A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1949), the title character in Peter Pan (1954), and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1959).

"[2]: 19  Martin, who said "I'd never understand the law"[2]: 19  began singing every Saturday night at a bandstand that was near the courtroom where her father worked.

She would win prizes for looking, acting and dancing like Ruby Keeler and singing exactly like Bing Crosby.

In Nashville she enjoyed imitating Fanny Brice at singing gigs, but she found school dull and felt confined by its strict rules.

[2]: 39 Their honeymoon was at her parents' house, and Martin's dream of life with a family and a white-picket fence faded.

"I was 17, a married woman without real responsibilities, miserable about my mixed-up emotions, afraid there was something awfully wrong with me because I didn't enjoy being a wife.

Here, she created her own moves, imitated the famous dancers she watched in the movies and taught "Sister's" waltz clog.

[citation needed] Soon after, Martin learned that her studio in Texas had been burned down by a man who thought dancing was a sin.

Martin left everything behind including her young son, Larry, and stayed in Los Angeles while her father handled her divorce from Benjamin Hagman for her.

After she finished the song, "a tall, craggly man who looked like a mountain" told Martin that he thought she had something special.

Martin began her radio career in 1939 as the vocalist on a short-lived revival of The Tuesday Night Party on CBS.

In 1940, she was a singer on NBC's Good News of 1940, which was renamed Maxwell House Coffee Time during that year.

[5] Martin was cast in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me!, making her Broadway debut in November 1938 in that production.

She became popular on Broadway and received attention in the national media singing the spoof striptease song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".

"My Heart Belongs to Daddy" catapulted her career and became very special to Martin—she even sang it to her ailing father in his hospital bed while he was in a coma.

[8] Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post wrote: "nothing I have ever seen her do prepared me for the loveliness, humor, gift for joyous characterization, and sheer lovableness of her portrayal of Nellie Forbush ....

Martin opened on Broadway in The Sound of Music as Maria on November 16, 1959, and stayed in the show until October 1961.

A national tour with Preston began in March 1968 but was canceled early due to Martin's illness.

Martin appeared in the play Legends with Carol Channing in a one-year US national tour opening in Dallas on January 9, 1986.

A Special Tony Award was presented to her in 1948 while she appeared in the national touring company of Annie Get Your Gun for "spreading theatre to the rest of the country while the originals perform in New York."

In the early 1970s, the couple lived, according to his March 1973 obituary in the Connecticut Sunday Herald,[14] "on a vast ranch they own near Anápolis" in the state of Goiás, Brazil.

[18][19] A van ran a red light at the corner of California and Franklin streets and crashed into the Luxor taxicab in which the group was riding, knocking it into a tree.

On March 15, 1983, he was found guilty of drunk driving and vehicular homicide and was sentenced to three years in prison.

"[27] Martin died of cancer at age 76 at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, on November 3, 1990.

[30] Albums[35] Mary Martin in an Album of Cole Porter Songs (1940) One Touch of Venus (1944) Lute Song (1946) Mary Martin Sings for You (1949) South Pacific (1949) Anything Goes (1950) The Bandwagon (1950) Babes in Arms (1951) Girl Crazy (1952) Peter Pan (1954) Annie Get Your Gun (1957) Walt Disney’s Story of Sleeping Beauty (1958) Mary Martin Sings – Richard Rodgers Plays (1958) Hi-Ho (1958) Mary Martin Sings a Musical Love Story (1959) The Sound of Music (1959) Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1959) The Little Lame Lamb, A Christmas Story of St. Francis (1960) Guideposts for Living (1962) Jennie – The Original Broadway Cast (1963) Hello, Dolly!

(1966) Mary Martin Tells the Story and Sings the Songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (1966) Hit singles [36]