Oscar Profile #131: Spring Byington

Born October 17, 1886 in Colorado Springs, Colorado to Professor Edwin Lee Byington and his wife, Helene, Spring Byington grew up to become one of Hollywood’s best loved character actresses.

After the death of her father, she and her younger sister, named Helen after her mother, were split up, but reunited after the death of her mother in 1907 when they were adopted by an aunt. Already of legal age, Spring, however was already out on her own having become an actress while still in high school.

Byington joined an acting troupe which performed American plays in Spanish and Portugese for Argentinian and Brazilian audiences between 1908 and 1916, marrying the troupe’s director, Roy Chandler in 1909. She returned to the states to give birth to her daughters in New York in 1916 and 1917, respectively. Divorced around 1920, she was engaged to a Brazilian industrialist in the early 1930s, but he died unexpectedly. She never remarried.

On Broadway between 1924 and 1935, one of her last stage roles was in When Ladies Meet which she later reprised on film.

She established her warm screen persona with her second film, George Cukor’s acclaimed 1933 version of Little Women. Now and then, however, she varied that persona with an occasional flibberty gibbet such as her town gossip in the 1936 screwball comedy, Theodara Goes Wild. That same year she become a household name as the mother in the low budget Jones Family films which totaled seventeen through 1940.

Oscar nominated for her daffy eccentric in 1938’s You Can’t Take It With You, she continued to give memorable performances through the 1940s and into the early 1950s in such films as Meet John Doe (as Barbara Stanwyck’s mom); The Devil and Miss Jones (as Charles Coburn’s love interest); When Ladies Meet (reprising her stage role); Roxie Hart (as the reporter); Rings on Her Fingers (in a rare villainous role); In the Good Old Summertime (as S.Z. Sakall’s love interest); Louisa (in which she’s pursued by both Charles Coburn and Edmund Gwenn) and Angels in the Outfield (as the Mother Superior).

From 1954 to 1959 she had her most famous role as the widow whose friends were always trying to fix her up with another man in the TV comedy series, December Bride. After appearing in one more film, 1959’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Byington spent the remainder of her career on TV with her most prominent role that of the housekeeper in Laramie from 1961 to 1963. Her last role was as the Mother General in The Flying Nun in 1968.

Spring Byington died September 7, 1971 one month before her 85th birthday.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

LITTLE WOMEN (1933), directed by George Cukor

Despite numerous remakes, Cukor’s 1933 version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel about the Boston home-front during the Civil War remains the one by which all others are judged. Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee and Jean Parker as the March sisters; Edna May Oliver as their formidable great-aunt; Douglass Montgomery as the boy next door and Paul Lukas as the Professor are all perfectly cast and so is Byington in only her second film as Marmee, the mother of the brood.

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938), directed by Frank Capra

Three years earlier Byington played Lionel Barrymore’s wife in Ah, Wilderness! . Just one year earlier she was his wife again in A Family Affair, the pilot for the Andy Hardy series. Now she was his wife and the mother of Jean Arthur who would play her co-worker in The Devil and Miss Jones three years later. The actress’s versatility also manifested itself in the type of role she played, an eccentric artist who encouraged her family to defy convention, the opposite of her by now patented role as the sensible mom.

THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES (1941), directed by Sam Wood

Interrupting her string of mother roles, Byington essayed her second most frequent screen role, that of the no-fuss spinster who wins the heart of the seemingly curmudgeonly old man, in this case Charles Coburn as a millionaire masquerading as a worker in the shoe department of his own store. The film was produced by Jean Arthur’s husband and featured the star in solo billing over the title, but Coburn in an Oscar nominated performance and Byington steal the show as the elderly couple who find an unlikely love in their twilight years.

IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME (1949), directed by Robert Z. Leonard

The romance between shop worker Byington and shop owner S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall is played up much more in this delightful musical version of The Shop Around the Corner than it is in other versions of the story including the 1940 Margaret Sullavan-James Stewart starrer. Judy Garland and Van Johnson are just dandy as the shop clerks who are unknowingly secret pen pals in this version. Judy gets to sing some terrific turn-of-the-century standards, but Byington and Sakall give it that extra something special.

PLEASE DON’T EAT THE DAISIES (1960), directed by Charles Walters

After the long-running success of TV’s December Bride, Byington returned to the big screen for the first time in five years. She would make her final appearance on film as Doris Day’s mother, tossing off a witty line here and a droll comment there, but the part was under-written and not up to the level of much of her previous work. Nevertheless she was nominated for a Golden Laurel as Best Supporting Actress of the year, an award given by motion picture exhibitors between 1948 and 1968.