May Whitty - Film Career

Film Career

I have everything Betty Grable has—I've just had it longer.

“ ”

She made her first major Hollywood film appearance, recreating her stage role in the film Night Must Fall (1937), which also starred Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell, and received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. This led to several supporting roles in films including that of the 'vanishing lady', "Miss Froy", in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938).

She moved permanently to the USA (although she never became a U.S. citizen) in 1939 and appeared both on stage and in Hollywood films where she usually played wealthy dowagers. It was one such part, as "Lady Beldon" in Mrs Miniver (1942), that brought her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

She continued to act for the remainder of her life and died in Beverly Hills, California from cancer at the age of 82; her husband had died the previous year during surgery.

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