Dame Frances Margaret Anderson, AC,DBE (10 February 1897 – 3 January 1992), known professionally as Judith Anderson, was an Australian actress who had a successful career in stage, film and television. A pre-eminent stage actress in her era, she won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award. She is considered one of the 20th century's greatest classical stage actors.[citation needed]
Early life
Frances Margaret Anderson was born in 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia,[1] the youngest of four children born to Jessie Margaret (née Saltmarsh; 19 October 1862 – 24 November 1950), a former nurse, and Scottish-born James Anderson Anderson, a sharebroker and pioneering prospector.[2][3]
She attended a private school, Norwood, where her education ended before graduation.[4]
Career
Early acting
She made her professional debut (as Francee Anderson) in 1915, playing Stephanie at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, in A Royal Divorce. Leading the company was the Scottish actor Julius Knight whom she later credited with laying the foundations of her acting skills.[5] She appeared alongside him in adaptations of The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Musketeers, Monsieur Beacauire and David Garrick. In 1917 she toured New Zealand.[6]
Early years in America
Anderson was ambitious and wanted to leave Australia. Most local actors went to London but the war made this difficult so she decided on the US.[7] She travelled to California but was unsuccessful for four months, then moved to New York, with an equal lack of success.[8][6]
After a period of poverty and illness, she found work with the Emma Bunting Stock Company at the Fourteenth Street Theatre in 1918–19. She then toured with other stock companies.[6]
Broadway and film
She made her Broadway debut in Up the Stairs (1922) followed by The Crooked Square (1923) and she went to Chicago with Patches (1923). She appeared in Peter Weston (1923), which only had a short run.[9]
One year later, she had changed her acting forename (albeit not for legal purposes) to Judith and had her first triumph with the play Cobra (1924) co-starring Louis Calhern, which ran for 35 performances. Anderson then went on to The Dove (1925) which went for 101 performances and really established her on Broadway.[10][6]
She toured Australia in 1927 with three plays: Tea for Three, The Green Hat and Cobra.[11][12][13] Back on Broadway she was in Behold the Bridegroom (1927–28) by George Kelly and had the lead role in Anna (1928).[14] She replaced Lynn Fontanne during the successful run of Strange Interlude (1929).
Anderson made her film debut in a short for Warner Bros, Madame of the Jury (1930). She made her feature film debut with a role in Blood Money (1933).
In 1931, she played the Unknown Woman in the American premiere of Pirandello's As You Desire Me, which ran for 142 performances. (It was filmed the following year with Greta Garbo in the same role.) She was in a short-lived revival of Mourning Becomes Electra (1932), then did Firebird (1932), Conquest, The Drums Begin (both 1933), and The Mask and the Face (1933, with Humphrey Bogart). Anderson then focused on Broadway with Come of Age (1934), and Divided By Three (1934).[15]
She returned to Broadway with Family Portrait (1939), which she adored but only had a short run. She later toured in the show.[18][7]
Rebecca
Anderson then received a career boost when she was cast in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940). As the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, she was required to mentally torment the young bride, the "second Mrs. de Winter" (Joan Fontaine), even encouraging her to commit suicide; and to taunt her husband (Laurence Olivier) with the memory of his first wife, the never-seen "Rebecca" of the title. The film was a huge critical and commercial success, and Anderson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 13th Academy Awards.
In 1941, she played Lady Macbeth again in New York opposite Maurice Evans in a production staged by Margaret Webster, a role she was to reprise with Evans on television, firstly in 1954 and then again in 1960 (the second version was released as a feature film in Europe). This ran for 131 performances.
Anderson made her appearance in Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy at the outdoor Forest Theater in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California on July 2–5, 1941. This was the first time it played in a professional manner. John Burr's Carmel Pine Cone review admired Anderson's performance and proclaimed the production was “an unqualified success." Director Charles O'Neal persuaded Anderson to appear in both The Tower Beyond Tragedy and the Family Portrait.[19][20]
In 1947, she triumphed as Medea in a version of Euripides' eponymous tragedy, written by the poet Robinson Jeffers and produced by John Gielgud, who played Jason. She was a friend of Jeffers and a frequent visitor to his home Tor House in Carmel.[24] She won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance. The show ran for 214 performances. Anderson then toured throughout the country with it.[25]
She returned to Broadway with The Tower Beyond Tragedy by Jeffers (1950), and toured Medea in German in 1951.[25] She was in a New York revival of Come of Age in 1952.
Anderson appeared in a 1958 adaptation of The Bridge of San Luis Rey for The DuPont Show of the Month and played the memorable role of Big Mama, alongside Burl Ives as Big Daddy, in the screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). She followed it with a return to Broadway, in the short-lived Comes a Day by Speed Lampkin (1958). "I don't profess to know much about films", she said around this time. "I seldom see one."[29]
Anderson reprised her performance as Medea for TV in 1959; in the same year she appeared in a small-screen adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence with Laurence Olivier. She had a role in the Wagon Train episode "The Felizia Kingdom Story", and appeared in several episodes of Playhouse 90 and one of Our American Heritage. In later years she starred as Minx Lockridge in the daytime NBC soap opera Santa Barbara from 1984 until 1987.
That year she also performed in Cradle Song and Macbeth (both 1960) for TV. She won The Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, for once again playing Lady MacBeth. She had support roles in Cinderfella (1960) and Why Bother to Knock (1961).
In 1961 she toured an evening in which she performed Macbeth, Medea and Tower.[30]
In 1970, she realised a long-held ambition to play the title role of Hamlet on a national tour of the United States and at New York's Carnegie Hall.[34]
Spoken word and radio
She also recorded many spoken word record albums for Caedmon Audio from the 1950s to the 1970s, including scenes from Macbeth with Maurice Anderson (Victor, in 1941), an adaption of Medea, Robert Louis Stevenson verses, and readings from the Bible. She received a Grammy nomination for her work on the Wuthering Heights recording.
That same year, she commenced a three-year stint as matriarch Minx Lockridge on the NBC serial Santa Barbara. When asked why, she replied "Why not? It's practically the same as doing a play."[36]
She had professed to be a fan of the daytime genre – she had watched General Hospital for twenty years – but after signing with Santa Barbara, she complained about her lack of screen time. The highlight of her stint was when Minx tearfully revealed the horrific truth that she had switched the late Channing Capwell with Brick Wallace as a baby, preventing her illegitimate grandson from being raised as a Capwell. This resulted in her receiving a Supporting Actress Emmy Nomination although her screen time afterwards diminished to infrequent appearances. After leaving the series, she was succeeded in the role by the quarter-century younger American actress Janis Paige.[citation needed]
Her last movies were The Booth and Impure Thoughts (both 1985).
Personal life
Anderson was married twice and declared that "neither experience was a jolly holiday":[37]
Benjamin Harrison Lehmann (1889–1977), an English professor at the University of California at Berkeley;[38] they wed in 1937 and divorced in August 1939. By this marriage she had a stepson, Benjamin Harrison Lehmann Jr. (born 1918).[39][40]
Luther Greene (1909–1987), a theatrical producer; they were married in July 1946 and divorced in 1951.[41][42]
^According to the United States Social Security Death Index (SSDI), the California Deaths Index Registry and Genealogy SA, Anderson was born in 1897 but sources traditionally cited 1898 as her year of birth.
^"Current Biography Yearbook". H.W. Wilson Co., 1941. 1941. Retrieved 31 October 2016. Judith Anderson was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the ... to give the girl eight years of good schooling at two private institutions in South Australia, Rose Park and Norwood.
^"Judith Anderson". The Sun. No. 1240. Darwin. 2 January 1927. p. 28. Retrieved 5 December 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
^ abSmith, Cecil (22 April 1985). "Dame Judith Anderson: Living, Working Legend". Los Angeles Times, page G2.
^Heywood, Anne (7 May 2003). "Anderson, Frances Margaret (Judith)". Australian Women's Archives Project. National Foundation for Australian Women. Retrieved 11 May 2008.
^"Judith Anderson". The Sydney Morning Herald. No. 27, 754. New South Wales, Australia. 17 December 1926. p. 15. Retrieved 5 December 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
^ abScheuer, Philip K. (26 September 1948). "Judith Anderson Puts Her All Into Amazing Medea Portrayal: Judith Anderson Gives Her All to Medea Role". Los Angeles Times, page D1.
^"Judith Anderson Signed", Chicago Daily Tribune, 19 September 1954, page R3.
^Lane, Lydia (28 October 1956). "Judith Anderson Never Let Self-Pity Hamper Success". Los Angeles Times, page D7.
^Scott, John L. (1 June 1958). "Judith Anderson: Lady Macbeth to Medea to Big Mamma With Ease: Judith Anderson Stage Superwoman". Los Angeles Times, page E1.
^Smith, Cecil (12 November 1961). "The Show? Just Call It Judith Anderson". Los Angeles Times, page A16.
Alistair, Rupert (2018). "Judith Anderson". The Name Below the Title : 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 12–14. ISBN978-1-7200-3837-5.
Deacon, Desley (2019), Judith Anderson: Australian Star, First Lady of the American Stage, Kerr Publishing, ISBN978-1-875703-18-0