Oscar Profile #235: Dame May Whitty

Born 150 years ago on June 19, 1865 in Liverpool, England to a Liverpool newspaper editor and his wife, Mary Louise Whitty would become known to the world as the actress May Whitty from 1881 and Dame May Whitty from 1918 to her death thirty years later.

An immediate success on stage, Whitty married actor-director Ben Webster in 1892. Their first child, a son, died at birth. Their daughter Margaret Webster, herself a noted stage actress and director, was born in the U.S. in 1905 and held joint U.S./British citizenship.

By 1910 Whitty had already moved into middle-aged and elderly roles, although she remained a star, making her film debut in 1914 in Enoch Arden in support of Gertrude Lawrence. Her husband, who would appear in many of her later films, also had a supporting role.

Whitty was the first stage and film actress to be made a Dame of the British Empire, the title awarded her in 1918 for her charitable work during World War I. She is the only performer, male or female, to have consistently used her title in billing from then on.

The actress who made her Broadway debut in 1908, had her greatest success on the great white way in the supporting role of the hypochondriac old lady in Emlyn Williams’ 1936 play, Night Must Fall. The performance was so brilliant that the Encyclopedia Britannica used illustrations from her performance to define the art of acting for decades.

Brought to Hollywood to recreate her performance in Night Must Fall for the screen, she received the first of her two Oscar nominations for her performance and stayed to become one of the most popular character actresses of the next ten years, returning to England briefly to play the title role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes as well as a couple of early made for British TV movies..

Whitty’s appearance in a film gave the film an added touch of class. She was featured in three films that won their leading ladies (Joan Fontaine, Greer Garson and Ingrid Bergman) Oscars within a four year period from 1941-1944, earning her own second Oscar nomination for Garson’s Mrs. Miniver. In addition to playing Fontaine’s mother in Suspicion, Garson’s nemesis in Mrs. Miniver and the local busybody in Bergman’s Gaslight, she gave memorable performances in such other 1940s films as This Above All, Forever and a Day, The Constant Nymph, Lassie Come Home, Madame Curie, The White Cliffs of Dover, My Name Is Julia Ross , Devotion, Green Dolphin Street and The Sign of the Ram.

Dame May Whitty’s beloved husband Ben Webster died in February, 1947 at the age of 82. Whitty followed him in death a year later, also at 82. Their daughter, Margaret Webster, who published a biography of the grand dame in1969, died in 1972 at the age of 67.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

NIGHT MUST FALL (1937), directed by Richard Thorpe

When Hollywood turned Emlyn Williams’ hit Broadway play into a film the only cast member they wanted to reprise her stage role was Whitty as the hypochondriac old lady who may be the next victim of a serial killer who may or may not be the nice young man she hires as a handyman who may or may not be keeping the head of his last victim in a shoebox in his room. Robert Montgomery is the nice young man and Rosalind Russell is Whitty’s niece/companion who suspects him. Montgomery and Whitty received Oscar nominations for their well-remembered iconic performances.
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THE LADY VANISHES (1938), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Whitty has the title role of the old lady who disappears on a train traveling through continental Europe just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Margaret Lockwood is the star as the young woman who suspects foul play. Michael Redgrave co-stars as the young man who helps Lockwood look for her. Paul Lukas is the smooth talking villain. Naunton Wayne and Basil Raadford create travel companions they would reprise in other films and Catherine Lacey makes a most unforgettable phony nun. It’s Whitty’s presence however, that overshadows everyone even though she’s missing from most of the film.
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MRS. MINIVER (1942), directed by William Wyler

Nominated for 12 Oscars and winner of 6, this ode to the resilience of the British home front during the early days of World War II was a phenomenon that broke house records at Radio City Music Hall, the world’s largest movie , where it played for 12 weeks in an era when most films played there for 2 weeks. Everyone connected with it received high praise including director Wyler, stars Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, co-stars Teresa Wright and Richard Ney and character actors Henry Travers and Whitty. Whitty, nominated the second time for an Oscar, lost to Wright who played her granddaughter.

THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER (1944), directed by Clarence Brown

MGM’s attempt at recreating the success of Mrs. Miniver with Irene Dunne as an American nurse in England who loses a husband to World War I and a son to World War II wasn’t quite as successful, nothing could be, but it was just as brilliantly acted, particularly by Dunne, Roddy McDowall, Gladys Cooper and Whitty. Whitty plays Dunne’s mother-in-law Cooper’s companion, Nanny, who raised her late son (Alan Marshall) and repeats the same duties with Dunne’s son, McDowell. She is wonderful throughout, proving once again what a great actress can do with a small but significant part.

MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945), directed by Joseph H. Lewis

Whitty never played sweet old ladies. Her characters, though often warm and kindly, always had an edge to them. Here as madman George Macready’s mother, she is pure evil behind a mask of old world charm and gentility. Nina Foch has the title role, that of a kidnapped secretary no one seemingly misses who is drugged and passed off as Macready’s wife in a cover-up for which they will need a body to make an insurance claim on the wife they have murdered. Foch is terrific and so is Whitty as her nemesis. The film has a genuinely creepy atmosphere.