Katie Johnson

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Bessie Kate "Katie" Johnson (born November 18, 1878 in Pyecombe , Sussex , England , † May 4, 1957 in Elham , Kent , England) was a British actress . The petite character actress has appeared in the theater, film and television. Largely subscribed to minor supporting roles in the film, she became known to a wide audience largely through her role as the old lady in the feature film Ladykillers (1955).

Life

Katie Johnson was born in 1878 in a village in the southern county of Sussex as Bessie Kate Johnson . She left her parents' home as a teenager and was taken to a traveling theater with Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet . Johnson appeared as a stage actress from 1894 and was employed in traveling theater for the next ten years, which was followed by tours of Great Britain and minor successes on the stages of London's West End . Guest performances have taken her to Canada, among others . She could be seen on New York Broadway in the first four months of 1935 in the play Escape Me Never at the side of Elisabeth Bergner .

Johnson made her film debut in the early 1930s, aged over 50, with a supporting role in Thomas Bentley's romantic film After Office Closes (1932). She then appeared regularly in English feature film productions of all genres, including Thorold Dickinson's crime film Gaslicht (1940), William Dieterle's melodrama Love Letters (1945) and Frank Launder's espionage thriller I See a Dark Stranger (1946). Although Johnson acted in these productions alongside renowned actors such as Deborah Kerr , Anton Walbrook or Diana Wynyard , she rarely got beyond minor supporting roles or extras in which she regularly gave elderly women a face. In 1940 she largely retired to private life on a farm. Six years later she moved to South Africa for some time , where she ran the household for her son. In 1953 she got a recurring part in the short-lived British television series The Quatermass Experiment .

The late fame as a film actress came only in 1955 with the female lead in Alexander Mackendrick's Ladykillers . In the crime game, in which Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers were her film partners, she slipped into the role of Mrs. Wimmerforce, who unwittingly offers shelter to five gangsters disguised as a string quintet who all seek their lives in the course of the plot. Ladykillers was a great success with critics and audiences at the time and is now considered a "milestone in British entertainment film" . For the part of the quirky, but trusting old lady Johnson was in 1956 with the price of the British Film Academy as Best British Actress Award and sat down inter alia against Deborah Kerr ( The End of the Affair ) by. A year after this success, Johnson passed away at the age of 78, having previously played a major supporting role in Nigel Patrick's feature film Uncle George and His Murderers (1956), another crime comedy .

Katie Johnson was married to fellow actor Frank G. Bayly until his death. In her old age she counted knitting and floriculture to her hobbies. Almost fifty years after the premiere of Ladykillers , a non-original remake was created under the direction of the two Americans Ethan and Joel Coen , in which the African-American actress Irma P. Hall Johnson's part took over.

Filmography

  • 1932: After Office Hours
  • 1934: A Glimpse of Paradise
  • 1936: Dusty Ermine
  • 1936: Laburnum Grove
  • 1938: Marigold
  • 1940: Gaslight ( Gaslight )
  • 1940: Freedom Radio
  • 1942: Talk About Jacqueline
  • 1943: Tawny Pipit
  • 1944: He Snoops to Conquer
  • 1945: Liebesbriefe ( Loveletters )
  • 1945: The year in between ( The Years Between )
  • 1945: I See a Dark Stranger
  • 1946: The Last Duel ( Meet Me at Dawn )
  • 1950: The History of Mr Polly (TV)
  • 1952: Death of an Angel
  • 1952: I Believe in You
  • 1953: Little jockey really big ( The Rainbow Jacket )
  • 1954: The Delavine affair ( Delavine Affair )
  • 1955: In love with a queen ( John and Julie )
  • 1955: Ladykillers ( The Ladykillers )
  • 1956: Uncle George and his killers ( How to Murder a Rich Uncle )

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Research results of the film archive K. Less, based on the birth register and the British census of 1881.
  2. ↑ a b c d Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of the film . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 4: H - L. Botho Höfer - Richard Lester. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 235.
  3. ↑ cf. Profile in the Internet Broadway Database (English)
  4. ↑ cf. Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)
  5. ↑ cf. Obituaries . In: The Times, May 9, 1957, p. 12
personal data
SURNAME Johnson, Katie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnson, Bessie Kate (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Pyecombe , Sussex , England
DATE OF DEATH May 4th 1957
Place of death Elham , Kent , England