Teresa Wright

To this day the lady is the only movie performer to receive  Oscar nominations for her first three films.  Additionally, she is only one of 12 to receive Oscar nominations in two categories in the same year.  Both records are astonishing especially for an actress who wasn't keen on making movies in the first place and practically had to be dragged into them from the Broadway stage.

And with that said, Teresa Wright only made 27 big-screen movies.  She would always consider the stage to be her home but she also appeared to be quite happy working in television.

The tough, outspoken playwright Lillian Hellman had brought her work The Little Foxes to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn to be turned into a film in 1941.  Despite every studio bidding for the rights, Hellman was loyal to Goldwyn because he had made successful films from four of her screenplays.  He borrowed Bette Davis from Warner Bros to play the lead, Regina Giddens, and brought several others from the Broadway play.

The role of the daughter, Alexandra, had been expanded by author and producer and it had not been cast.  Goldwyn hadn't liked the Hollywood pickings so he sent Hellman to New York to scout out some possibilities.  She saw Wright in Life with Father and was convinced she'd found her Alexandra. She asked Goldwyn to come to New York, see the play and make up his own mind.  

Goldwyn loved how down-to-earth and unassuming she was and said he immediately knew she was right for the role.  He was not prepared for her reluctance when she said she wanted to be a legitimate actress not a movie star.  He likely thought he could bulldoze over her as he did with most of those in his employ.

She knew who William Wyler was having seen the latest movies he'd directed (Dodsworth, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights and The Letter) and was impressed he would be helming The Little Foxes.  She finally agreed to sign on because it was only a one-picture deal and she could return to New York and the cast of Life with Father.  

The Little Foxes is an intense rendering of a ruthless Southern family on a runaway train of greed, larceny and ambition.  The only calming, bright spot of the entire story is the daughter, the moral center and protector of her dying Casper Milquetoast father against her unscrupulous mother and uncles.  If the actress who played Alexandra was not right, it would have thrown the entire story off its trolley but luckily Wright came through.  Wyler would say she was the most talented young actress he ever directed.  She would rightfully capture a supporting actress Oscar nomination and surprisingly would sign a five-year contract with Goldwyn before the film was completed. 

Wright & Greer Garson both won Oscars for Mrs. Miniver

Both Wright and Wyler were loaned to MGM to make the sentimental WWII drama Mrs. Miniver (1942).  Interestingly, it has no war scenes but is about a British family's struggles at home as they adjust to the early months of the war.  Playing the spirited, independent daughter-in-law of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon who dies at the end of the story, she wowed audiences and critics alike with her sincerity.  A certifiable tearjerker, Wright not only was nominated for another supporting Oscar, she won it.  

Back with Goldwyn, Wright got her first leading actress role as Lou Gehrig's altruistic wife in the immensely popular, The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and captured her third Oscar nomination and the second for the same year.  She and Gary Cooper were a most popular screen couple and the film, especially at the end, another of the great tear-jerkers.  Damn, if I'm not misty-eyed writing this. 

Lou Gehrig's story was brought to Goldwyn's attention by one of his writers/story editors, Niven Busch.  Wright had met him when she was making The Little Foxes.  He was quite handsome, polished, comfortable in a tux and more comfortable in jeans and cowboy boots.  She was attracted to creative people, most especially to writers.  He was impressed how much she knew, really knew, about the process of acting on the stage and movies.  He had a parental feel, which for a long while she liked, and she felt cared for, loved.  They married in early 1942.  His two sons from previous marriages  lived with them and the Busch's would have two children of their own.

As it turned out, Wright, Hitchcock and I all have something in common.  Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is our favorite film for them.  She was for the first time top-billed as a young girl in a small, central California town who adores her Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) who comes to stay with her and her family for a while.  But the film turns disturbing when she comes to suspect he's a serial murderer of widows.

With Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt

The entire cast is letter-perfect but I always found it to be Wright's best performance despite the deserved accolades for her first three films.  One impressive thing is the growth of the character... every actor hopes for that and doesn't always find it.  Her journey from innocence to horrified to tough is such a treat.  And she accomplished so much with silence, with a look.  That she wasn't nominated for an Oscar for this one sounds pushy, I know, but come on!  It may be due to the film not being popular when it was first released.  It took a few years to earn glory.

No glory was earned for Casanova Brown (1944), a clumsy attempt to reunite Wright and Cooper.  Once in a blue moon Cooper could have a funny moment but I didn't sense that she had a funny bone in her body in anything I saw. 

In 1944 Busch completed writing Duel in the Sun and he saw nobody but his wife in the central role of the wild Pearl Chavez.  Boy, it must have been love because what else could have prompted Busch to come up with such a ludicrous idea?  Still, I would have said the same about Jennifer Jones, who did get the part, and she dazzled me.

March, Loy, Wright, Andrews in Best Years

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is probably the best movie in her collection.  I am not referring to her fine acting in it but the film itself.  If you missed my earlier piece on it, here's your chance to catch up.  This would be her second film to win Oscar's best picture award, Mrs. Miniver being the first.

Wright's first western arrived with Pursued (1947), helmed by a great director of the genre, Raoul Walsh, and written by her husband.  It is considered by many to be the first noir western.  Robert Mitchum's participation helps that notion as does James Wong Howe's brilliant black and white photography.  It's loaded with psychological overtones about a man who suffers damage from a vague childhood and his subsequent, suspicious life with a neighboring family whose daughter (Wright) he loves.

Frankly, I thought Wright made an excellent western heroine (though not the lusty Pearl Chavez).  Her general demeanor just seemed so right for those hardscrabble times.  She was tough, real tough, a change I liked in her acting.  Too bad she didn't do more westerns.  One she did do in 1952 with Cornel Wilde, California Conquest, was not only bad but one of her worst films.  Still, I liked her look in it.  

An outlaw in California Conquest

Enchantment (1948), the This Is Us of its day, concerned generations of a family with a story that moves from the past to the present and back again, involving several family members.  Wright and her real-life friend, David Niven, are the stars and Evelyn Keyes and Farley Granger the younger set.  People seemed to either not like it or quite like it and I fall in with the latter group.  The story is captivating, it's beautifully filmed and it's a great cast.

And then the bottom fell out.  Goldwyn planned every aspect of his films with meticulous care and his ideas were specific and were to be carried out by others as he dictated.  To publicize Enchantment, he wanted his four stars to travel to various spots around the country.  This was something Wright never wanted to do.  She was an actress not a goodwill ambassador.  But she apparently had planned to do a little something when she became ill.

She told Goldwyn she would be staying home and getting well.  He blew up and obviously didn't believe her when he said he would send a studio physician to her home to examine her.  She defiantly said  that her own doctor advised her to stay home and she would not be seeing the studio doctor.  And just as defiantly Goldwyn fired her.  He said a few things, she said a few things.  She said she didn't like being owned.  He said he didn't like employees who didn't honor their contracts. Then each said them in public so all of Hollywood and across the country knew what was being laid down.  Most everyone sided with Goldwyn.  Stubborn as she was, in later times she came to feel she'd made a number of mistakes regarding this incident.

And Wright's movie actress life changed forever more. From now on she would not have the prestige movies to star in.  Most of her future films were just so-so and/or her roles were small and supporting.  The pay was far less as were the opportunities.  Luckily she had television to turn to... live television, no less, some of which was prestigious.  And she returned time and again to the stage.

Why did this happen to an actress with her track record?  One has to assume it was the ruckus with Goldwyn.  When actors renege on their contracts and/or appear ungrateful, it's usually the Hollywood death knell.  But something else occurs to me.  

She was not a glamour girl or seductive and she knew it.  Hollywood makeup and hair wizards, of course, could have done something to help in this regard.  But not only was she not a natural glamour girl, she wasn't interested in becoming one. She also made in clear from Day One that she wouldn't do cheesecake photos and was unlikely to get too involved in plugging her pictures.  And wasn't she rather dour?  I thought she was one of the saddest actresses I'd ever seen.

My favorite photo of her

Wyler, directing her in three films, said she exuded integrity and sincerity.  Others mused that she was sweet, unaffected, the girl-nextdoor type.  That's all quite fine but it didn't spell allure for me.    I never disliked her as an actress but I also never said I feel like seeing a Teresa Wright movie.  Anything playing? 

I did see a quiet toughness in her work, which I liked, but again, it was dour I mostly noticed.  Even when she was pretending to be happy and light, I saw that melancholia and I always suspected there was something about her early life that must have brought this about.  People who cling so desperately to privacy usually have something to hide.  And how many bios did I have to read to know that many actors used the escape of playing other people to forget who they really were?

She was born in Harlem in 1918.   Her parents married before her mother's divorce was final.  Her father was an insurance salesman who traveled around several states and her mother was a prostitute who traveled around the neighborhood.  She brought home tricks and there were times when the little girl was in the same bed with them.  And then one day her mother simply vanished, never to be seen again.  How's that for promoting dour and not showing much humor?  Obviously she never wanted to talk about it so she internalized it and it just lay deep inside her.  Through strength and perseverance, she grew up to be a lady.  Who's wondering why she couldn't stand cheesecake photos that promoted sex and in her opinion, cheap.  No doubt as to why being a mother herself was so important.

In the first grade she got a small part in a play and until the day she graduated 12 years later, there were few years she wasn't in a play.  She took piano lessons, read poems at public events, did impersonations of famous people and family and friends and learned to sew her own costumes at a young age.  She knew she wanted to be a stage actress which was heartily reinforced after seeing Helen Hayes, already her heroine, in a play.

She made it to Broadway, at first as understudy to Dorothy McGuire (who became a lifelong friend) and Martha Scott.  By the time she was 21 she had the ingenue role in Life with Father which she did for a year and a half in 624 performances.  And you'll recall this is where she met up with Sam Goldwyn.

Being fired by him and seeing her career slip away wasn't all that was going on.  She knew her handsome writer-husband was cheating on her.  He also didn't want her to work which he capped off by moving the family to a ranch in Northern California.  They would be divorced in 1952.  Her son remained with his father and Wright's daughter moved with her back to the Los Angeles area.

She became Marlon Brando's first leading lady in The Men (1950), the story of a paraplegic attempting to adjust to his circumstances and civilian life and marriage.  She felt she was hoodwinked into accepting the role, she barely got to know Brando and she felt the entire experience was a trial.  Brando and Wright... not a team I would ever have guessed. 

She joined her pal Joe Cotten again for a little thriller about a bank VP who pilfers a large amount of cash and is going to flee the country.  The Steel Trap (1952) had its moments but Wright, a blonde for this one for some reason, was little more than the wife.

She was the wife of Spencer Tracy and mother of Jean Simmons in

The Actress (1953), based on actress Ruth Gordon's early life.  I got through the dreariness of the project and found it appealing.  Wright and Simmons became life-long friends and would become mother and daughter in another film 16 years later.

Track of the Cat (1954) is the first Teresa Wright movie I ever saw and frankly it should have been something else.   She played a hardened, embittered spinster in a western about three brothers out to track a panther that is killing livestock.  I was real okay with Mitchum and Tab Hunter as two of the brothers, but Wright was mega-gloomy in her few scenes and the fact that audiences never lay one eye on the big cat was most disappointing.

In 1957 she and Cameron Mitchell play adorable Jon (Lassie) Provost's parents in Escapade in Japan (1957).  The boy gets separated from them and the story concerns his life with a Japanese family and his parents' search for him.  I thought it was charming but it did little business.  The Restless Years (1958) got a jump start on Sandra Dee's brief career with Wright as her sexually-repressed mother in a story of small-town morals and values.

In 1959 she married writer Robert Anderson.  He had written the autobiographical Tea and Sympathy before they met and would go on to write The Nun's Story, The Sand Pebbles and I Never Sang for My Father.  While they were dating, he also had affairs with Ingrid Bergman, Deborah Kerr, Simmons and Audrey Hepburn.  Wright also had to compete with the memory of his first wife.  He put Wright down publicly too much which didn't help her always fragile self-esteem and her ever-present struggle with rejection.  They divorced in 1978.

In 1965 she and Anderson moved to Connecticut where she would live for the rest of her life.  She would also spend most of the rest of her time lighting up stages around the country, usually in highly-lauded plays, and doing television.

The Happy Ending (1969) was the first film Wright had made in 11 years and wouldn't have done it had she not received a call from Simmons.  It was directed by Simmons's husband, Richard Brooks, and was rather biographical, detailing her harrowing involvement with alcohol.  The actress got a well-deserved Oscar nomination but said she needed her pal Wright involved to help her through the tough film.

In 1980 she joined Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer for the romantic piece, Somewhere in Time.  Her part was very small.  The film was enormously popular with lovers and Reeve fans and the location filming at the Grand Hotel on Michigan's Mackinac Island is stunning.

While still knocking 'em dead on the stage and television, she managed a small but vital role as Diane Keaton's grandmother in The Good Mother (1988) and was lauded for her fine acting.  Then in 1997 she had a rare comedy role as the widow Birdsong alongside Matt Damon's in The Rainmaker (1997), her final film.

Teresa Wright died in her Bridgeport home in 2005 from a heart attack at age 86.

Prior to her appearing in The Pride of the Yankees she had paid scant attention to baseball but after making the film, she became a diehard Yankees fan.  In 1998, at age 80, she made her first trip to Yankees Stadium to toss the ceremonial pitch.  Upon her death when the roll call was read of former Yankees who had died, Wright's name was read among the ballplayers and members of the Yankee family.  How touching is that?

Next posting:

A largely unknown comedy from

one of my favorite actresses

(mentioned in this posting)