Career
On September 17, 1883 she became an actress on the Brooklyn Grand Opera House stage. Her name was incorrectly spelled "Robson" in the billing, which she used from that point forward "for good luck". Over the next several decades, she flourished on the stage as a comedienne and character actress. Her success was partly due to her affiliation with powerful manager and producer Charles Frohman and the Theatrical Syndicate. Robson had established her own touring theatrical company by 1911.
She appeared as herself at her Long Island home in a cameo with one of her adult daughters in the 1915 silent How Molly Made Good, a film that's available on DVD. She starred in the 1916 silent film A Night Out, an adaptation of the play she co-wrote, The Three Lights.
In 1927 Robson went to Hollywood where she would have a successful film career as a senior aged woman. Among her starring roles was 1931's The She-Wolf, in which she was cast as a miserly millionaire businesswoman based on Hetty Green. She also starred in the final segment of the anthology film If I Had a Million (1932) as a rest home resident who gets a new lease on life when she is given a $1,000,000 check by a dying business tycoon. She played the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (1933), Countess Vronsky in Anna Karenina (1936), Aunt Elizabeth in Bringing Up Baby (1938), Aunt Polly in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), and a sharp-tongued Granny in A Star Is Born (1937). Miss Robson was top-billed as late as 1940, starring in Granny Get Your Gun at age 82. Her last film was 1942's Joan of Paris.
Read more about this topic: May Robson
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