Dame May WhittyFilmography

Born:: June 19, 1865 in Liverpool, England
Occupation:: Actor
Biography:: The daughter of a Liverpool newspaper editor, British actress Dame May Whitty first stepped on a London stage in 1882. Shortly afterward she was engaged by the St. James Theatre, serving mostly in an understudy capacity. From there, Whitty went into a travelling stock company, finally attaining...Read More

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The Sign of the Ram

Actors: Susan Peters, Alexander Knox, Phyllis Thaxter, Peggy Ann Garner, Ron Randell

Synopsis: Susan Peters, a fine actress of the 1940s whose career was curtailed by an accident which left her wheelchair-bound, utilizes her handicap to her advantage in Sign of the Ram. Peters plays an invalid wife and mother who exercises dictatorial control over all around her. Peters' loved ones are Read More

1948
The Return of October

Actors: Glenn Ford, Terry Moore, Albert Sharpe, Dame May Whitty, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: In this whimsical fantasy, a young girl suddenly discovers that her horse is really a reincarnation of her beloved uncle who upon his death bed was heard to say that if could ever come back, he would want to be a race horse that wins the Kentucky Derby. When the girl's relatives learn of her Read More

1948
If Winter Comes

Actors: John Abbott, Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Hugh French, Binnie Barnes, Halliwell Hobbes, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: In this drama, set in England, an honorable textbook writer in a village becomes friends with a pregnant girl. The friendship costs him his marriage. Later, the girl dies, and the authorities wonder if it is murder. A coroner's inquest is held, and for a while the writer's social and professional Read More

1947
This Time for Keeps

Actors: Esther Williams, Johnny Johnston, Lauritz Melchior, Jimmy Durante, Xavier Cugat

Synopsis: In this aqueous musical comedy, an opera singer brings his son to Michigan's Mackinac Island where the son falls in love with the star of the "aquacaper." It is difficult to woo her as she is constantly surrounded by her piano-playing bodyguard and her ever-present grandmother. It's musical and Read More

1947
Green Dolphin Street

Actors: Patrick Aherne, Lana Turner, Van Heflin, Linda Christian, Gladys Cooper, Donna Reed, Bernie Gozier, Richard Hart, Edmund Gwenn

Synopsis: The 161-minute costume drama Green Dolphin Street is set in 1840, on an island off the coast of Newfoundland, (or at least, the MGM backlot facsimile of same). Boiled down to essentials, it's the story of two sisters, blonde Marguerite Patourel (Donna Reed) and brunette
Marianne Patourel Read More

1947
My Name Is Julia Ross

Actors: Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Anita Bolster

Synopsis: Cult figure and B-movie auteur Joseph H. Lewis directed this taut exercise in film noir. Julia Ross (Nina Foch), an American receiving medical treatment in London, finds herself short on money and takes a job as secretary for Mrs. Hughes (May Whitty), the matriarch of a large estate. Julie meets Read More

1945
Devotion

Actors: Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Olivia de Havilland, Sydney Greenstreet, Arthur Kennedy, Nancy Coleman

Synopsis: Roundly blasted upon its release because of the extreme liberties it takes with the truth, Devotion is better as cinema than as history. Not that it's great cinema, mind you, mainly because the filmmakers opted to replace historical fact with either tired dramatic clichés or wild improbabilities. Read More

1945
The White Cliffs of Dover

Actors: Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Frank Morgan, Ralph Morgan, Roddy McDowall, Van Johnson

Synopsis: The White Cliffs of Dover is one of those overlong MGM wartime films that everyone seems to have seen a part of, but no one can remember the film as a sum total. Based on a poem by Alice Duer Miller, the story chronicles the trials and tribulations of one courageous woman through two world wars. Read More

1944
Gaslight

Actors: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: Ingrid Bergman won her first of three Oscars for this suspense thriller, crafted with surprising tautness by normally genteel "women's picture" director George Cukor. Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a late 19th century English singer studying music in Italy. However, Paula abandons her studies Read More

1944
Forever and a Day

Actors: Brian Aherne, Merle Oberon, Gladys Cooper, Ida Lupino, C. Aubrey Smith, Claude Rains, Robert Cummings, Anna Neagle, Roland Young

Synopsis: The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old Read More

3/26/43
The Constant Nymph

Actors: Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Alexis Smith, Charles Coburn, Peter Lorre, Brenda Marshall

Synopsis: Warner Bros.' The Constant Nymph was the third filmization of Margaret Dean's 1924 novel; the first two were filmed in Britain in 1928 and 1933 by producer Michael Balcon. The plot was substantially the same in all three versions: A self-centered European musician (Charles Boyer) is idolized by a Read More

1943
Crash Dive

Actors: Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, James Gleason, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: Tyrone Power made his last screen appearance before a three-year stretch in the Marines in this World War II drama. Lt. Ward Stewart (Tyrone Power) has served with distinction as the commander of a PT boat, so his uncle, Adm. Bob Stewart (Minor Watson), gives him a new and more challenging Read More

1943
Slightly Dangerous

Actors: Lana Turner, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: This airy bit of MGM fluff stars Lana Turner as small-town soda clerk Peggy Evans. After telling off the self-important new drugstore manager Bob Stuart (Robert Young), Peggy, convinced that there's no future for her in her hometown, fakes her suicide and heads for the big city. After a series of Read More

1943
Flesh and Fantasy

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Charles Boyer, Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Field, Robert Cummings

Synopsis: In the tradition of his earlier Carnival in Flanders and Tales of Manhattan, director Julien Duvivier's Flesh and Fantasy is a "pormanteau" film, consisting of several short stories. Linking the three tales unfolded herein are clubmen Doakes (Robert Benchley) and Davis (David Hoffman), who carry Read More

1943
Stage Door Canteen

Actors: Cheryl Walker, William Terry, Marjorie Riordan, Lon McCallister, Margaret Early

Synopsis: This star-studded musical drama was largely financed by Theatre Guild, with all proceeds going to various wartime fundraising concerns. Most of the story takes place at the Stage Door Canteen, a Manhattan-based home away from home for soldiers, sailors and marines (the real-life Canteen on 44th Read More

1943
Madame Curie

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Walker, Van Johnson, Albert Basserman, Margaret O'Brien, Henry Travers

Synopsis: Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon team for the third time in this fact-based biography directed by Mervyn Leroy, based on Eve Curie's book about her mother. In early 1900s Paris, poor Polish student Marie (Greer Garson) gets a chance to study magnetism with kindly professor Jean Perot (Albert Basserman Read More

1943
Lassie Come Home

Actors: Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Elsa Lanchester, Nigel Bruce

Synopsis: Female dogs tend to shed while in heat; this is why all the collies who've played doggy heroine Lassie in the movies have actually been well-disguised males. A magnificent animal named Pal was the screen's first Lassie in 1943's Lassie Come Home. Set in Yorkshire during the first World War, the Read More

1943
Thunder Birds

Actors: Gene Tierney, Preston S. Foster, John Sutton, Jack Holt, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: On a secluded base in Arizona, veteran World War One pilot Steve Britt (Preston Foster) trains flyers to fight in World War Two. One of his trainees, Englishman Peter Stackhouse (John Sutton), competes with Britt for the affections of Kay Saunders (Gene Tierney), the daughter of a local rancher. Read More

1942
Mrs. Miniver

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: As Academy Award-winning films go, Mrs. Miniver has not weathered the years all that well. This prettified, idealized view of the upper-class British home front during World War II sometimes seems over-calculated and contrived when seen today. In particular, Greer Garson's Oscar-winning Read More

1942
One Night in Lisbon

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Madeleine Carroll, Patricia Morison, Billie Burke, John Loder

Synopsis: One Night in Lisbon is one of several pre-1942 films which used the screwball-comedy form to comment upon the raging war in Europe. While transporting American warplanes to the beleagured RAF, Texas flyboy Dwight Houston (Fred MacMurray) is caught in a London air raid. Scurrying to a shelter Read More

1941
Suspicion

Actors: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: Wealthy, sheltered Joan Fontaine is swept off her feet by charming ne'er-do-well Cary Grant. Though warned that Grant is little more than a fortune-hunter, Fontaine marries him anyway. She remains loyal to her irresponsible husband as he plows his way from one disreputable business scheme to Read More

1941
A Bill of Divorcement

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Adolphe Menjou, Fay Bainter, Herbert Marshall, Dame May Whitty

Synopsis: A creaky remake of the 1932 film of the same name, Bill of Divorcement tells of the effect an emotionally disturbed father's homecoming has on this household. Adolphe Menjou, a longtime mental patient, is released after 20 years' confinement and returns home. Only vaguely aware of the time lapse, Menjou Read More

1940
Return to Yesterday

Actors: Clive Brook, Anna Lee, Dame May Whitty, Hartley Power, Milton Rosmer

Synopsis: A delightful film that begs to be rediscovered, Return to Yesterday was adapted from Goodness, How Sad, a play by Robert Morley. Clive Brook is ideally cast as Robert Maine, a famous movie star who longs for the simpler days before he became the idol of millions-and before he was trapped into a Read More

1940
Raffles

Actors: David Niven, Olivia de Havilland, Dame May Whitty, Dudley Digges, Douglas Walton

Synopsis: The fourth cinematic version of the novel Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, this romantic caper is a virtual remake of the 1930 version. David Niven stars as A.J. Raffles, a famed cricket player of English society's upper crust. Secretly, however, Raffles is a skilled cat burglar Read More

1939
The Lady Vanishes

Actors: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty, Cecil Parker

Synopsis: The Lady Vanishes, Alfred Hitchcock's comedy-thriller, came at the end of his British period; this film's success brought Hitchcock to the attention of Hollywood. He would complete only one other British production, Jamaica Inn, before crossing the Atlantic to working for David O. Selznick on Rebecca Read More

1938
I Met My Love Again

Actors: Joan Bennett, Henry Fonda, Alan Marshal, Louise Platt

Synopsis: An undying love is chronicled in this "women's picture." The sweeping tale begins in a quiet New England village during the late '20s. There an introverted young man and a restless young woman (Henry Fonda and Joan Bennett) are happily in love until a dashing, sophisticated fellow (Alan Marshall) Read More

1938
The Thirteenth Chair

Actors: Dame May Whitty, Madge Evans, Elissa Landi, Thomas Beck

Synopsis: The 1937 Thirteenth Chair was the third film version of the 1919 stage melodrama by Bayard Veiller. Dame Mae Whitty dominates the proceedings as Mme. La Grange, a phony mystic who is on hand when a man is killed during one of her seances. The killing takes place in the home of a provincial British Read More

1937
Night Must Fall

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Dame May Whitty, Alan Marshal, Merle Tottenham

Synopsis: Emlyn Williams' theatrical horror piece Night Must Fall was filmed by MGM without the usual studio-imposed happy ending. Robert Montgomery stars as Danny, a wickedly charming Irish bellhop who wins the confidence of an elderly invalid (Dame May Whitty). The old woman's niece (Rosalind Russell) is Read More

1937
Conquest

Actors: Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen, Alan Marshal, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: Conquest was released in England as Marie Waleska, the name of the real-life historical personage portrayed by Greta Garbo. The film begins in 1807, when Marie, a Polish countess, is dispatched by her country to meet with Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (Charles Boyer). Marie has been encouraged to Read More

1937
Enoch Arden

Actors: Alfred Paget

Synopsis: This adaptation of the Tennyson poem is graced with the presence of silent luminary Lillian Gish as Annie Lee. Three children -- Philip Ray, Annie Lee and an orphan, Enoch Arden, grow up together, and when they reach adulthood (with handsome Wallace Reid as Philip and a miscast Alfred Paget as Read More

1915