Cora Witherspoon

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Cora Witherspoon (1910s)

Cora Witherspoon (born January 5, 1890 in New Orleans , Louisiana , † November 17, 1957 in Las Cruces , New Mexico ) was an American actress who specialized in pesky and conceited characters.

life and career

Cora Witherspoon was born to Cora S. Bell and Henry Edgeworth Witherspoon, who worked as an assistant surgeon during the Civil War . She was orphaned at the age of ten and had to be partially raised by her older sister Maud. Her sister was the owner of a rag doll factory. Witherspoon made her professional debut as an actress in 1905. On Broadway in New York , she first played in 1910 at the Belasco Theater in the hit comedy The Concert , in which the 20-year-old actress played a 76-year-old lady. Further engagements at renowned theaters followed. By 1946 she played a total of around 35 plays on Broadway. Some of the pieces were later made into films like Jezebel , The Terrible Truth, and Waterloo Bridge .

With the start of talkies, numerous Broadway actors were engaged to Hollywood, including Cora Witherspoon. She made her film debut in 1931 in Tarnished Lady alongside Tallulah Bankhead . In the next 25 years she played supporting roles in over 25 films, whereby her appearances were mostly short, but all the more striking. She was mainly used as a snobbish and annoying high society lady, for example in The Women (1939) by George Cukor . She also played house dragons regularly, for example in one of her best-known roles as the wife of WC Fields in the comedy The Bank Detective (1940). The writers John Springer and Jack Hamilton wrote about the character actress in 1974: "Witherspoon was blessed with a face that could have come from one of those cartoonists who specialize in portraying the war between men and women." The 1950s came Witherspoon did a few guest roles on television before she retired from the acting business.

In her private life, her life was considered less happy, and according to Tennessee Williams' memoir , Witherspoon was addicted to morphine . She died in 1957 at the age of 67 and was buried in Metairie Cemetery in her hometown of New Orleans .

Filmography (selection)

Cora Witherspoon as a baby (around 1890)

Web links

Commons : Cora Witherspoon  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Axel Nissen: Actresses of a Certain Character 2006, p. 213.
  2. ↑ Axel Nissen: Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties . McFarland, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7864-2746-8 ( google.de [accessed on January 16, 2018]).
  3. ^ Anthony Slide: "It's the Pictures That Got Small": Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age . Columbia University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-231-53822-0 ( google.de [accessed January 16, 2018]).
  4. ^ Cora Witherspoon at Find A Grave
personal data
SURNAME Witherspoon, Cora
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH New Orleans , Louisiana , United States
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 1957
Place of death Las Cruces , New Mexico , United States