A Bit on Olive Blakeney

Born on August 21, Olive Blakeney (1894-1959), best known for playing Mrs. Aldrich in the Aldrich Family comedies (1942-44).

Blakeney was a native of Newport, Kentucky; she received her theatrical training at the Cincinnati School of Expression, just across the river. Starting in the nineteen-tens she began acting with stock companies in Cincinnati, Pittsfield, Mass., and with Lucille La Verne’s Company in Atlanta. In the ’20s she toured vaudeville in dramatic playlets with a succession of partners, including Ezra Matthews and William Gaxton.

In 1927 Blakeney moved to England, where she appeared in regional and West End Theatre in plays like George Abbott’sBroadway, and married actor Bernard Ledell. From 1933 to 1939 she appeared in a dozen British films, including Hello, Sweetheart (1934) an adaptation of George S. Kaufman’s The Butter and Egg Man directed by Monty Banks, with Claude Hulbert, Gregory Ratoff, and Nancy O’Neill; Come Out of the Pantry (1935) with Jack Buchanan and Fay Wray; Two’s Company (1936) with Ned Sparks and Mary Brian; Don’t Get Me Wrong (1937) with Max Miller and George E. Stone; and Gangway (1937) with Jessie Matthews, Nat Pendleton, and Alastair Sim.

The coming of World War Two caused Ledell and Blakeney, very sensibly, to return to the States. Her Hollywood screen career was less charmed than her British one, though it started on a promising note. She had a great role in the ensemble of Lubitsch’sThat Uncertain Feeling (1941) and a smaller role in Cukor’s Two Faced Woman (1941), Garbo’s last film, among other things. In 1942 she took over for Hedda Hopper as the mother in the Henry Aldrich comedies. The title character was played by Jimmy Lydon, her real life son-in-law. Despite her much higher status in British films, however, Blakeney played mostly bit parts in American movies, like Billy the Kid (1941), Random Harvest (1942), Nob Hill (1945), Dakota (1945), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Sentimental Journey (1946), and Sealed Verdict (1948).

In the ’50s Blakeney worked steadily in television, and still made the occasional film. She’s third billed in the family comedy Roogie’s Bump (1954), had a role in The Green Eyed Blonde (1957) with Susan Oliver, and played a women’s prison warden in the Barbara Graham bio-pic I Want to Live (1958) starring Susan Hayward. She also had a couple of Broadway roles, appearing in Harlequinade with Maurice Evans in 1949 as well as a 1951 revival of George S. Kaufman’s and Edna Ferber’s The Royal Family. Her very last credit was a 1959 episode of the tv show One Step Beyond.

For more about vaudeville, where Olive Blakeney got her start, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.