Ethel Meglin

For nearly 35 years, starting in 1928, the Meglin Kiddies Studios taught singing, dancing, and acting to children, catapulting many into prominent, even starring roles on stage and in the movies. In time, it became a source of talent from which Hollywood's studios reliably drew whenever the need arose for kids who could perform in front of an audience or a camera. The eponymous founder, who guided her studio and its cast of young aspirants, was Ethel Marie Meglin, born Ethel Marie Redman in Cincinnati, Ohio. She started out teaching dance in Cincinnati before moving to New York where she landed a spot in Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s Follies. It was in New York that she changed her married name, Moegling, to Meglin, just to make it simpler for people to spell and pronounce, not to mention that the change was easier to put on a marquee. By 1920, she had moved to Los Angeles and was renting office space near her home from Mack Sennett. It was in this venue that she first opened a dance studio for kids. Having gradually attracted approximately 30 young enrollees to her program, she sought to attract someone in show business who could utilize the talents of this group. One such producer liked what he saw, but insisted he needed at least 100 kids. Ethel instructed her students to entice their brothers and sisters into joining up. The rest is history. Eventually, the likes of Shirley Temple, Jane Withers, the Gumm Sisters (Judy Garland being one of them), and Mickey Rooney found their way to the Meglin Kiddies Studio and beyond. While most of her students failed to achieve stardom, all of them received exposure to the possibilities and at one time or another performed on a stage or in front of a camera. The actors playing the Parisian kids that Gene Kelly befriends in An American in Paris (1951) were all Meglin Kiddies. Through various business deals, she managed to extend her reach with the opening of more than 100 studios nationwide. It was not until the death of her husband Richard in 1962 that Ethel Meglin closed the last of her studios. She spent her remaining years in retirement in Dana Point, California, where she died peacefully at the age of 98 in 1988.