Oscar Profile #646: Aline MacMahon

Born May 3, 1899 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Aline MacMahon was of Scottish-Irish and Russian-Jewish descent. Her father Marcus MacMahon was a telegraph operator who became editor-in-chief of Munsey Magazine, her mother Jennie Simon MacMahon, who lived to 107, was an actress.

Growing up in McKeesport, a suburb of Pittsburg, and later Brooklyn, New York, MacMahon was a performer from childhood, having appeared on stage as early as 1905. By 1908, her appearances were noted in the Brooklyn Eagle. Educated at New York’s Barnard College, she made her Broadway debut in an uncredited role in 1920. She appeared in thirteen credited roles on Broadway from 1921-1931 including those in Artists and Models and If Love Were All. She married famed architect Clarence Stein in 1928 and remained married to him until his death in 1975 at 92.

MacMahon made an auspicious film debut as Edward G. Robinson’s secretary in 1931’s Five Star Final. She was in seven films in 1932, most memorably as the phony countess in One Way Passage with William Powell and Kay Francis. She was in four films in 1933 including Gold Diggers of 1933 in which she was starred alongside Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell as one of the film’s three female stars. In 1934, she was in five films including Babbit in which she played Guy Kibbee’s long-suffering wife.

1935 found MacMahon in five films including Ah, Wilderness! in which she made her mark as the old maid aunt opposite Wallace Beery and Lionel Barrymore. In just two more films in the remainder of the decade, she was back on Broadway in three plays from 1939-1942 while also appearing in another three films during those years including Tish in which her co-stars were Marjorie Main and ZaSu Pitts. She then appeared as herself in 1943’s Stage Door Canteen

The actress received her first and only Oscar nomination for playing Katharine Hepburn’s mother and Walter Huston’s wife in the controversial 1944 film, Dragon Seed, in which she, unlike most of her co-stars, was totally believable as a Chinese peasant in the midst of World War II.

Following her Oscar nomination, MacMahon appeared infrequently on screen, but always in important roles in prestigious films such as of the sympathetic head of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Camp in 1948’s The Search, the no-nonsense rancher in 1955’s The Man from Laramie, the feisty frontierswoman in 1961’s Cimarron, James Darren’s Hawaiian mother in 1962’s Diamond Head, and Jean Simmons’ nurturing aunt in 1963’s All the Way Home., her last theatrical film.

MacMahon spent the next twelve years alternating between Broadway and TV. Her last Broadway role was in a 1975 production of Trelawney of the Wells.

Alien MacMahon died on October 12, 1991. She was 92.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ONE WAY PASSAGE (1932), directed by Tay Garnett

This long popular love story about a terminally ill woman and a convicted criminal meeting at a bar in Hong Kong before embarking on a voyage to San Francisco where both will presumably die within the year was the inspiration for both 1939’s Love Affair (and its remake An Affair to Remember) and Dark Victory, which led to its 1940 remake, ’Til We Meet Again. Kay Francis and William Powell were the film’s celebrated leads, but MacMahon steals all her scenes as a phony countess out to snare a rich husband. Frank McHugh and Warren Hymer co-starred.

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933), directed by Mervyn LeRoy

One of the great original film musicals of the 1930s, this pre-Code gem had its beginnings as a 1919 Broadway play. Joan Blondell, MacMahon, and Ruby Keeler are the showgirl roommates looking for husbands in Warren William, Guy Kibbee, and Dick Powell, respectively, with Ginger Rogers in a major supporting role as their friend, a fellow showgirl. Rogers’ “We’re in the Money”, Keeler and Powell’s “Pettin’ in the Park” and Blondell’s “My Forgotten Man” are the musical highlights under Busby Berkely’s direction. MacMahon and Kibbee shine in their comedic roles under Mervyn LeRoy’s equally assured direction.

THE SEARCH (1948), directed by Fred Zinnemann

Zinnemann received his first Oscar nomination for Best Director for this beloved classic in which MacMahon had one of her best roles as the director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Camp in which she is responsible for helping separated parents and children find one another after being liberated from the Nazi concentration camps. She brilliantly supports the film’s main characters, Montgomery Clift, Oscar nominated as the young G.I. who befriends lost boy Ivan Jandl, who was given an honorary Oscar for his soulful performance, and famed opera singer Jamila Novotna as Jandl’s mother.

THE MAN FROM LARAMIE (1955), directed by Anthony Mann

The last of the classic James Stewart-Anthony Mann westerns of the 1950s was the one that Stewart considered the best of the numerous westerns in which he starred. This and 1965’s Shenandoah, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, are my personal favorites. MacMahon had one of her strongest roles as the rancher for whom Stewart works in defiance of local land baron Donald Crisp, his son, Alex Nicol, and foreman, Arthur Kennedy. Despite their feuding, MacMahon loves Crisp, and their scenes together are some of the strongest accorded character players in a western.

ALL THE WAY HOME (1963), directed by Alex Segal

MacMahon reprised her Broadway role as the sympathetic aunt in the first of three memorable film versions of Tad Mosel’s play adapted from James Agee’s A Death in the Family. A critical favorite, the film was not a box-office hit when first released and Jean Simmons’ beautiful portrayal of the young widow opposite Robert Preston as her husband, was kept from an assured Oscar nod by the film’s L.A. release being pushed back to 1964. The subsequent remakes were both done for TV, the first in 1971 with Joanne Woodward and Richard Kiley, the second in 1981 with Sally Field and William Hurt.