# Edna May Oliver

Edna May Oliver (born Edna May Nutter, November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942) was an American stage and film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the better-known character actresses in American films, often playing tart-tongued spinsters.

## Career

Born in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Oliver quit school at age 14 to pursue a stage career.
She achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern's musical comedy Oh, Boy!, playing the hero's comically dour Aunt Penelope. In 1925, Oliver appeared on Broadway in The Cradle Snatchers, costarring Mary Boland, Gene Raymond, and 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 musical Show Boat. She reprised her role in the 1932 Broadway revival, but turned down the chance to play Parthy in the 1936 film version to play the Nurse in that year's film version of Romeo and Juliet.
Her film debut was in 1923 in Wife in Name Only. She continued to appear in films until Lydia in 1941. She first gained major notice in films for her appearances in several comedies starring the team of Wheeler & Woolsey, including Half Shot at Sunrise, her first film under her RKO Radio Pictures contract in 1930. Usually in featured parts, she starred in ten films, including Fanny Foley Herself (1931) and Ladies of the Jury (1932). She played wealthy, domineering Aunt March in the 1933 version of Little Women.
Oliver's most popular star vehicles were mystery-comedies, starring as spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers from the popular Stuart Palmer novels. The series ended prematurely when she left RKO to sign with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935; the studio attempted to continue the series with Helen Broderick and then ZaSu Pitts as Withers.
While at MGM, David O. Selznick cast Oliver in two film versions of novels by Charles Dickens, as the prim, acidic Miss Pross A Tale of Two Cities (1935), starring Ronald Colman, and as the title character's eccentric aunt, Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield (also 1935).
She appeared in the Shirley Temple film Little Miss Broadway (1938) as the landlord of a hotel for vaudevillians who wants to shut it down. She also performed in two 1939 movie musicals: with Tyrone Power in the Sonja Henie skating film Second Fiddle, and in a supporting role as the agent of the title characters in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. A 1940 comic performance as Laurence Olivier's Mr. Darcy's domineering aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice and a 1941 role as Merle Oberon's grandmother in Lydia concluded her film career.
She was also cast in noncomedic films such as Cimarron (1931), Ann Vickers (1933), and Romeo and Juliet (1936).

## Death

Oliver died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (today Cedars-Sinai Medical Center) on her 59th birthday in 1942 shortly after being diagnosed with abdominal cancer, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

## Awards and honors

Oliver received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Drums Along the Mohawk (1939).

## Stage

(This list is limited to New York/Broadway theatrical productions.)
Broadway credits of Edna May Oliver :
| Date | Title | Role |
| December 5, 1916 - January 1917 | The Master | |
| February 20, 1917 – March 30, 1918 | Oh Boy | Miss Penelope Budd |
| November 25, 1919 – January 7, 1920 | The Rose of China | Mrs. Hobson |
| February 2, 1920 – May 1, 1920 | My Golden Girl | Mrs. Judson Mitchell |
| November 1, 1920 – December 11, 1920 | The Half Moon | Mrs. Francis Adams Jarvis |
| September 26, 1921 – unknown | Wait 'Til We're Married | Aunt Meridian |
| November 28, 1921 – December 1921 | Her Salary Man | Mrs. Sophie Perkins |
| September 6, 1922 – September 1922 | Wild Oats Lane | June |
| February 10, 1923 – June 1923 | Icebound | Hannah |
| October 13, 1924 – November 15, 1924 | In His Arms | Mrs. John Clarendon |
| January 13, 1925 – February 1925 | Isabel | Mrs. John Clarendon |
| September 7, 1925 – October 1926 | Cradle Snatchers | Ethel Drake |
| December 27, 1927 – May 4, 1929 | Show Boat | Parthy Ann Hawks |
| May 19, 1932 – October 22, 1932 | Show Boat | Parthy Ann Hawks |

## Filmography

Silent films :
| Year | Title | Role | Studio/distributor |
| 1923 | Wife in Name Only | Mrs. Dornham | Pyramid Pictures |
| 1923 | Three O'Clock in the Morning | Hetty | C. C. Burr Pictures |
| 1924 | Restless Wives | Benson's Secretary | C. C. Burr Pictures |
| 1924 | Icebound | Hannah | Famous Players–Lasky |
| 1924 | Manhattan | Mrs. Trapes | Famous Players–Lasky |
| 1925 | The Lucky Devil | Mrs. McDee | Famous Players–Lasky |
| 1925 | Lovers in Quarantine | Amelia Pincent | Famous Players–Lasky |
| 1925 | The Lady Who Lied | | First National Pictures |
| 1926 | The American Venus | Mrs. Niles | Famous Players–Lasky |
| 1926 | Let's Get Married | J. W. Smith | Famous Players–Lasky |
Talkies :
| Year | Title | Role | Studio/Distributor |
| 1929 | The Saturday Night Kid | Miss Streeter | Paramount Productions |
| 1930 | Half Shot at Sunrise | Mrs. Marshall | RKO Pictures |
| 1931 | Cimarron | Mrs. Tracy Wyatt | RKO Pictures |
| 1931 | Forbidden Adventure | Bessie Tate | Paramount Productions |
| 1931 | Fanny Foley Herself | Fanny Foley | RKO Pictures |
| 1931 | Laugh and Get Rich | Sarah Austin | RKO Pictures |
| 1931 | Cracked Nuts | Aunt Minnie Van Varden | RKO Pictures |
| 1932 | The Penguin Pool Murder | Miss Hildegarde Martha Withers | RKO Pictures |
| 1932 | Ladies of the Jury | Mrs. Livingston Baldwin Crane | RKO Pictures |
| 1932 | The Conquerors | Matilda Blake | RKO Pictures |
| 1932 | Hold 'Em Jail | Violet | RKO Pictures |
| 1933 | Ann Vickers | Malvina Wormser | RKO Pictures |
| 1933 | Meet the Baron | Dean Primrose | MGM |
| 1933 | The Great Jasper | Madame Talma | RKO Pictures |
| 1933 | It's Great to Be Alive | Dr. Prodwell | Fox Film Corp. |
| 1933 | Only Yesterday | Leona | Universal Pictures |
| 1933 | Little Women | Aunt March | RKO Pictures |
| 1933 | Alice in Wonderland | The Red Queen | Paramount Productions |
| 1934 | The Last Gentleman | Augusta Pritchard | 20th Century Fox |
| 1934 | The Poor Rich | Harriet Spottiswood | Universal Pictures |
| 1934 | Murder on the Blackboard | Hildegarde Withers | RKO Pictures |
| 1934 | We're Rich Again | Maude | RKO Pictures |
| 1935 | David Copperfield | Aunt Betsey Trotwood | MGM |
| 1935 | No More Ladies | Mrs. Fanny "Grandma" Townsend | MGM |
| 1935 | Murder on a Honeymoon | Hildegarde Withers | RKO Pictures |
| 1935 | A Tale of Two Cities | Miss Pross | MGM |
| 1937 | My Dear Miss Aldrich | Mrs. Lou Atherton | MGM |
| 1937 | Parnell | Aunt Ben Wood | MGM |
| 1937 | Rosalie | Queen of Romanza | MGM |
| 1937 | Romeo and Juliet | The Nurse | MGM Note: Premiered August 20, 1936, but not released until April 16, 1937 |
| 1938 | Little Miss Broadway | Sarah Wendling | 20th Century Fox |
| 1938 | Paradise for Three | Mrs. Julia Kunkel | MGM |
| 1939 | Nurse Edith Cavell | Countess de Mavon | Imperadio Pictures Ltd |
| 1939 | Drums Along the Mohawk | Mrs. McKlennar | 20th Century Fox |
| 1939 | The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle | Maggie Sutton | RKO Pictures |
| 1939 | Second Fiddle | Aunt Phoebe | 20th Century Fox |
| 1940 | Pride and Prejudice | Lady Catherine de Bourgh | MGM |
| 1941 | Lydia | Sarah MacMillan | Alexander Korda Films |
| 1976 | America at the Movies | Footage | American Film Institute |