Edna May Oliver

Born in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Oliver quit school at age 14 to pursue a stage career.

She achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern's musical comedy Oh, Boy!, playing the hero's comically dour Aunt Penelope.[1] In 1925, Oliver appeared on Broadway in The Cradle Snatchers, costarring Mary Boland, Gene Raymond, and Humphrey Bogart.[2] Oliver's most notable stage appearance was as Parthy, wife of Cap'n Andy Hawks, in the original 1927 stage production of the musical Show Boat.[3] She reprised her role in the 1932 Broadway revival,[4] but turned down the chance to play Parthy in the 1936 film version to play the Nurse in that year's film version of Romeo and Juliet.

Her film debut was in 1923 in Wife in Name Only.[5] She continued to appear in films until Lydia in 1941. She first gained major notice in films for her appearances in several comedies starring the team of Wheeler & Woolsey, including Half Shot at Sunrise, her first film under her RKO Radio Pictures contract in 1930. Usually in featured parts, she starred in ten films, including Fanny Foley Herself (1931) and Ladies of the Jury (1932). She played wealthy, domineering Aunt March in the 1933 version of Little Women.

Oliver (center) in lobby card for David Copperfield (1935)

John Barrymore, Oliver and Leslie Howard in Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Oliver's most popular star vehicles were mystery-comedies, starring as spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers from the popular Stuart Palmer novels. The series ended prematurely when she left RKO to sign with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935; the studio attempted to continue the series with Helen Broderick and then ZaSu Pitts as Withers.[6]

While at MGM, David O. Selznick cast Oliver in two film versions of novels by Charles Dickens, as the prim, acidic Miss Pross A Tale of Two Cities[7] (1935), starring Ronald Colman, and as the title character's eccentric aunt, Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield[8] (also 1935).

She appeared in the Shirley Temple film Little Miss Broadway (1938) as the landlord of a hotel for vaudevillians who wants to shut it down. She also performed in two 1939 movie musicals: with Tyrone Power in the Sonja Henie skating film Second Fiddle,[9] and in a supporting role as the agent of the title characters in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.[10] A 1940 comic performance as Laurence Olivier's Mr. Darcy's domineering aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice[11] and a 1941 role as Merle Oberon's grandmother in Lydia[12] concluded her film career.

She was also cast in noncomedic films such as Cimarron[13] (1931), Ann Vickers[14] (1933), and Romeo and Juliet[15] (1936).

Oliver died on her 59th birthday in 1942 following a short intestinal ailment, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[16]

Oliver received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Drums Along the Mohawk (1939).[17]

(This list is limited to New York/Broadway theatrical productions.)

• Monush, Barry (2003). Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the silent era to 1965. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-1-55783-551-2.
• Palmer, Stuart (2013). Hildegarde Withers in The Riddle of the Blueblood Murders. Wildside Press LLC. ISBN 978-1-4344-4637-4.

• Alistair, Rupert (2018). "Edna May Oliver". The Name Below the Title : 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 200–203. ISBN 978-1-7200-3837-5.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edna May Oliver.

• Edna May Oliver at IMDb
• Edna May Oliver at the Internet Broadway Database
• Edna May Oliver at AllMovie
• Edna May Oliver at Find a Grave