A Minute on Mildred Natwick

We’ve had numerous occasions to mention actress Mildred Natwick (1905-1994) on Travalanche; high time for her own entry.

We love her of course principally for being everything you would want a woman named Mildred Natwick to be. Plain and spinsterish, a Bryn Mawr grad, she had personality to spare and was often cast as feisty fighters who were also somehow warm and loveable. She has always reminded me a bit of Elsa Lanchester., Her first Broadway part, appropriately was in Carrie Nation (1932). Over two dozen additional Broadway forays followed, including parts in revivals of Shaw’sCandida, Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit,Synge’sThe Playboy of the Western World, and the original U.S. productions of Jean Anouilh’s The Waltz of the Toreadors, Ira Levin’s Critic’s Choice (1961, later made into a movie with Bob Hope and Lucille Ball), and Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (1963). Later stage stuff included a 1969 revival of Our Town with her old friend Henry Fonda, and Kander and Ebb’s 70 Girls, 70 (1971) with fellow stage veterans Hans Conried, Lillian Roth, Joey Faye,Gil Lamb, and Sally Demay.

Baltimore native Natwick had gotten her start on Cape Cod with the University Players, where she worked with and befriended Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Joshua Logan, associations that no doubt assisted her career.

In films she started out as a member of the John Ford stock company, appearing in such classics as The Long Voyage Home (1940),3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952). For Alfred Hitchcock she appeared in The Trouble with Harry (1955) and two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Other notable movies Natwick appeared in include Yolanda and the Thief (1945), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), The Court Jester (1955), Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), Barefoot in the Park (1967), If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium (1969), The Maltese Bippy (1969) and two by Peter Bogdanovich, who obviously cast her because of his love of Ford: Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975).

As for television, she won an Emmy for her work opposite Helen Hayes in (of all things) The Snoop Sisters, on the NBC Mystery Movie program. She was also known for a series of holiday tv movies that began with The Year Without a Christmas Tree (1972), as well as guest shots on things like Bonanza, McMillan and Wife, Hawaii Five-O, Alice, and Murder She Wrote.

Mildred Natwick’s final credit was in Stepher Frear’s 1988 adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons.

Natwick was first cousins with the animator Grim Natwick, best known for developing Betty Boop for Fleischer Studios. It seemed worth mentioning in light of the current Broadway show!