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Edna May Oliver

 
Actor: Edna May Oliver
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Nov 09, 1883 in Malden, Massachusetts
  • Died: Nov 09, 1942 in Hollywood, California
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '20s-'30s
  • Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
  • Career Highlights: A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Lydia
  • First Major Screen Credit: Three O'Clock in the Morning (1923)

Biography

"Horse faced" was the usual capsule assessment given American actress Edna May Oliver - a gross disservice to her talent and accomplishments. A descendant of President John Quincy Adams, she aspired to a career in opera, and at 16 her uncle secured her a job with a light opera company. Her voice was damaged from overuse and exposure to bad weather, so Oliver turned her energies to acting. Stock company work began in 1911, and even as a teenager she lanternlike facial features assured her older character roles. Her 1916 Broadway debut led to a string of small and unsatisfying roles, until fortune smiled upon her with a supporting part as a servant in Owen Davis' Icebound. Davis' play won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, thrusting everyone involved into the spotlight. Oliver was hired to repeat her Icebound duties for the film cameras in 1924, and though not technically her film debut, she would always list Icebound as her starting point in cinema. Solid roles in the Broadway productions The Cradle Snatchers, Strike Up the Band and the immortal Show Boat kept Oliver busy during the '20s, culminating in a contract with RKO Radio Studios. RKO thrust her into anything and everything, from Wheeler and Woolsey comedies to the Oscar-winning Cimarron (1931). The best testament to her popularity in films were the Edna May Oliver caricatures (complete with "Oh, reaaallly" voice imitation) that popped up with regularity in animated cartoons of the '30s. Oliver worked for virtually all the big studios in the '30s, at one point starring briefly in the Hildegarde Withers mystery series, a role she seemed born to play. Evidently, producers loved to put her angular frame in period costumes, as witness her marvelous roles in David Copperfield (1934), Tale of Two Cities (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). By 1940, Edna May Oliver was a law unto herself (even dictating what hours she would and wouldn't work) and filmakers wisely allowed her to use all the acting tricks at her disposal, from her famous loud sniff of distaste to her low, claxonish voice. After a long intestinal illness, Edna May Oliver died in 1942 on her 59th birthday; ironically, her last screen role had been as an infuriatingly healthy hypochondriac in Lydia (1941). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Edna May Oliver

in the Little Women trailer (1933)
Born Edna May Nutter
November 9, 1883(1883-11-09)
Malden, Massachusetts,
United States
Died November 9, 1942 (aged 59)
Malibu, California,
United States
Years active 1923–1941

Edna May Oliver (November 9 1883 – November 9 1942) was an American film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the American screen's best-known character actresses often playing tart-tongued spinsters.

Contents

Early life

Born Edna May Nutter in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the 6th American president John Quincy Adams. She quit school at age fourteen in order to pursue a career on stage and achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern's musical comedy Oh, Boy!, playing the hero's comically dour Quaker Aunt Penelope.

Career

In 1925 Oliver appeared in The Cradle Snatchers co-starring Mary Boland, Margaret Dale, Gene Raymond, Raymond Hackett & a young Humphrey Bogart. Oliver's most notable stage appearance was as Parthy, wife of Cap'n Andy Hawks, in the original 1927 stage production of the famous musical Show Boat. She repeated the role in the 1932 Broadway revival, but turned down the chance to play Parthy in the 1936 film version of the show so that she could play the Nurse in that year's film version of Romeo and Juliet. Helen Westley played Parthy in the 1936 Show Boat. Oliver's role as the Nurse was her only role in a Shakespeare film or play.

Her film debut occurred in 1923 in the film Wife in Name Only and she continued to appear in films until Lydia in 1941. Oliver first gained major notice in films for her appearances in several comedy films starring the team of Wheeler & Woolsey including Half Shot at Sunrise, her first film under her RKO Radio contract in 1930.

While most often playing featured parts, she starred in 10 films, including the women's stories Fanny Foley Herself and Ladies of the Jury. Edna May Oliver's most popular star vehicles were mystery-comedies starring Oliver as spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers from the popular Stuart Palmer novels. The series ended prematurely when Oliver left RKO Radio to sign with MGM in 1935; the studio attempted to continue the series with Helen Broderick and then ZaSu Pitts as Withers, but these later films were not well-received.

Oliver frequently appeared in film versions of classic British literature, including Alice in Wonderland (1933), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), David Copperfield (1935), the 1936 film version of Romeo and Juliet, and Pride and Prejudice (1940). She received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1939 for her appearance in Drums Along the Mohawk.

Oliver was one of the many movie stars caricatured in the 1937 cartoon Porky's Road Race.

Death

The actress being notably "bottom-heavy" (a fact satirized in cartoons such as The Hardship of Miles Standish (Warner Bros., Friz Freleng, 1940)), coincidentally was connected with her demise.

She died on her 59th birthday in 1942 following a short intestinal ailment that proved terminal, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Filmography

External links

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