Margaret Wycherly

Wycherly, Margaret [née De Wolfe] (1881–1956), actress. The slim, sad‐eyed performer was born in London but raised in Boston. After studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she made her debut in 1898 opposite Madame Janauschek in What Dreams May Come. She spent time with Jessie Bonstelle's company and in stock in San Francisco before returning to New York, where she played in several classic revivals and in new plays by Yeats and Shaw. Among her notable later roles were the medium Madame LaGrange in The Thirteenth Chair (1916), written by her husband, Bayard Veiller; the title role of the deceived wife in Jane Clegg (1920); the Mother in Six Characters in Search of an Author (1922); Daisy Devore in The Adding Machine (1923); the domineering mother Mrs. Hallam in Another Language (1932); and the downtrodden mother Ada Lester in Tobacco Road (1933). In later years she replaced Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie and shortly before her death played the Dowager Duchess of York in Richard III.

• Born: Oct 26, 1881 in London, England, UK
• Died: Jun 06, 1956 in New York City, New York
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '40s-'50s
• Major Genres: Drama, Mystery
• Career Highlights: White Heat, Sergeant York, Call it Murder
• First Major Screen Credit: The Thirteenth Chair (1929)

Biography

On-stage from 1898, British actress Margaret Wycherly toured in English repertory and American stock before making her Broadway premiere. Her biggest commercial stage success was Tobacco Road, but the role which made her a star was the low-born, smarter-than-she-seems phony spirtualist in The Thirteenth Chair, a murder mystery written for the actress by Bayard Veiller. Wycherly re-created the role in a 1919 silent film, then ten years later remade it as a talking picture. Despite the histrionics of Bela Lugosi as a police inspector, Wycherly dominated the 1929 Thirteenth Chair, playing each significant moment full-out, but without the artificiality which afflicated the rest of the cast. She remained active on stage and TV and in films (her last was Olivier's Richard III) for the rest of her life, but Margaret Wycherly would be memorable if only for two of her film appearances: As Gary Cooper's weary backwoods mother in Sergeant York (1941), for which she was Oscar-nominated, and as a far more malevolent parent, James Cagney's gangster "Ma" in White Heat. Though she was killed off midway in this film, audiences had no trouble remembering the hatchet-hard face and marrow-chilling voice of Margaret Wycherly just before the final fadeout, as Cagney blew himself up while screaming "Made it, Ma! Top of the World!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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