Marjorie Mazia Guthrie (October 6, 1917 – March 13, 1983) was for a time the wife of folk musician Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...

, and was the mother of folk musician Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...

 and Woody Guthrie archivist Nora Guthrie

Nora Guthrie

Nora Lee Guthrie is the daughter of American folk musician and singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie and his second wife Marjorie Guthrie, sister of singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie, and granddaughter of renowned Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt...

.

She was born Marjorie Greenblatt in Atlantic City

Atlantic City, New Jersey

Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and a nationally renowned resort city for gambling, shopping and fine dining. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast...

, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, USA, to Aliza Waitzman

Aliza Greenblatt

Aliza Greenblatt was an American Yiddish poet. Her works include such well known Yiddish songs as Fisherlid and Du, Du. Her daughter Marjorie was for a time married to folk musician Woody Guthrie...

 and Izadore Greenblatt. Following the death of her ex-husband from Huntington's Disease

Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease, chorea, or disorder , is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and leads to cognitive decline and dementia. It typically becomes noticeable in middle age. HD is the most common genetic cause of abnormal involuntary writhing movements called chorea...

 in 1967, she founded the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease. This eventually became the Huntington's Disease Society of America

Huntington's Disease Society of America

Huntington's Disease Society of America is a national non-profit organization committed to finding a cure for Huntington's disease. Huntington's disease is an incurable degenerative disease of the nervous system that affects movement, thinking, and some aspects of personality. The disease is...

. She met Guthrie in 1940 as a Martha Graham Dancer

Martha Graham

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...

 trained in Modern Dance

Modern dance

Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...

, while she was adapting some of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads to a routine. Though she was Guthrie's second wife (of three) they maintained a close relationship throughout his life and she provided constant care to Guthrie until his death. She also founded the Marjorie Mazia School of Dance on Sheepshead Bay Road in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, which trained young dancers in Modern Dance and Ballet in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. In 1950, Mazia also recorded, Dance Along on Folkways Records

Folkways Records

Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...

, a dance album for children. She is extensively cited in the book, Outwitting History

Outwitting History

Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky is a book about Lansky and his book-saving adventures. At age 23 Lansky read that thousands of the few remaining Yiddish books in North America were being discarded by the children of the books' original Yiddish-speaking owners. The books meant nothing to many of...

by National Yiddish Book Center

National Yiddish Book Center

The National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States, on the campus of Hampshire College. It is a cultural institution dedicated to the preservation of books in the Yiddish language. It is a member of Museums10 and is a non-profit institution, and its cultural programs are...

 founder/director Aaron Lansky

Aaron Lansky

Aaron Lansky is the founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, an organization he created to help salvage Yiddish language publications. When he began saving books in the early 1980s, most experts believe that there were fewer than 70,000 Yiddish volumes extant...

.