You have more options, as time goes on, if you’re tall or have an unusual voice. To start a career in the 1930s as a 5’10” woman with a deep and raspy voice is impressive. Oh, it does mean a lifetime of nurses and housekeepers and best friends—and a surprising number of nuns, all things considered—but she still had a career regardless. I don’t think most people would know her name, if you said it, but I think a lot of people would know her if you showed them a picture. And that’s something, at least.
While she was not part of the cast for the infamous “War of the Worlds” broadcast, she did work with Orson Welles for the Mercury Theatre on the Air. Her first film appearance was in Too Much Johnson! Her first Broadway appearance was with Henry Fonda in 1934’s The Farmer Takes a Wife. Her first TV appearance was in The Actor’s Studio, meaning her career on television goes back to 1948, before most people had even seen a television. She even played Mary Poppins in a 1949 TV adaptation, which I wasn’t aware even existed.
About the only performance of which I’m aware where someone is romantically interested in her is a trio of Zorro episodes where she’s courted by Sergeant Garcia, who’s frankly interested in her money. She would have been middle aged at the time, of course. At that, her character was still shown as being too smart to fall for Garcia’s wooing, being quite aware that he’s interested in her money and not her person. I think I would’ve enjoyed seeing something where a man is genuinely interested in her for her, regardless of her size and age, but of course that wasn’t going to get made. The romances of older people are not taken seriously even now, for the most part.
And there are all those nuns. Though strangely not on The Father Dowling Mysteries, her last live-action recurring role. Also not in 1960’s The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio. But she was in six things where she was credited as Sister someone-or-other. Which may not sound like a lot, but how many actresses play even one nun in their careers? Sally Field and Meryl Streep, okay. Susan Sarandon and Audrey Hepburn. But I would suggest that the vast majority of actresses go their entire careers without even playing one, much less six times, much less twice in sequels to previous successful works about nuns.
Nurses are also extremely common in her films and TV shows, more so than average. Her feature career (Too Much Johnson is apparently a short?) starts with repeating her Broadway role as the nurse Miss Breen in The Man Who Came to Dinner. From there, she played a nurse at least eight more times (including in The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio), and that’s just based on either ones I know or ones where she’s credited as “Nurse Someone-or-Other.” I wouldn’t even want to guess at the number of housekeepers, since those aren’t usually listed as such. Still, you know, she was able to leave $2 million to endow a library named after her parents for the film, television, and theatre arts program at her alma mater of Washington University in St. Louis, so she did better than actually being a nurse or a housekeeper. Or definitely than a nun.
I can’t afford to endow anyone, but you could help me out by contributing to my Patreon or Ko-fi!
