Marion "Kiki" Roberts (née Strasmick, 1909 - ?). American dancer and showgirl. She was better known as the girlfriend and moll of American gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond.
At age 17, she was signed as a Ziegfeld girl.
Jack "Legs" Diamond was a major Irish-American bootlegger and mobster of the 1920s and 1930s. There are various accounts as to how Diamond and "Kiki" Roberts met, but one was that she had befriended a lady named Agnes O. Laughlin, who was in turn friends with Diamond and introduced them.
The two soon became lovers, gaining Roberts the celebrity she wanted. Diamond helped Roberts get introduced to New York City choreographers in order to improve her dancing skills.
It is widely believed that Roberts was one of the later people to see Diamond alive before he was gunned down in December 1931.
Not much is known about Marion Roberts after the death of "Legs" Diamond. She did an interview for the Boston American newspaper, recorded in film in 1931, and in 1935, she moved to the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, and by 1937, she was headlining a show titled Crazy Quilt at the Allentown Lyric Theater in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
By the 1940s, she had disappeared from the limelight. Attempts at finding her whereabouts and her death date have been unsuccessful.
- "Marion Roberts the red haired sweetheart of slain gangster chief, Jack (Legs) Diamond, yesterday signed a vaudeville contract." https://www.gettyimages.it/.../marion-roberts.../97295498
- "... Marion "Kiki" Roberts, an auburn-haired woman who Marcus thinks is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen." https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/legs/section4/
- "... and his red-haired girlfriend Marion Kiki Roberts." http://thepublici.blogspot.com/2017/11/calling-judge-crater-chapter-seven.html
No comments:
Post a Comment