t renewed.”
In the early 1950s, Lee retired and married Thomas Cathcart and became the mother of two, Bill and Kathy. Lyn was already married to Jim Cathcart (Tom’s brother), and the couple had two children, Carter and Lee Ann. Jim Cathcart had been the violinist for Ray Noble’s orchestra at The Palmer House.
The twins said in multiple interviews that starting their careers at such a young age was a detriment. They said they were considered to play the twin roles in films like “A Stolen Life” (1946), but the roles went to Bette Davis with camera trickery used for one person to play both roles. The same technique was used for Oliva de Havilland playing twins in “The Dark Mirror” (1946).
Lyn left retirement to try a solo career and was cast in a small cameo in the 1951 musical classic “Singin’ in the Rain,” playing a tennis player model during the “Beautiful Girl” musical number.
As for how the twins came to call Michigan City their “home away from home,” the connection comes from their married lives and the husbands from their twin sisters-in-law status.
The four Cathcart brothers, consisting of Jack, Jim, Tom, and Dick, were all established career musicians originally from Michigan City. Dick played trumpet for Lawrence Welk in his orchestra and also on his long-running television show. Dick married Peggy Lennon of the Lennon Sisters while remaining brother Jack married Judy Garland’s sister, Sue.
“Lyn had so many old Hollywood stories she’d share,” my financial planner Michael said with a sly smile.
“The twins were friends with Judy Garland and spent quite a bit of time around her.”
It was Lyn’s husband Jim who wanted the couple to retire and return to Michigan City to live a more modest life not as involved in show business. Jim started his own symphony orchestra and Lyn spent her summers acting at Dunes Summer Theatre along Long Beach in Michigan City. In later years, Lyn was a pageant director and often judge for the Miss Indiana state pageants.
After Jim Cathcart died in 1970, Lyn remarried Dwight Oberlink until his passing in 1996. Lee’s husband Tom Cathcart died in 2010. Lee died at age 92 in Los Angeles in September 2015 and Lyn followed exactly a year later at age 93 in September 2016 in hospice care in Michigan City.
Philip Potempa is a journalist, published author and the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at Philip.M.Potempa@powershealth.org.
