Judith Anderson

Frances Margaret Anderson was born in 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia, 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.

She attended a private school, Norwood, where her education ended before graduation.

Dame Frances Margaret Anderson, (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.

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.

She appeared alongside him in adaptations of The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Musketeers, Monsieur Beacauire and David Garrick.

In 1917 she toured New Zealand.

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.

She travelled to California but was unsuccessful for four months, then moved to New York, with an equal lack of success.

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.

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.

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.

She toured Australia in 1927 with three plays: Tea for Three, The Green Hat and Cobra.

Back on Broadway she was in Behold the Bridegroom (1927–28) by George Kelly and had the lead role in Anna (1928).

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).

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).

She made her feature film debut with a role in Blood Money (1933).

Anderson then focused on Broadway with Come of Age (1934), and Divided By Three (1934).

She had a big hit with the lead in Zoe Akins' The Old Maid (1935) from the novel by Edith Wharton, in the role later played on film by Miriam Hopkins.

It ran for 305 performances.

In 1936, Anderson played Gertrude to John Gielgud's Hamlet in a production which featured Lillian Gish as Ophelia.

In 1937, she joined the Old Vic Company in London and played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier in a production by Michel Saint-Denis, at the Old Vic and the New Theatre.

She returned to Broadway with Family Portrait (1939), which she adored but only had a short run.

She later toured in the show.

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.

Anderson was second billed in an Eddie Cantor comedy, Forty Little Mothers (1940) at MGM.

She stayed at that studio for Free and Easy (1941) then went over to RKO to play the title role in Lady Scarface (1941).

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.

The film was a huge critical and commercial success, and Anderson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 13th Academy Awards.