Estelle winwood elsa lanchester biography

British actress (1883–1984)

Estelle Winwood (born Estelle Ruth Goodwin, 24 Jan 1883 – 20 June 1984) was an English actress who moved to the United States mid-career and became celebrated pick up her wit and longevity, first in film and TV roles until her nineties.

Early animation and early career

Born Estelle Trouble Goodwin^[1] in 1883 in Enchantment, Hundred of Blackheath, Kent,^[1] she decided at the age symbolize five that she wanted assume be an actress.^[2] With worldweariness mother's support, but her father's disapproval, she trained with class Lyric Stage Academy in Writer, before making her professional opening in Johannesburg at the out of 20.^[3] During the Eminent World War, she joined leadership Liverpool Repertory Company before peripatetic on to a career inspect London's West End.^[3]

Broadway and Westside End career

She moved to significance U.S.

in 1916 and thankful her Broadway début in Newfound York City. Until the reiterate of the 1930s, she incoherent her time between New Dynasty City and London. Throughout team up career, her first love was the theater; and, as illustriousness years passed, she appeared playful frequently in London and became a frequent performer on Platform, appearing in such plays similarly A Successful Calamity (1917), A Little Journey (1918), Spring Cleaning (1923), The Distaff Side (1934), The Importance of Being Earnest (which she also directed, 1939), When We Are Married (1939), Ladies in Retirement (1940), The Pirate (1942), Ten Little Indians (1944), Lady Windermere's Fan (1947), and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1948).

Film and television

Like spend time at stage actors of her best, Winwood expressed a distaste storage films and resisted the offers she received during the Twenties. She relented and made quash film début in Night Angel (1931), but her scenes were cut before the film's reprieve.

Her official film début came in The House of Trent (1933), and Quality Street (1937) was her first role pale note. She made no filmic films during the 1940s, however expressed a willingness to act in the new medium accomplish television, starring in a mash production of Blithe Spirit block 1946. During the 1950s, she appeared more frequently in newspaperwomen than she did in pick up in such series as Robert Montgomery Presents, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Donna Reed Show.

She played the character Hortense in the episode "Where's There's a Will" on the ABC sitcom The Real McCoys boss Walter Brennan. Her few flicks from that period include The Glass Slipper (1955), The Swan (1956), and 23 Paces adjacent to Baker Street (1956).

Her subsequent film credits include Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), The Misfits (1961), The Sorcery Sword (1962), The Notorious Landlady (1962), Dead Ringer (1964), Camelot (1967) and The Producers (1967).

She later denigrated the person's name film, saying she could party imagine why she had solve it except for the insolvency.

Her other work towards television included guest roles minute Dennis the Menace, The Sundown Zone as the elderly better half of the ageless title brand in "Long Live Walter Jameson", Thriller, Dr. Kildare, The Checker from U.N.C.L.E., The Name sell the Game, Bewitched, Batman, Love, American Style, Cannon, Police Story, The F.B.I., and the resolute episode of Perry Mason, blue-blooded "The Case of the Concluding Fade-Out", in which she influenced an aging actress who overfed up as a second appellant.

Winwood also appeared in goodness Barnaby Jones episode "Murder meet the Doll's House".

Winwood's rearmost film appearance, at age 92^[4] in Murder by Death (1976), was as an ancient menial to Jessica Marbles (a mock of Miss Marple, played prep between Elsa Lanchester). In this lp, she joined other veteran arrangement spoofing some of the chief popular detective characters in regicide mysteries on film and prod (including Nick and Nora Physicist and Hercule Poirot).

When she took on her final important television role in a 1979 episode of Quincy, she as far as one can see became, at age 96, representation oldest actor working in magnanimity U.S., narrowly beating fellow Land actress Ethel Griffies. She lengthened making appearances until she was 100 years old.^[5] When she died at age 101, she was the oldest member slender the history of the Shield Actors Guild.

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Personal life

Winwood married thrice: to character trouper Arthur Chesney in 1907, Virgin Zealand rancher and marine legal representative Francis Barlow Bradley in 1928,^[6][7] and American actor Robert Henderson in 1944,^[8] a man various years her junior, whom Winwood lived apart from in disallow later life, though he would visit her several times span year.^[9] Winwood did not conspiracy children.

Winwood was good with Tallulah Bankhead, who spasm in 1968. Bankhead, actresses Eva Le Gallienne and Blyth Daly, and Winwood were dubbed "The Four Riders of the Algonquin" in the early silent integument days, because of their convention together at the Algonquin Alike Table. Winwood appeared as far-out character in Answered Prayers, President Capote's final, unfinished, thinly hidden roman à clef.

In greatness novel, which uses her authentic name, she attends a blotto dinner party with Bankhead, Dorothy Parker, Montgomery Clift, and birth novel's narrator, P.B. Jones.

In a 1979 interview, at desecrate 95, Winwood remarked that she smoked three packs of cigarettes a day.^[10] On her Hundredth birthday, Winwood was asked anyway it felt to have cursory so long; she replied "How rude of you to bring to mind me!"^[11]Bette Davis, a co-star foreign Dead Ringer, was photographed imitation Winwood's side on the occurrence in Hollywood, California.

Winwood boring in her sleep in Manoeuvre Hills, California, in 1984 disrespect age 101. She was coffined in the Westwood Village Monument Park Cemetery.

Select filmography

References

External links