SGT, US Army, Marion “Jinx” Allworth Silcox Junkin

Marion “Jinx” Junkin joined the Women’s Army Corps as a private at Edgar, Illinois, on October 2, 1944. ¹ She directed service shows featuring other soldiers. ^{2, 3} “I got most of my directing experience in the WACs, and that’s why I always liked doing big musicals,” she recalled in an interview with the Santa Fe New Mexican. ¹

Junkin was born in Canada, but moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she grew up. ³ She was the daughter of Dr. Homer David Junkin and Eva Alice Silcox. ¹ At age three, Junkin lost her mother to tuberculosis and was raised by her surgeon father. ⁴ He nicknamed her Jinx, although she never knew why. ¹ Junkin’s longtime friend Carol McGiffin explained that her father wanted her to be a surgeon as well, but Junkin had other plans. ¹ Her earliest theater experience was landing a bit part in a Hal Roach comedy as a child. “I got to fall down into a birthday cake in one scene. I thought that was great fun,” she told Robert Nott of the Santa Fe New Mexican. ¹

In 1930, she and her sister studied nursing in Paris, Illinois. Later, Junkin moved to New York City, where she wrote for the education desk at The New York Herald Tribune by day while working as a stage manager at night. ⁴ There, she worked with legendary theater director Guthrie McClintic and his wife, Katherine Cornell. One winter night, Junkin’s cat, Cleo, got out of her apartment. Marlene Dietrich helped Junkin try to retrieve her cat. Dietrich pulled the cat out from under a car, but it was the wrong cat. Junkin didn’t have the heart to tell Detrich that it wasn’t hers. ³ After the war, she studied drama at the Goodman Memorial Theater School in Chicago, where one of her classmates was stage and screen star Geraldine Page. Junkin later said she and Page were “the worst actresses in the class.” ¹

Junkin moved to Santa Fe in the mid-1950s and got involved with the Corelli Players and the Santa Fe Community Theater (now known as the Santa Fe Playhouse). ³ Junkin once remarked, “I didn’t start to live until I got to Santa Fe.” ⁴ In 1968, Junkin started a children’s theater company which was dubbed Jinx’s Magic Theater. ¹ Of community theater, Junkin once remarked, “It’s sort of like being part of a great big family.” ⁵ In 1979, Junkin won a Special Achievement Award given by the Santa Theater Guild. ⁶ In 1989, she won the Santa Fe Community Foundation’s Geronima Cruz-Montoya Award for outstanding service in the arts and humanities. ⁷ In 1992, she won an award for outstanding contributions to the arts in the community, which was presented by the mayor of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Arts Commission. ⁷ Due to failing eyesight, Junkin stepped back from the theater in the late 1990s. ⁸ In 2000, she was named a Santa Fe Living Treasure. ⁴