Judith Anderson

Judith Anderson
Dame Frances Margaret Anderson, (10 February 18973 January 1992), known professionally as Judith Anderson, was an Australian actress who had a successful career in stage, film and television. A pre-eminent stage actress in her era, she won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award. She is considered one of the 20th century's greatest classical stage actors.
Early life
Frances Margaret Anderson was born in 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia, the youngest of four children born to Jessie Margaret (née Saltmarsh; 19 October 1862 – 24 November 1950), a former nurse, and Scottish-born James Anderson Anderson, a sharebroker and pioneering prospector.
She attended a private school, Norwood, where her education ended before graduation.
Career
Early acting
She made her professional debut (as Francee Anderson) in 1915, playing Stephanie at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, in A Royal Divorce. Leading the company was the Scottish actor Julius Knight whom she later credited with laying the foundations of her acting skills. She appeared alongside him in adaptations of The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Musketeers, Monsieur Beacauire and David Garrick. In 1917 she toured New Zealand.
Early years in America
Anderson was ambitious and wanted to leave Australia. Most local actors went to London but the war made this difficult so she decided on the US. She travelled to California but was unsuccessful for four months, then moved to New York, with an equal lack of success.
After a period of poverty and illness, she found work with the Emma Bunting Stock Company at the Fourteenth Street Theatre in 1918–19. She then toured with other stock companies.
Broadway and film
She made her Broadway debut in Up the Stairs (1922) followed by The Crooked Square (1923) and she went to Chicago with Patches (1923). She appeared in Peter Weston (1923), which only had a short run.
One year later, she had changed her acting forename (albeit not for legal purposes) to Judith and had her first triumph with the play Cobra (1924) co-starring Louis Calhern, which ran for 35 performances. Anderson then went on to The Dove (1925) which went for 101 performances and really established her on Broadway.
She toured Australia in 1927 with three plays: Tea for Three, The Green Hat and Cobra. Back on Broadway she was in Behold the Bridegroom (1927–28) by George Kelly and had the lead role in Anna (1928). She replaced Lynn Fontanne during the successful run of Strange Interlude (1929).
Anderson made her film debut in a short for Warner Bros, Madame of the Jury (1930). She made her feature film debut with a role in Blood Money (1933).
In 1931, she played the Unknown Woman in the American premiere of Pirandello's As You Desire Me, which ran for 142 performances. (It was filmed the following year with Greta Garbo in the same role.) She was in a short-lived revival of Mourning Becomes Electra (1932), then did Firebird (1932), Conquest, The Drums Begin (both 1933), and The Mask and the Face (1933, with Humphrey Bogart). Anderson then focused on Broadway with Come of Age (1934), and Divided By Three (1934).
Broadway star
She had a big hit with the lead in Zoe Akins' The Old Maid (1935) from the novel by Edith Wharton, in the role later played on film by Miriam Hopkins. It ran for 305 performances.
In 1936, Anderson played Gertrude to John Gielgud's Hamlet in a production which featured Lillian Gish as Ophelia. In 1937, she joined the Old Vic Company in London and played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier in a production by Michel Saint-Denis, at the Old Vic and the New Theatre.
She returned to Broadway with Family Portrait (1939), which she adored but only had a short run. She later toured in the show.
Rebecca
Anderson then received a career boost when she was cast in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940). As the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, she was required to mentally torment the young bride, the "second Mrs. de Winter" (Joan Fontaine), even encouraging her to commit suicide; and to taunt her husband (Laurence Olivier) with the memory of his first wife, the never-seen "Rebecca" of the title. The film was a huge critical and commercial success, and Anderson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 13th Academy Awards.
1940s
Anderson was second billed in an Eddie Cantor comedy, Forty Little Mothers (1940) at MGM. She stayed at that studio for Free and Easy (1941) then went over to RKO to play the title role in Lady Scarface (1941).
In 1941, she played Lady Macbeth again in New York opposite Maurice Evans in a production staged by Margaret Webster, a role she was to reprise with Evans on television, firstly in 1954 and then again in 1960 (the second version was released as a feature film in Europe). This ran for 131 performances.
Anderson made her appearance in Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy at the outdoor Forest Theater in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California on July 2-5, 1941. This was the first time it played in a professional manner. John Burr's Carmel Pine Cone review admired Anderson's performance and proclaimed the production was “an unqualified success." Director Charles O'Neal persuaded Anderson to appear in both The Tower Beyond Tragedy and the Family Portrait.
She returned to films to make four movies at Warner Bros: All Through the Night, and Kings Row (both 1942), Edge of Darkness, and Stage Door Canteen (both 1943).
In 1942–43, on stage she played Olga in Chekhov's Three Sisters, in a production which also featured Katharine Cornell, Ruth Gordon, Edmund Gwenn, Dennis King and Alexander Knox. (Kirk Douglas, playing an orderly, made his Broadway debut in the production.) It ran for 123 performances. The production was so illustrious, it was featured on the cover of Time.
Anderson returned to Hollywood to appear in Laura (1944). She briefly returned to Australia to tour American army camps. She was back in Hollywood to appear in And Then There Were None (1945), The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). Anderson had rare top billing in Specter of the Rose (1946), written and directed by Ben Hecht. She returned to support roles for Pursued (1947), The Red House (1947), and Tycoon (1947).
Medea
In 1947, she triumphed as Medea in a version of Euripides' eponymous tragedy, written by the poet Robinson Jeffers and produced by John Gielgud, who played Jason. She was a friend of Jeffers and a frequent visitor to his home Tor House in Carmel. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance. The show ran for 214 performances. Anderson then toured throughout the country with it.
1950s
On the big screen, Anderson played a golddigger in Anthony Mann's western The Furies (1950) and made her TV debut in a 1951 adaptation of The Silver Cord for Pulitzer Prize Playhouse. She guest starred on TV shows like The Billy Rose Show and Somerset Maugham TV Theatre.
She returned to Broadway with The Tower Beyond Tragedy by Jeffers (1950), and toured Medea in German in 1951. She was in a New York revival of Come of Age in 1952.
She was Herodias in Salome (1953) and played in Black Chiffon on The Motorola Television Hour.
In 1953, she was directed by Charles Laughton in his own adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body with a cast also featuring Raymond Massey and Tyrone Power. Then she did In the Summer House (1953–54) on Broadway.
On television she was in Macbeth (1954) with Maurice Evans for which she won The Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Single Performance, and The Elgin Hour. She was in several episodes of The Star and the Story and an episode of Climax! as well as playing Memnet in Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments (1956).
In 1955 she toured Australia with Medea.
In 1956 she was in a production of Caesar and Cleopatra for Producers' Showcase.
Anderson appeared in a 1958 adaptation of The Bridge of San Luis Rey for The DuPont Show of the Month and played the memorable role of Big Mama, alongside Burl Ives as Big Daddy, in the screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). She followed it with a return to Broadway, in the short-lived Comes a Day by Speed Lampkin (1958). "I don't profess to know much about films", she said around this time. "I seldom see one."
Anderson reprised her performance as Medea for TV in 1959; in the same year she appeared in a small-screen adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence with Laurence Olivier. She had a role in the Wagon Train episode "The Felizia Kingdom Story", and appeared in several episodes of Playhouse 90 and one of Our American Heritage. In later years she starred as Minx Lockridge in the daytime NBC soap opera Santa Barbara from 1984 until 1987.
1960s
In 1960, she played Madame Arkadina in Chekhov's The Seagull first at the Edinburgh Festival, and then at the Old Vic, with Tom Courtenay, Cyril Luckham and Tony Britton.
That year she also performed in Cradle Song and Macbeth (both 1960) for TV. She won The Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, for once again playing Lady MacBeth. She had support roles in Cinderfella (1960) and Why Bother to Knock (1961).
In 1961 she toured an evening in which she performed Macbeth, Medea and Tower.
Anderson was in The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964) for TV.
In 1966 she did a performance on stage in Elizabeth the Queen which received poor reviews.
She received acclaim for her lead performance in a TV version of Elizabeth the Queen (1968, with Charlton Heston). She followed it with The File on Devlin (1969) and A Man Called Horse (1970). The latter was her first feature since Why Bother to Knock.
In 1970, she realised a long-held ambition to play the title role of Hamlet on a national tour of the United States and at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Spoken word and radio
She also recorded many spoken word record albums for Caedmon Audio from the 1950s to the 1970s, including scenes from Macbeth with Maurice Anderson (Victor, in 1941), an adaption of Medea, Robert Louis Stevenson verses, and readings from the Bible. She received a Grammy nomination for her work on the Wuthering Heights recording.
Radio broadcasts
Return to Australia
Anderson returned briefly to Australia. She guest-starred in Matlock Police and was in the film Inn of the Damned (1974).
Her other credits that decade included The Borrowers (1973) and The Chinese Prime Minister (1974)
Later career
In 1982, she returned to Medea, this time playing the Nurse opposite Zoe Caldwell in the title role. Caldwell had appeared in a small role in the Australian tour of Medea in 1955–56. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.
In 1984, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the Vulcan High Priestess T'Lar.
That same year, she commenced a three-year stint as matriarch Minx Lockridge on the NBC serial Santa Barbara. When asked why, she replied "Why not? It's practically the same as doing a play."
She had professed to be a fan of the daytime genre – she had watched General Hospital for twenty years – but after signing with Santa Barbara, she complained about her lack of screen time. The highlight of her stint was when Minx tearfully revealed the horrific truth that she had switched the late Channing Capwell with Brick Wallace as a baby, preventing her illegitimate grandson from being raised as a Capwell. This resulted in her receiving a Supporting Actress Emmy Nomination although her screen time afterwards diminished to infrequent appearances. After leaving the series, she was succeeded in the role by the quarter-century younger American actress Janis Paige.
Her last movies were The Booth and Impure Thoughts (both 1985).
Personal life
Anderson was married twice and declared that "neither experience was a jolly holiday":
Benjamin Harrison Lehmann (1889–1977), an English professor at the University of California at Berkeley; they wed in 1937 and divorced in August 1939. By this marriage she had a stepson, Benjamin Harrison Lehmann Jr. (born 1918).
Luther Greene (1909–1987), a theatrical producer; they were married in July 1946 and divorced in 1951.
Death
Anderson spent much of her life in Santa Barbara, California, where she died of pneumonia in 1992, aged 94.
Honours
Anderson was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1960 and thereafter was often billed as "Dame Judith Anderson".
On 10 June 1991, in the 1991 Australian Queen's Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), "in recognition of service to the performing arts".
Complete filmography
Madame of the Jury (1930, Short)
Blood Money (1933) – Ruby Darling
Rebecca (1940) – Mrs. Danvers
Forty Little Mothers (1940) – Madame Madeleine Granville
Free and Easy (1941) – Lady Joan Culver
Lady Scarface (1941) – Slade
All Through the Night (1942) – Madame
Kings Row (1942) – Mrs. Harriet Gordon
Edge of Darkness (1943) – Gerd Bjarnesen
Stage Door Canteen (1943) – Judith Anderson
Laura (1944) – Ann Treadwell
And Then There Were None (1945) – Emily Brent
The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) – Madame Lanlaire
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) – Mrs. Ivers
Specter of the Rose (1946) – Madame La Sylph
Pursued (1947) – Mrs. Callum
The Red House (1947) – Ellen Morgan
Tycoon (1947) – Miss Braithwaite
The Furies (1950) – Flo Burnett
Salome (1953) – Queen Herodias
Macbeth (1954, TV Movie) – Lady Macbeth
The Ten Commandments (1956) – Memnet
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) – Big Momma Pollitt
The Felizia Kingdom Story (1959 tv series - Wagon Train) - Felizia Kingdom
The Moon and Sixpence (1959, TV Movie) – Tiare
A Christmas Festival (1959, TV Movie) – Narrator of the final offering
Cradle Song (1960, TV Movie) – The Prioress
Macbeth (1960, TV Movie) – Lady Macbeth
Cinderfella (1960) – Wicked Stepmother
Don't Bother to Knock (1961) – Maggie Shoemaker
The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964, TV Movie) – Paulina
Elizabeth the Queen (1968, TV Movie) – Queen Elizabeth I
The File on Devlin (1969, TV Movie) – Elizabeth Devlin
A Man Called Horse (1970) – Buffalo Cow Head
The Borrowers (1973, TV Movie) – Aunt Sophy
The Underground Man (1974, TV Movie) – Mrs. Snow
The Chinese Prime Minister (1974, TV Movie) – She
Inn of the Damned (1975) – Caroline Straulle
Medea (1983, TV Movie) – Nurse
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) – T'Lar
The Booth (1985, TV Movie)
Impure Thoughts (1985) – The Sister of Purgatory
Sources
Dame Judith Anderson papers, at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library; accessed 19 August 2014.
Dame Judith Anderson prompts , at the National Library of Australia website; accessed 19 August 2014.
Dame Judith Anderson at the National Film and Sound Archive
References
Further reading
External links
1897 births
1992 deaths
20th-century British actresses
Actresses awarded damehoods
Actresses from Adelaide
Actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood
Australian Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Australian people of Scottish descent
British Shakespearean actresses
British emigrants to the United States
British expatriate actresses in the United States
British film actresses
British soap opera actresses
British stage actresses
British television actresses
Companions of the Order of Australia
Deaths from pneumonia in California
Donaldson Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners
Tony Award winners