Born into an upper-crust family in New Orleans, Cora Bell Witherspoon (1890-1957) was an orphan by the age of 10 and a professional actress by 15. She was seen on Broadway from 1910 till 1946 in 36 productions and was a popular character actress in Hollywood between 1931 and 1954. On stage she played roles like Sallie McBride in Daddy Long Legs, Josephine Trent in The Awful Truth, Martha Culver in The Constant Wife, Prudence in Camille, and Mrs. Grant in The Front Page. Like many Hollywood supporting players, her screen time was limited. She made the most of it, whether as W.C. Fields's shrewish wife in The Bank Dick, Bette Davis's fair weather friend Carrie in Dark Victory, the earthy, amorous maid Patty in Quality Street, or the overbearing dowager Mrs. Williamson in The Mating Season. On both stage and screen, Witherspoon portrayed a range of stereotypes of older women. In the end, though, she created her own type, incarnating the fashionable, frivolous, flighty, and fawning society woman, often with a thinly veiled libidinous quality. In addition to a detailed account of Witherspoon's theater and film career, this groundbreaking biography reveals her upbringing and family background and discusses her struggle with substance abuse, which resulted in two highly publicized arrests and one conviction.

Best known for her roles in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, and Make Way for Tomorrow, Beulah Bondi (1889-1981) had a 60-year long acting career and an interesting on-screen life. Despite starting her professional acting career at 30, she made her mark on the film industry as a character actress. Before making a name for herself on-screen, she worked at the Stuart Walker stock company and performed on Broadway. This biography is the first to unpack Bondi's life before and throughout her film career. This work also explores Bondi's early family life in Indiana with a Jewish underwear salesman and a Presbyterian poet for parents.

Agnes Moorehead (1900-74) was unique among twentieth-century American actresses in making a major career for herself in all four entertainment media after the age of 40. As the title indicates, Agnes Moorehead on Radio, Stage and TV focuses on Moorehead's career in radio, on the stage, and in television. A representative selection of 25 of her most interesting and representative performances in these media are discussed in separate profiles ranging in length from 1,500 to 7,500 words, with the longest chapters devoted to Mayor of the Town, Suspense, Moorehead's one-woman show, Bewitched and Gigi. Naturally, the book also covers Moorehead's celebrated appearance on The Twilight Zone, both her productions of Don Juan in Hell, and her Emmy-winning appearance on The Wild Wild West. Many less well-known performances have never been analyzed in detail before. These include fascinating and entertaining portrayals on TV series such as Wagon Train, Adventures in Paradise, Rawhide and Burke's Law. The profiles are organized in chronological order. Thus, from The Shadow to Gigi, the book can be read as a continuous, chronological narrative of Moorehead's unfolding acting career through more than three decades; or the individual chapters may be read as self-contained accounts of individual shows and performances. Each profile concentrates on Moorehead's contribution to the show or episode. In addition to analyzing the nature and function of Moorehead's role and how she performs it, the author variously discusses the place of the performance in her career development as a whole; her relationship with directors, producers, and/or fellow actors: comparisons and contrasts with similar types of roles in the same or other media; and curious, little known facts about the production. Nissen also discusses salient events in Moorehead's personal life at the time.

Before she achieved immortality on the long-running situation comedy Bewitched, Agnes Moorehead had established a distinguished career as a character actress. After her screen debut in Citizen Kane (1941), Moorehead became one of the most familiar female faces on the silver screen. For moviegoers of the 1940s and '50s, she was the quintessential character actress, earning four Academy Award nominations during a career that saw her gain the respect of her peers in all four major entertainment media: radio, film, theater, and television. In The Films of Agnes Moorehead, Axel Nissen looks at the actress's sixty-three feature films between 1941 and 1973. Each film is profiled here, with particular emphasis placed on the films that merit closer attention: Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mrs. Parkington, Dark Passage, All That Heaven Allows, The Left Hand of God, The Swan, Tempest, The Bat, and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Arranged in chronological order, the discussion of these films highlights Moorehead's contribution to each feature. In addition to analyzing her performances, the author discusses the development of Moorehead's career as a whole, along with her relationship with various studios, directors, producers, and fellow actors. Based on extensive interviews with the actress's surviving friends and co-workers, as well as detailed archival research into primary sources, this book brings to light new information not just about Moorehead's work in film, but on her life and career in general. Though this book will certainly appeal to movie buffs, The Films of Agnes Moorehead will also be of interest to students and scholars of classic Hollywood films, including those interested in women and film, gender studies, and film history.

Continuing the exploration which began in Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties (McFarland, 2006), this companion volume analyzes the contributions of female supporting players in the films of Hollywood's Golden Age. The twenty-five actresses profiled herein range from the easily recognizable (Marie Dressler, Ethel Waters) to the long forgotten (Esther Howard, Evelyn Varden), and from the prolific (Clara Blandick, Mary Forbes) to the ""one-work wonders"" (Jane Cowl, Queenie Vassar). Overall, this survey focuses upon the typical roles available to character actresses in classic Hollywood films. Each profile captures the essence of the individual performer's on-screen persona, unique talents and popular appeal--with special emphasis on the single definitive performance of the actress's motion picture career (who, for example, could ever forget Josephine Hull in Harvey?). The appendix offers a list of ""The Top 100 Performances by Character Actresses in Hollywood, 1930-1960.

Drawing on historical documents and newspaper reports, this book provides a fascinating group portrait of a diverse group of character actresses who left their stamp on Hollywood from the early sound era through the 1960s. The lives of 40 actresses are explored in detail. Some are familiar: Margaret Hamilton starred in dozens of films before and after her signature role as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz; Una Merkel nearly died when her mother committed suicide in 1945. Others are nearly forgotten: Maude Eburne owed her career to a spectacular fall on the Broadway stage in 1914; Greta Meyer, who played the quintessential German maid, came to Hollywood after years in New York's Yiddish theater-though she wasn't Jewish.

Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz --all were unforgettable characters who played an integral part in some of Hollywood's most memorable productions. For over three decades, from the 1930s to the 1950s, character actresses who brought such roles to life were one of Hollywood's great but little acknowledged assets. Often lured from Broadway yet billed fifth or sixth (if at all), these talented ladies received little acclaim for their roles in film industry productions. Still, what they lacked in promotion and perhaps adulation they made up for in longevity. While a screen star's career was generally limited by age and physical appearance, character actresses often worked well into their seventies, eighties or even nineties. Signed to contracts by major studios just like the stars they supported on screen, character actresses made hundreds of films over their careers. From the early days of sound film through the end of the studio era, this volume documents in detail the lives and careers of two score of Hollywood's most talented character actresses. It presents information regarding birth, death, film credits and prizes and analyzes each player's unique talents, signature roles and overall career development. Forty individual profiles are provided from a representative range of backgrounds, character types and career experiences. These include actresses such as Marjorie Main, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Lucile Watson, Sara Allgood, Lee Patrick and Jessie Ralph, among others. A fascinating tour through Hollywood's big studio era and the lives of its characters.

The modern idea of Victorians is that they were emotionless prudes, imprisoned by sexual repression and suffocating social constraints; they expressed love and affection only within the bounds of matrimony--if at all. And yet, a wealth of evidence contradicting this idea has been hiding in plain sight for close to a century. In "Manly Love," Axel Nissen turns to the novels and short stories of Victorian America to uncover the widely overlooked phenomenon of passionate friendships between men.

Nissen's examination of the literature of the period brings to light a forgotten genre: the fiction of romantic friendship. Delving into works by Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells, and others, Nissen identifies the genre's unique features and explores the connections between romantic friendships in literature and in real life. Situating love between men at the heart of Victorian culture, Nissen radically alters our understanding of the American literary canon. And with its deep insights into the emotional and intellectual life of the period, "Manly Love" also offers a fresh perspective on nineteenth-century America's attitudes toward love, friendship, marriage, and sex.