What a Character: Gladys Cooper

The What a Character! blogathon is in progress now, hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken and Freckled and Paula's Cinema Club. Click here for more information and links to participating blogs. My entry for the event follows...

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Young Gladys

She was a beautiful child, wide-eyed and wistful, who began modeling at age six; during World War I she was the favorite 'picture postcard' pin-up of British troops; she went on tour in a musical at age 17 and by the time she neared 40 she was a star of the London stage. In 1940, at age 51, she began working as a character actress in Hollywood and would, over the course of the next three decades, earn three Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Her name was Gladys Cooper and she is best remembered for her performance as Bette Davis's cruel, steel-willed mother, Mrs. Vale, in Now, Voyager...

William Wyler's "The Letter" (1940) - Starting with a Bang

 

Of director William Wyler, Bette Davis once declared, “It was he who helped me realize my full potential as an actress.” Of the actress, Wyler would recall, “She was a director’s dream.” Together they made three very popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood films. The pair first collaborated on the 1938 Warner Bros. production of Jezebel. For her performance Bette Davis won the second of her two Best Actress Academy Awards. Davis was sorely disappointed that Wyler had not received a Best Director nod for his work on the film and would later credit her Oscar-winning portrayal to him, “It was all Wyler,” she wrote.