Mabel Albertson

Born in Essex Co. and died in Los Angeles Co., daughter of Russian Jewish immigrant parents Leopold Albertson, a shoemaker born in Russia on 14 May 1880, and wife (married in Boston, Suffolk Co., MA, 25 Dec 1900) Flora Kraft, born in Russia on 25 Dec 1879 and died in Los Angeles Co., CA, 30 Jun 1955, who married secondly in Lynn, Essex Co., MA, 1 June 1910 Alexander Eliss Ehrlich, a barber born in Russia 5 Aug 1884 and died in Los Angeles Co., CA, 26 Jan 1973.

Her first husband Harold Austin Ripley (Wethersfield, Hartford Co., CT, 1908 - 1987) was the son of William Chauncey Ripley (b. Montague, Franklin Co., MA, 1879) and wife Ella May (b. 1882). They had a daughter Patricia Ripley, married, and a son George Howe Ripley.

In fact, she had been a successful vaudeville performer in the 1920s, a radio star in the 1930s and a theater actress and director in the 1940s.

She had tried her hand in films twice (in 1928 and 1940) but without much success.

When, at 50, Mabel Albertson was given the supporting role of Mrs. Carter, young actress Aileen Stanley Jr. 's mother in a Warner Bros. Technicolor musical romance, little did she know that she was starting out a movie and TV career in which she would shine as "the ultimate haughty judgmental (often wealthy) mother-in-law (or mother, or stepmother, or auntie)" in an impressive series of films, TV films or TV series episodes. Mabel Albertson's comic gifts helped her to make these generally obnoxious characters hilarious. She is indeed memorable as Jerry Lewis' mother-in-law in Don't Give Up The Ship (1959), as George Hamilton's mother in All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) or the domineering mother-in-law of poor Anthony Franciosa in Period of Adjustment (1962). On television, Tom Ewell, Dick Van Dyke and Dick Sargent, among others, were given the same treatment by their screen mother. Even at 50 years of age, Mabel Albertson was no newcomer to the business.