Cora Witherspoon (January 5, 1890 – November 17, 1957) was an American stage and film character actress whose career spanned nearly half a century. She began in theatre where she remained rooted even after entering motion pictures in the early 1930s. As Witherspoon's career progressed, she carved a niche playing haughty society women or harridan housewives such as Princess Lina in Ferenc Molnár's 1928 play Olympia, or Agatha Sousè, W.C. Fields’ domineering spouse in the 1940 film The Bank Dick.[The Play. The New York Times, October 17, 1928, p. 26][ Hémard, Ned – New Orleans Nostalgia Retrieved August 26, 2013] John Springer and Jack Hamilton, authors of They Had Faces Then: Super Stars, Stars, and Starlets of the 1930s (1974), wrote that "Witherspoon was blessed with a face that might have been drawn by one of those cartoonists who specialize in dealing with the war between men and women."[ Nissen, Axel - Actresses of a Certain Character,'' 2006, p. 213 Retrieved August 26, 2013]
Early life
Witherspoon was born in New Orleans, to Cora S. Bell and Henry Edgeworth Witherspoon. Her father was an assistant surgeon with the
Confederate Army during the American Civil War while her mother was an aunt of the civil rights advocate Judge John Minor Wisdom.
[ Freidman. Champion of Civil Rights: Judge John Minor Wisdom 2009, p. 4 retrieved August 24, 2013] Witherspoon was orphaned by age 10 and raised at least in part by her older sister, Maud, who, while still in her teens founded the
Maud Witherspoon Rag Doll Manufacturing Company.
[ In the Realm of Women. The Indiana Weekly, Volume 11, Issue 21, September 7, 1901, p. 5 Retrieved December 13, 2013][ Troy Daily Times, "Women's World", column 2, January 22, 1902; retrieved August 24, 2013.][Cora Witherspoon, Actress, 67, Is Dead; Performer 50 Years Made Bow at 15. New York Times, November 19, 1957, p. 33.] Witherspoon's ancestors had reportedly once owned Ellington Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.
[ Seebold, Herman de Bachelle - Old Louisiana Plantation Homes And Family Trees 2004, p. 104; retrieved August 26, 2013]
Stage
Witherspoon made her professional stage debut in 1905 with a New Orleans stock company. She first appeared in New York at the Belasco Theatre in the 1910 hit comedy
The Concert, which was
Leo Ditrichstein's adaptation of the stage play, in which the 20-year-old actress portrayed the 76-year-old Edith Gordon. Witherspoon appeared with Ditrichstein in September 1913 for a four-month run at the Belasco and briefly the Theatre Republic playing Fanny Lamont in
The Temperamental Journey, from the comedy
Pour Vivre Heureux by André Rivoire and Yves Mirandeis. From September 1914 into the following May at the Gaiety Theatre, she played Sally McBride in
Jean Webster comedy
Daddy Long Legs.
[ Internet Broadway Database profile; retrieved August 25, 2013.]
Witherspoon had a long run between November 1915 and June 1916 at the
Longacre Theatre as Mrs. Van Ness in
The Great Lover, another play by Ditrichstein, written in collaboration with Fanny and Frederic Hatton.
In 1926 Witherspoon was a member of the summer stock cast at Denver's Elitch Theatre, where she performed with Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, and Beulah Bondi.
She remained active on stage for another three decades often in long-running Broadway plays, such as:
-
Miss Risdon in Three Faces East by Anthony Paul Kelly (1918/19)
-
Gertrude Ainlee in Lilies of the Field by William J. Hurlbut (1921/22)
-
Josephine Trent in The Awful Truth by Arthur Richman (1922/23)
-
Marianne Regnault in Grounds for Divorce by Guy Bolton and Ernest Vajda (1924/25)
-
Martha Culver in The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham (1926/27)
-
Mrs. Oliver in Philip Goes Forth by George Kelly (1931)
-
Mrs. Paula La Salle in Forsaking All Others by Edward Roberts and Frank Cavett (1933)
-
Mrs. Letty Walters in Jig Saw by Dawn Powell (1934)
-
Isabel Cobb in A Touch of Brimstone by Frank Craven (1935)
-
Mame Phillips in Ramshackle Inn by George Batson (1944)
-
Mrs. Grant in The Front Page (revival) by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (1946)
Film
Her first film appearance was a small role in the 1931 motion picture
Tarnished Lady starring Tallulah Bankhead. She played supporting roles in Hollywood films for nearly 25 years. Witherspoon played Mrs. Burns Norville in
Libeled Lady with
Jean Harlow and
William Powell; Nesta Pett in
; Nora in ; Patty in
; Countess de Noailles in ; Carrie in
Dark Victory; Mrs. Van Adams in
; Susie Watson in Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise; and Mrs. Williamson in . Her last film role was in
It Should Happen to You (1954).
[ Witherspoon - Internet Movie Database profile; retrieved August 25, 2013.]
Television and radio
Witherspoon appeared in several episodes of the classic American television series
Fireside Theatre,
Kraft Theatre and
Studio One in Hollywood, and on radio in the NBC
Great Plays series.
Addiction
In his 1975 autobiography,
Tennessee Williams: Memoirs, Williams told of his time in 1941 as a night shift elevator operator at the San Jacinto Hotel in Manhattan. Among the hotel's guests at the time was Witherspoon who, according to Williams, employed him or the hotel's telephone operator, a budding poet, to pick up her
morphine prescription from an all-night pharmacy.
Death
Witherspoon died in 1957, aged 67, at Las Cruces, New Mexico and interred at the Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans. She was survived by her sister Maud.
External links
