Category Archives: who’s that girl

What a Character: Mary Wickes

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By all accounts, Mary Wickes did not start out her life with the intention to become an actress. She was a St. Louis debutante who attended college early, graduating from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science with plans to attend law school–that is, until she gave in to the allure of the stage and headed to New York instead. Appearances on Broadway eventually led her to Hollywood, and she found her niche as a character actress, generally typecast as a wisecracking sidekick–nurses, secretaries, housekeepers–in a number of sprightly comedies.

Wickes certainly did not look–or sound like–the typical Hollywood starlet. Her tall, thin, somewhat gangly frame had her towering over many of her fellow actors. She had wide-set eyes and a long nose that gave her a rather patrician profile. Her voice was remarkable: loud and insistent, demanding to be heard, marked by high-pitched cracks and growls that grew more distinct in her later years. She demonstrated an impeccable sense of comic timing, and she seemed to have an almost instinctive sense for well-staged reaction shots (few could say more with a pair of widened eyes than Mary Wickes could). Everything about her was unique. Even if she never intended to be an actress, there’s no denying she was custom-made to be one anyway.

Wickes appeared in a few cinematic shorts in the 1930s, including a notable one in 1938 called Too Much Johnson, directed by Orson Welles, which she made while a member of Welles’ Mercury Theater. She finally made her feature film debut at the age of thirty-two, when she appeared in the 1942 classic The Man Who Came to Dinner. In the film, Wickes reprises her role from the original Broadway production alongside co-star Monty Woolley (who plays the main character, popular radio host Sheridan Whiteside). As the much-maligned nurse, Miss Preen, Wickes bears the brunt of the acerbic Whiteside’s sharp-tongued barbs (in addition to some manhandling courtesy of Jimmy Durante). Her reactions to Whiteside’s constant insults range from wild confusion to wide-eyed horror to, finally, a sharp-tongued rant of her own–a brilliant moment that highlights Wickes’ comedic abilities:

“I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you , Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on, anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed you, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!”

Wickes parlayed that memorable supporting role into a number of others throughout the next fifty-something years. In the process, she starred with some of the biggest names of the classic Hollywood era, among them Bette Davis (the aforementioned Dinner; Now, Voyager; June Bride; The Actress), Abbott and Costello (Who Done It?); Doris Day (On Moonlight Bay, I’ll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, It Happened to Jane); Jack Lemmon (How to Murder Your Wife); Rosalind Russell (The Trouble with Angels; Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows); Frank Sinatra (Higher and Higher); Bing Crosby (White Christmas); and many, many more.

Wickes was even immortalized in animation due to her involvement in two high-profile Disney features. For the 1961 classic 101 Dalmatians, Wickes served as the live-action model for the villainous Cruella De Vil. Disney’s Marc Davis animated the character, and according to his widow, Alice Estes Davis, Wickes was hand-picked by him to serve as the physical inspiration for Cruella: ”She was very tall, slim, had good bone structure and was a wonderful comedienne. All he had to do was tell her once how he wanted her to walk and move and that and she did it.” Wickes also supplied one of the additional voices in the film.

But Disney wasn’t quite done with her after that; thirty-four years later, Wickes’ final role before her death in 1995 was recording the voice of Laverne, one of the gargoyles in Disney’s adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Sadly, Wickes passed away before completing her part, and the rest of her lines were filled in by actress Jane Withers (who also voiced Laverne in the highly unnecessary sequel to the film in 2002).

Wickes also made her mark on the small screen, with a number of appearances on popular television shows. Most notably, she became great friends with a fellow comedienne, the legendary Lucille Ball, and over the years, she appeared in several different incarnations on Lucy’s various television series. Her most well-known guest role, however, was her first (and the only one she would make on Ball’s first series, I Love Lucy). In 1952, she appeared as Madame Lemond, a grand dame of a dancing teacher, in the episode “The Ballet.” That episode remains one of the most beloved of the entire series, namely for the scene in which Wickes puts Lucy through her paces:

Lemond: “I think we should go to the barre.”
Lucy: “Oh, good, ’cause I’m awful thirsty.”

When Wickes passed away in 1995, Lucie Arnaz spoke at the memorial service and recalled the many times Wickes would come over to their home while she was growing up: ”Mary was just like one of the family. If any of us were sick or even in bed with a cold, Mary would show up at the back door with a kettle of chicken soup. She could be loud and boisterous and as demanding as any of the characters she played, but she was also very loving and giving. What a lady!”

What a lady, indeed. In her eighty-five years on this earth, Mary Wickes appeared in over a hundred films and television series. She never lacked for new roles, and indeed remained a popular entertainer; in her final years, her popularity saw a resurgence with memorable roles in Postcards from the Edge, the Sister Act films (in which she played crusty, feisty Sister Mary Lazarus), and the 1994 version of Little Women, in which she played Aunt March. In the end, it’s little wonder Wickes was able to maintain a seven-decade career, because it is simply a joy to watch her onscreen. Even in the smallest of roles, she brings warmth, humor, and pure zing to each film she graces. In every sense of the word, Mary Wickes was quite the character.

 

This post is our submission to the “What a Character!” blogathon hosted by Outspoken and Freckled, Once Upon a Screen, and Paula’s Cinema Club. The blogathon concludes tomorrow, so make sure to check out all of the great characters being discussed by the participating blogs!

Who’s that girl?: Helen Broderick

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Her name may not be well-known to modern audiences, but her face is immediately recognizable to classic film fans. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, actress Helen Broderick appeared as the wisecracking pal of numerous Hollywood stars, always bringing a shot of well-timed droll humor to every role. In many ways, Broderick was the prototype for the sarcastic female sidekick, a persona that would later be filled (and taken to new, snarky heights) by such memorable character actresses as Eve Arden and Thelma Ritter. Her career in films amounted to a little more than two dozen pictures over the course of two decades, and even in the smallest of parts, Broderick was a welcome comedic presence.

Broderick had grown up determined to avoid show business due to a stage-obsessed mother, but when she left home at the age of fourteen, she found there was no better way to support herself than to reluctantly embrace the field she loathed. Broderick kicked off her career as a chorus girl on Broadway, appearing in the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907 when she was barely sixteen years old. As one of the glamorous Ziegfeld Girls, Broderick shared the stage with some of the most notable performers of the day, including Will Rogers, Sophie Tucker, W.C. Fields, and Ed Wynn, among many others. Soon she moved on to the dramatic stage, understudying to popular Broadway star Ina Claire. When Broderick was forced to stand in for Claire one evening, her deliberately hilarious mangling of the play Jumping Jupiter made her a star. She went on to appear in a number of shows, most notably the Cole Porter-scored musical Fifty Million Frenchmen, which debuted in 1929.

Though Broderick had appeared in a handful of short films while living in New York, it was the big-screen adaptation of Frenchmen that ultimately brought her to Hollywood in 1931. In the movie, she reprises her role as Violet, a naughty American tourist. The film was not a strict adaptation of the stage show–the musical numbers were removed from the film before its release, as the public had reportedly grown weary of the genre by that time. The movie itself is relatively unremarkable, though The New York Times singled out Broderick positively in an otherwise lackluster review of the picture.

Broderick’s most notable roles may have been in the two films she made opposite Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire–and they just happen to be two of the dancing pair’s very best. In 1935′s Top Hat, Broderick appears as Madge Hardwick, exasperated wife of Edward Everett Horton’s Horace. Madge is good friends with Rogers’ Dale Tremont, who in a case of mistaken identity believes that Astaire’s character, Jerry–the man with whom she has fallen in love–is actually Horace. Broderick is hilarious as Madge, particularly when needling hapless husband Horton (when Jerry realizes that Dale has rejected his proposal because she believes he is married to her friend, Madge wryly replies, “Well, no wonder she said he was interesting”).

The following year, Broderick again partnered with Astaire and Rogers (as well as the subject of our last “Who’s That Girl?” profile, Betty Furness) in Swing Time. This go-round, Broderick plays Mabel, Rogers’ tart-tongued friend and confidant who gets caught up in the complicated romance between the two leads, as Lucky (Astaire) tries to hide his engagement to Margaret (Furness) from new love Penny (Rogers). Broderick gets some of the best zingers in the film–though most of them tend to reference her supposedly decrepit age (she was barely in her mid-40s at the time)–and she has a great rapport with costar Victor Moore, who plays Lucky’s older pal Pop.

Throughout the decade following her appearance in Swing Time, Broderick was featured in supporting roles opposite some of the biggest names in Hollywood: Barbara Stanwyck, Constance Bennett, Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell, Fred MacMurray, Adolphe Menjou, and Gloria Swanson among them. The actress also appeared in leading roles in several B-movies during that time as well, though she never broke through to mainstream leading-lady success. She eventually retired from the screen after completing the 1946 film Because of Him, in which she appeared opposite Deanna Durbin and Franchot Tone.

Though Helen Broderick may not be well-remembered today for her own career, she has a very special connection to a noteworthy Oscar-winning star. While still a teenager, she married fellow actor and vaudevillian Lester Crawford (who would go to appear with her both on Broadway and onscreen in Frenchmen), and in 1911, she gave birth to their son, Broderick Crawford (pictured to the right). And in 1949, Broderick won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his searing portrayal of Willie Stark in the film adaptation of All the King’s Men.

Helen Broderick passed away in 1959 at the age of sixty-eight. Though she had not wanted a career in entertainment, it found her nonetheless–and quite thankfully, for all of us who enjoy revisiting her films to witness anew her smart-mouthed charm.

Who’s that girl?: Betty Furness

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Betty Furness began her career as a movie starlet and ended it as an influential expert in consumer issues and a reporter for The Today Show. The story of how she got there is an interesting one, to say the least, marked by Furness’ self-professed inability to say “no” to any job that crossed her path.

Born as Elizabeth Mary Furness in 1916, the lovely young woman started out as a teenage model before moving to Hollywood and signing a contract with RKO in 1932. The studio put her right to work. In her first film that year, Thirteen Women, she appeared opposite Irene Dunne, but her scenes were ultimately cut from the movie (strangely enough, the same thing happened the following year when she was cast with Dunne in No Other Woman). Her screen debut came with the release of Renegades of the West, a minor Western starring Tom Keene, in November 1932.

The following year was the most prolific of Furness’ movie career, as she appeared in more than a dozen films, including an uncredited role in Flying Down to Rio, the first movie to pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Incidentally, Furness would go on to appear opposite Fred and Ginger again in 1936′s Swing Time, this time in a full-fledged supporting role as Astaire’s fiance, Margaret.

Furness and Astaire, after the infamous “Bojangles of Harlem” number from SWING TIME

 

In 1935, Furness starred in her highest-profile film to date when she was once again cast opposite Dunne in Magnificent Obsession, playing Dunne’s stepdaughter. This time, her scenes remained intact in the final film. That same year, Furness also appeared with popular funny couple George Burns and Gracie Allen in Here Comes Cookie (1935), in which she played Allen’s flighty younger sister. But by the end of the decade, after performing in almost three dozen films, Furness found it difficult to score additional acting jobs, and her appearances tapered off. She made one movie in 1939, the B-picture North of Shanghai, before returning to New York to seek roles on the Broadway stage. And by the end of the 1940s, Furness moved on to the next phase of her career when she embraced the fledgling medium of television.

Starting off as the host of a show called Fashions, Coming and Becoming in 1945, Furness segued into guest appearances on series such as Studio One and ABC Showcase. However, it wasn’t long before the actress became a noted advertising spokesperson, and it was almost by accident. During filming one day in 1948, Furness volunteered to substitute for another actor in a Westinghouse spot, and the company, thrilled with her performance, signed her as their new “Westinghouse girl.” It was a role she would maintain for the next twelve years on radio and on television. In the meantime, Furness continued acting in a number of television series, starring in her own daytime talk show Meet Betty Furness, and, perhaps most infamously, a 1951 show with the hilariously cumbersome title Your Kaiser Dealer Presents Kaiser-Frazer “Adventures in Mystery” Starring Betty Furness in “Byline.” She also made numerous appearances on the popular game shows What’s My Line? and I’ve Got a Secret.

Furness prepping for a Westinghouse commercial in 1952, from LIFE magazine.

 

After parting ways with Westinghouse, Furness, a vocal Democrat, was recruited by President Lyndon B. Johnson to be the Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs in 1967. The post was not a mere title gift-wrapped for a celebrity; Furness had multiple responsibilities in her role, also serving as the chairman of the President’s Committee on Consumer Interests and head of the Consumer Advisory Council. At first, Furness’ appointment was met with skepticism, as her identity as the Westinghouse spokeswoman was so ingrained in the public consciousness. But the actress adapted easily to the role of politician and quickly became an expert in her new field, proving the naysayers wrong. Furness later served as the director of Consumer Affairs for New York City and was named the first chairman of the state’s Consumer Protection Board in 1970.

The following year, Furness left politics to return to television, this time as a reporter focusing on the topic of consumer affairs for WNBC in New York–a job that eventually led to her hiring by NBC’s national morning talk show, The Today Show, in 1976. According to the Paley Center for Media, Furness thus became the first full-time consumer advocate on television–a role she relished thoroughly. She also hosted a local television show in New York called Buyline: Betty Furness; that show won a Peabody Award for excellence in television in 1977. Furness remained a correspondent for Today for sixteen years, building a reputation as a fierce consumer advocate in the process, until she was let go in 1992. Her firing from Today was considered an example of ageism and raised ire among Furness’ fans as well as media watchdogs.

Furness was married four times–her first husband, whom she divorced in 1943, was five-time Academy Award-winning composer and songwriter Johnny Green, with whom she had her only child, a daughter named Babbie Green (who followed in her father’s footsteps as a singer/songwriter). Furness’ granddaughter, Liza Snyder, later became a television star in her own right, headlining the 2000-2006 CBS comedy series Yes, Dear.

Furness passed away in 1994 after a bout with stomach cancer. She was seventy-eight years old.

Who’s that girl?: Doris Davenport

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Doris Davenport is not a name that is very familiar to movie fans, for she sadly did not have a very long-lasting career in Hollywood, having appeared in only a handful of films between 1934 and 1940. A beautiful actress who worked as a model to support herself in between roles, Davenport flirted with fame over the years, but never quite caught on with audiences.

Born in Illinois in 1917, Davenport moved to California at a young age and tried to break into the film industry. Her big break came with her induction into the veritable Hollywood sorority known as the Goldwyn Girls, a group of young dancers who made frequent appearances in Goldwyn films throughout the 1930s and 40s. Davenport joined their ranks in 1934, joining a group that already included future movie stars Lucille Ball and Paulette Goddard.

As a Goldwyn Girl, Davenport was set to make her film debut with the rest of the troupe in that year’s Roy Del Ruth musical Kid Millions, starring Eddie Cantor and Ethel Merman. But Samuel Goldwyn took a liking to Davenport and gave her the part of “Toots,” Eddie’s love interest in the film. Though the role of Toots was relatively small, it nonetheless took Davenport out of the chorus line and gave the new actress some valuable screen time, particularly in the famed “ice cream fantasy” Technicolor sequence at the end of the film, where she closes the movie with a smooch for Cantor.

Unfortunately, however, this opportunity did not lead to bigger and better things for the young actress. Over the next few years, Davenport appeared in the background of several other films including 1937′s Thin Ice, with Sonja Henie and Tyrone Power, and 1939′s Sorority House with Anne Shirley. In the interim, under the name Doris Jordan, she–along with practically every other actress in Hollywood at the time–auditioned for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939), and was reportedly one of the finalists under consideration for the part until Vivien Leigh was cast.

The Scarlett audition did give Davenport’s career a boost, however; Goldwyn was impressed with her screen test for the role and decided to cast her opposite Gary Cooper in the 1940 film The Westerner, with the hopes that this would be the movie that would finally make her a star. Instead, the film would turn out to be the apex of her short career.

In The Westerner, Davenport plays Jane-Ellen Matthews, the love interest of Cooper’s Cole Harden. When Jane’s father is killed through the unscrupulous dealings of Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), Harden decides to take action and challenge Bean’s authority, ultimately bringing the “hanging judge” to justice. Davenport was given the part despite director William Wyler’s desire to cast his own wife, Margaret Tallichet, in the role. But even though Davenport does a fine job as Jane, it was ultimately not a breakout performance for the actress. After one more film–the 1940 B-movie Behind the News, opposite Lloyd Nolan and Frank Albertson–Davenport was forced to retire from the screen in the wake of a car accident that reportedly crippled her legs to the point that she could not walk without using a cane.

Davenport spent the rest of her years out of the public eye, and passed away in 1980. Though her time in the spotlight was brief, she nonetheless was a bright spot in her two biggest films, leaving us to wonder what might have been, had circumstances been different.

Who’s that girl?: Diana Lynn

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A fresh-faced young beauty sporting a killer sense of comedic timing from an early age, Diana Lynn was a fixture in some of the funniest comedies of the 1940s and 50s. Lynn was born Dolores “Dolly” Loehr, but like so many of her contemporaries, the actress’ name was changed when she became a contract player for Paramount. She began her career in music, playing the piano with the Los Angeles Junior Symphony Orchestra, which precipitated her appearance in 1939′s They Shall Have Music with Joel McCrea. She appeared in an uncredited part as one of the child musicians in the movie, and again appeared as a musician in the similarly-themed 1941 picture There’s Magic in Music.

Lynn’s first acting role was in 1942 in The Major and the Minor, playing Lucy Hill, the precocious sister of Rita Johnson’s bitchy blonde. Lynn couldn’t have asked for a better acting debut–her costars were Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, and the film was the first to be directed by famed screenwriter Billy Wilder. The young actress certainly makes her mark–the smart-assed, wise-beyond-her-years budding scientist is one of the highlights of this utterly delightful comedy. As the only one who sees through Rogers’ charade (making her instantly smarter and more perceptive than every adult in the room), Lynn deftly portrays Lucy’s youthful cynicism with an irresistible sparkle.

In 1944, Lynn appeared in a film for another great writer/director, Preston Sturges. In The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Lynn plays Emmy Kockenlocker, the wiseacre younger sister of Betty Hutton’s Trudy. When Trudy wakes up after a night of partying with a bevy of soldiers, she finds herself married and pregnant–though she cannot remember her husband’s name. The rather racy subject matter somehow slipped through the Production Code, and the movie was the most popular film of the year. Another notable supporting role came in 1948, when Lynn costarred with the soon-to-be-married Cary Grant and Betsy Drake in Every Girl Should Be Married (which marked Drake’s film debut). Lynn plays Julie, best friend to Drake’s Annabel, and helps her determined pal snag Dr. Grant for herself–whether he wants her or not.

Lynn may be best remembered for the three films she made with the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. In My Friend Irma (1949) and My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), Lynn plays the ditzy Irma’s (Marie Wilson) exasperated roommate, Jane, who winds up falling in love with Martin’s character, Steve. The films are based on the popular radio show (which also starred Wilson), and though Martin and Lewis play supporting roles in the first film, their popularity ended up convincing the folks at Paramount to exponentially increase their roles in the sequel. Five years later, Lynn reunited with the now-influential comedy duo for You’re Never Too Young. This movie marked a kind of “full circle” moment for Lynn–it was based on the film that introduced her to audiences, The Major and the Minor. In this version, Lewis takes on the Ginger Rogers role, with Lynn as the Ray Milland-type figure who believes Lewis to be a young boy in need of help (Martin again plays Lynn’s love interest in the film).

You’re Never Too Young was one of Lynn’s last big-screen performances. She made one more film in 1955–The Kentuckian, with Burt Lancaster–and, at the age of 30, retired from films. She moved to television at that point and guest-starred on several notable series and anthology shows, even starring as Tracy Lord in a 1959 television version of The Philadelphia Story (alongside Mary Astor, Gig Young, and Christopher Plummer). In 1965, she left Hollywood altogether, but reappeared onscreen in a small role in 1970′s Company of Killers with Van Johnson and–once again–Ray Milland. A year later, Lynn was offered the role of Helene, the wife of closeted homosexual B.Z. (Anthony Perkins) in Play It As It Lays (1972), but she sadly passed away in December 1971 after suffering a stroke. She was only 45 years old.

Diana Lynn’s film career was relatively short–only lasting fifteen years and 30 movies–but with her wit, charm, and ever-exuding warmth, the actress was certainly a welcome screen presence in each and every film she undertook.

Who’s that girl?: Mary Nash

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Sometimes an actress so thoroughly embodies a character that it becomes her signature role, the one for which she is mainly recognized (and sometimes at the expense of an otherwise extensive career). In many ways, I find this to be the case with Mary Nash. By the time Nash starred as Katharine Hepburn’s dithering mother in 1940′s The Philadelphia Story, she had already made a name for herself as a solid character actress, amassing a number of screen credits opposite some of the most popular stars of the 1930s. Still, the character of Margaret Lord remains the one for which Nash is arguably the most recognized.

Born in 1884 in New York, Nash began her career there in vaudeville before moving to the Broadway stage, where she was a ubiquitous presence for more than twenty-five years. During her time in New York, Nash filmed roles in a couple of minor silent pictures, but her movie career did not begin in earnest until 1934, when the actress left New York for Hollywood. Her first film role came later that year in Uncertain Lady, in which she appeared with Edward Everett Horton. Two years later, Nash moved up into the “big leagues,” so to speak, with a supporting role as Edward Arnold’s neglected wife in Come and Get It.

In 1937, Nash once again took on the role of Arnold’s wife in the screwball comedy Easy Living, written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. As Jenny, whose wealthy husband bemoans her unchecked spending habits (and in the process inadvertently sets the entire city to believing he is having an affair with Jean Arthur’s Mary Smith), Nash is delightfully daffy, going to extreme lengths early in the film to protect her brand-new, $58,000 sable coat.

Nash also appeared in two films with the biggest Hollywood star of the decade, Shirley Temple. Unlike most of her previous roles, however, in each of these films, she was not part of the comic relief, but instead Temple’s main adversary. In 1937′s Heidi, Nash plays Fräulein Rottenmeier, the evil housekeeper who makes Heidi’s life miserable and tries to sell the young girl to a band of Gypsies. Two years later, in The Little Princess, Nash once again squared off with Temple’s Sara Crewe as Miss Minchin, the spiteful head of a girls’ boarding school.

In 1940, the Broadway smash The Philadelphia Story was brought to the big screen, starring Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord, Cary Grant as her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven, and James Stewart as reluctant tabloid reporter Macaulay Connor. The film was a turning-point in the career of Hepburn, who had appeared in the Broadway production after being labeled “box-office poison” in the wake of a string of financially disappointing films. As the film was so vital to Hepburn’s career, she had a hand in almost every aspect of production, from the costumes to the lighting to the casting. The movie was filmed much like a play, with the dialogue and interactions between the characters taking precedence over most other elements. And Nash, a capable stage veteran, was an inspired choice for the role of Tracy’s mother, Margaret, who has left her husband at the urging of her angry daughter. As she juggles wedding planning, unexpected guests and magazine spies, and the reappearance of her estranged husband, Nash beautifully brings the frazzled–and sometimes puzzled–Margaret to life.

After The Philadelphia Story, Nash was featured in supporting roles in several more films throughout the first half of the 1940s, including The Human Comedy (1943) with Mickey Rooney and Yolanda and the Thief (1945) with Fred Astaire. Her final film appearance came in 1946, and she retired from acting at the age of sixty-two. Nash passed away thirty years later, a few months after her 92nd birthday in 1976, leaving behind a filmography comprised of more than two dozen big-screen roles that demonstrate her adept ability to slide between the worlds of comedy and drama.

Who’s that girl?: Joyce Compton

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If you’re a classic movie fan, you’ve probably seen Joyce Compton in dozens of minor film roles–she played a wide variety of nurses, waitresses, and random girlfriends in almost two hundred movies throughout her three-decades-long career. But she wasn’t merely relegated to these type of blink-and-you’ll-miss-her roles. In the heyday of her career in the 1930s and 40s, Compton starred opposite some of the greatest actors and actresses in Hollywood history, sometimes as the romantic rival to the film’s leading lady. These more notable supporting parts, however, typically involved some play on the “dumb blonde” stereotype, which ultimately served to pigeonhole Compton, never really allowing her to break out as a performer despite a charming on-screen persona and a gift for comic timing.

Compton started out as a bit player in the silent picture era, making memorable appearances in two films with eventual close friend Clara Bow, The Wild Party and Dangerous Curves (both in 1929). In the 1930s, she would go on to make nearly 100 films–many of them “B” pictures–but her career never reached the heights of some of her contemporaries (in fact, the actress sometimes appeared uncredited in her smaller roles). Still, in these films, Compton was able to share the screen with such big names as Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, Humphrey Bogart, Carole Lombard, and Gary Cooper, among others.

Her most notable role during the decade came in 1937, when she appeared opposite Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth. In the film, Compton plays Dixie Bell Lee, Grant’s nightclub-singer girlfriend, who performs a racy rendition of “My Dreams Are Gone With the Wind” in which her gauzy skirt blows up with every lyrical mention of a breeze (the song is also performed later in the film by a masquerading Dunne). Compton is charmingly ditzy and unabashed in this small but memorable part, more than holding her own opposite comedy veterans Grant and Dunne.

As the 1940s dawned, Compton appeared in two films directed by Raoul Walsh and co-starring George Raft: 1940′s They Drive By Night, also featuring Bogart, and the following year’s Manpower. Again, Compton’s roles were small in these pictures, though Night featured an entertaining courtroom scene in which a confused Compton testifies at the murder trial of Raft’s character. As she swivels her head between the judge and the district attorney, unsure of whom she was to refer to as “your honor,” Compton encapsulates the essence of the pretty “dumb blonde,” a persona she had, largely against her will, perfected over the years.

In 1945, Compton appeared as the drawling Southern belle Nurse Mary Lee in Christmas in Connecticut. In this movie, the actress stars opposite Dennis Morgan and the inimitable Barbara Stanwyck as Morgan’s purported fiance. Though her role is still quite minor, Compton’s appearances nevertheless bookend the film, and her character both precipitates the plot and helps her two co-stars reach their inevitable happy conclusion.

In the late 40s, Compton appeared in minor parts in other notable films, including a stint with Joan Crawford as a waitress in Mildred Pierce (1945); as a chorus girl in 1946′s Night and Day, once again opposite Grant; and as blond arm candy, again opposite Stanwyck, in 1948′s Sorry, Wrong Number. Compton was uncredited for all three of these roles. She also played a bit role in the post-war classic The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), but her part was ultimately cut from the film.

When Compton’s career began to slow down in the 1950s, she moved into the nursing profession for a short while–a somewhat ironic move given her penchant for playing such roles on the big screen. She appeared in a handful of final roles throughout the decade, in both film and television, before retiring from acting completely. Still, she kept her hand in Hollywood pursuits, serving at times as a writer and clothing designer. In 1997, Joyce Compton passed away at the age of 90, leaving behind an extensive filmography that indicates, to viewers new and old, the depth of her talent and skill as a character actress.

Who’s that girl?: Thelma Ritter

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One of the most visible and beloved supporting players of the 1950s was a middle-aged, theater-trained actress from Brooklyn, Thelma Ritter.

You may not know her name, but if you’re a classic movie fan, you know her face. Ritter appeared in supporting roles in a series of big-name films opposite some big-name stars—Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, and Doris Day among them—in a two-decade-long Hollywood career. And along the way, Ritter racked up an impressive six Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress (four of them consecutively between 1950 and 1953).

It’s always wonderful to pop in an old movie and see Thelma Ritter’s name appear in the opening credits. Whether she’s tackling comedy or drama, her performance is always one that draws the eye. Even in her first movie, 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street (for which she was uncredited), Ritter’s short scene as a mother seeking the “perfect” fire engine for her son is a memorable one within the film.

Her “big break” came in 1950’s All About Eve, in which Ritter plays Birdie, the long-suffering personal maid to stage diva Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Down-to-earth Birdie is the first person in Eve to grow wise to the title character’s machinations, and Ritter does a wonderful job in helping the audience see the first glimmers of deception in Eve’s story. And it’s no wonder Ritter is so phenomenal in the role: the film’s writer/director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, wrote the part with Ritter specifically in mind after having worked with her in the previous year’s A Letter to Three Wives. Ultimately, Ritter’s performance was noteworthy enough to garner her first Academy Award nomination (one of fourteen nominations for that film, incidentally).

I was first exposed to Thelma Ritter in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), in which she plays James Stewart’s no-nonsense nurse, Stella. It’s a relatively small role, but Ritter is phenomenal in it—in fact, I’d argue that it’s the best role of her career. Initially skeptical of her employer’s claims that the man across the way murdered his wife, Stella eventually becomes an enthusiastic accomplice in their quest to uncover the crime. Ritter shares a great on-screen camaraderie not only with Stewart, but with costar Grace Kelly, as the two women actively investigate the mystery while Stewart remains frustratingly confined in his wheelchair. I’m just surprised that Ritter didn’t score another Oscar nomination for the role.

One of my favorite Ritter roles is in the 1959 romantic comedy Pillow Talk. She plays Doris Day’s housekeeper, Alma, who shows up for work every morning with a killer hangover and spends her days mooning over Day’s dreamy party-line partner, Rock Hudson. The scene in which Hudson’s character, Brad, tries to get Alma drunk in order to finagle a relationship with Day—only to have Alma out-drink him into a stupor—is one of the best parts of the movie:

Brad: “I know a nice little bar, right down the street.”
Alma: [grabs his arm and pulls him along] “I know a better one.”

Her hilarious role in Pillow Talk presented Ritter with her fifth Oscar nomination.

Though she found a great deal of success in Hollywood, Ritter was also an accomplished stage actress, winning a 1958 Tony Award for Best Leading Performance in a Musical for her role in New Girl in Town, a musical adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie (which was so memorably brought to the screen as Greta Garbo’s first “talkie” in 1930). Ritter shared the award with her costar, Gwen Verdon.

The 1960s brought Ritter several more acclaimed roles, including a supporting part in the final completed film for actors Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, The Misfits (1961); a sixth Oscar-nominated performance as the mother of the titular character in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962); an appearance next to Debbie Reynolds in the star-studded Western epic How the West Was Won (also in 1962); and a reunion with Day in 1963’s Move Over, Darling.

Ritter passed away in 1969, just shy of her 67th birthday. She left behind a body of work comprising more than thirty films and a wide variety of stage and television performances. She never won an Oscar, but not for nothing was she one of the most-nominated actors of all time. Despite having only spent two decades in Hollywood, Thelma Ritter certainly left one hell of a mark on the classic cinematic landscape.