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Marion Caroline Dougherty (February 9, 1923 – December 4, 2011) was an American casting director.

She is the primary subject of the 2012 documentary Casting By.

Biography
Dougherty attended university at Penn State University, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. Dougherty's career in the performing arts began when, after graduating from Penn State in 1943, she had a brief stint working at the Cleveland Playhouse as an actress. She then moved to New York City, just as live television was hitting the mainstream. She was making window displays at Bergdorf Goodman when a fellow Penn State alum, who had been recently hired into the casting department at Kraft Television Theatre, hired her as an assistant.

In 1991 many prominent filmmakers and actors, including Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen and Al Pacino attempted to convince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to grant an honorary award to Dougherty. Unfortunately this dream of recognizing the woman considered to be the "grand matriarch" of casting was never accomplished before her death in 2011.

Career
After working at the Kraft Television Theatre, Dougherty moved on to two another tv series, Naked City, where she gave John Voight and Dustin Hoffman their first acting credits. While working on this show and another, Route 66, Marion was able to feature many notable guest stars such as Tina Louise , Michael Parks , Jean Stapleton , Jessica Walter , William Shatner , Joan Crawford , Christopher Walken , Gene Hackman , Martin Sheen , and Robert Duvall.

In 1963 Dougherty established her own casting company in New York, where she began casting local talent out of the theatres. Out of her brownstone, Dougherty worked on many Hollywood films, including The World of Henry Orient, Hawaii, and Midnight Cowboy. In 1972 with the release of Slaughterhouse-Five Dougherty made history as being the first casting director to receive an entire title card to list their credit. From 1979 to 1999 Dougherty worked at Warner Brothers as the Vice-President of casting.

Other notable actors that Dougherty gave their first film credit to include Glenn Close in The World According to Garp, Bette Midler in Hawaii , and Al Pacino in Me, Natalie.