Years active 1905–1955 Role Film actress | Occupation Actress Name Josephine Hull | |
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Full Name Mary Josephine Sherwood Spouse Shelly Hull (m. 1910–1919) Parents William H. Sherwood, Mary Elizabeth Tewkesbury Movies Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, The Lady from Texas, After Tomorrow Similar People Jean Adair, Priscilla Lane, Mary Chase, Henry Koster, Raymond Massey | ||
Josephine hull wins supporting actress 1951 oscars
Josephine Hull (January 3, 1877 – March 12, 1957) was an American stage and film actress who also was a director of plays. She had a successful 50-year career on stage while taking some of her better known roles to film. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the movie Harvey (1950), a role she originally played on the Broadway stage.
Contents
- Josephine hull wins supporting actress 1951 oscars
- Josephine hull in harvey
- Background
- Stage
- Film
- Death
- Broadway Appearances
- Broadway Credits as Director
- Filmography
- References
Josephine hull in harvey
Background
Hull was born January 3, 1877 as Mary Josephine Sherwood in Newtonville, Massachusetts, one of four children born to William H. Sherwood and Mary Elizabeth ("Minnie") Tewkesbury; but would later shave years off her true age. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music and Radcliffe College, both in the Boston area.
Stage
Hull made her stage debut in stock in 1905, and after some years as a chorus girl and touring stock player, she married actor Shelly Hull (the elder brother of actor Henry Hull) in 1910. After her husband's death as a young man, the actress retired until 1923, when she returned to acting using her married name, Josephine Hull. The couple had no children.
She had her first major stage success in George Kelly's Pulitzer-winning Craig's Wife in 1926. Kelly wrote a role especially for her in his next play, Daisy Mayme, which also was staged in 1926. She continued working in New York theater throughout the 1920s. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hull appeared in three Broadway hits, as a batty matriarch in You Can't Take It with You (1936), as a homicidal old lady in Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), and in Harvey (1944). The plays all had long runs, and took up ten years of Hull's career. Her last Broadway play, The Solid Gold Cadillac (1954–55), was later made into a film with the much younger Judy Holliday.
Film
Hull made only six films, beginning in 1927 with a small part in the Clara Bow feature Get Your Man, followed by The Bishop's Candlesticks in 1929. That was followed by two 1932 Fox features, After Tomorrow (recreating her stage role) and The Careless Lady.
She missed out on recreating her You Can't Take It With You role in 1938, as she was still onstage with the show. Instead, Spring Byington appeared in the film version. Hull and Jean Adair played the Brewster sisters in the 1944 film version of Arsenic and Old Lace (starring Cary Grant and Priscilla Lane), and Hull appeared in the screen version of Harvey, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Variety credited Hull's performance: "the slightly balmy aunt who wants to have Elwood committed, is immense, socking the comedy for every bit of its worth."
After, Hull made only one more film, The Lady from Texas (1951); she had also appeared in the CBS-TV version of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1949, with Ruth McDevitt, an actress who often succeeded Hull in her Broadway roles, as her sister.
Death
Josephine Hull died on March 12, 1957, aged 80, from a cerebral hemorrhage.