Elisabeth Risdon

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Elisabeth Risdon (1920)
Elisabeth Risdon on a poster for the film Mother (1917). At the age of 30, she was "made older" for this role

Elisabeth Risdon (* 26. April 1887 in London , England as Elizabeth Evans ; † 20th December 1958 in Santa Monica , California ) was a British actress . From 1913 up to and including 1957 she was seen in around 150 film and television productions.

Life

Elisabeth Risdon studied at the Royal Academy of Arts , where she later also worked as a teacher. At a young age, the thin, dark-haired actress was considered a great beauty and became a theater star.

She made her Broadway debut in New York in 1912 with the comedy Fanny's First Play . However, she soon returned to Great Britain, where she made numerous successful silent films over the next few years and was consequently voted the most popular film star in England in 1915. In 1916 she married the American film director George Loane Tucker (1880–1921), in whose films and plays she took over leading roles. From 1917 she mainly devoted herself to the theater business and was cast by George Bernard Shaw in leading roles in some of his plays. In addition, she worked as the leading lady of important theater actors of her time such as George Arliss , Otis Skinner and William Faversham. In the 1920s she took on roles on both Broadway and the London stages and had a contract in New York with the Theater Guild, a group of freelance and eminent theater actors.

In the mid-1930s she came to Hollywood in the film business, where she appeared as a character actress in over 140 films until 1952. Although she rarely got beyond supporting roles, almost all of her appearances were featured in the credits . Mostly she embodied respectable, but at the same time strict and dominant women. She was used many times as the mother of the main female character, for example by Joan Crawford in the drama Mannequin (1938), by Priscilla Lane in the gangster film The Wild Twenties (1939) and by Claudette Colbert in The Egg and Me (1947). Her last film was Scaramouche, the gallant Marquis (1952) with Stewart Granger , in which she played a French noblewoman. In the mid-1950s, she made a few television appearances before retiring from acting a year before her death.

After the death of George Loane Tucker, she married the actor Brandon Evans in 1921, who died in April 1958. Elisabeth Risdon died of intercerebral haemorrhage just a few months later after her husband at the age of 71 . Her body was donated to medicine.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Risdon  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elisabeth Risdon at Fandango
personal data
SURNAME Risdon, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Evans, Elizabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1958
Place of death Santa Monica , California , United States