Sara Allgood

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Sara Allgood (circa 1912)

Sara Allgood (born October 31, 1879 in Dublin , Ireland , † September 13, 1950 in Woodland Hills , California ) was an American film and theater actress of Irish origin.

biography

Sara Allgood was the older of two sisters and grew up in a medium-sized Irish family. Her sister Mary Allgood (1885-1952) was also a successful actress under the stage name Máire O'Neill . After finishing school, Sara became a member of Dublin's Abbey Theater , the Irish national theater , at the age of 19 . After she had only extra roles without text and later supporting roles for a few years, she made her leading role debut in The King's Threshold by William Butler Yeats in 1903 . Sara Allgood soon became Ireland's most famous theater actress at the time. In 1911 she made her debut on Broadway in New York, where she played more frequently in the decades that followed. During one of her numerous tours to Australia , she made her film debut in the silent film Just Peggy in 1918 .

At the same time as the filming of Just Peggy , Allgood had to cope with two severe blows of fate: In 1916 she married the Australian Gerald Henson , but her daughter, who was just under one year old, died of the Spanish flu in 1917 and Henson himself died in 1918 . In the 1920s she mainly worked in the theater and did not make her second film until 1929, the crime film Blackmail by Alfred Hitchcock . Blackmail was not just Allgood's first sound film; it was also the first sound film ever to be produced in England . A year later, Hitchcock used Allgood again, namely as the leading actress in his film Juno and the Paycock . In the following decade, she took on character roles on Irish, US and British stages. In addition, she regularly played major roles in now largely forgotten British film productions.

Sara Allgood moved to Hollywood in 1940 , where she enjoyed great success with her first films. For example, director John Ford used Allgood in his miners drama Schlagende Wetter as the kind mother of a Welsh miners family. For this performance she received an Oscar nomination in the category Best Supporting Actress in 1942 . A long-term collaboration with 20th Century Fox began , in which the matronly character actress was mainly used as an Irish mother or maid. She had one last brief appearance in 1950 in the American comedy Cheaper by the Dozen .

Sara Allgood, who became a US citizen in 1945, died of a heart attack a few weeks before her 71st birthday .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Sara Allgood  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Allgood, Sara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actress of Irish descent
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1950
Place of death Woodland Hills (Los Angeles)