Margaret Hamilton Movies
A kindergarten teacher in her native Cleveland, Margaret Hamilton began her acting career there in community theatre and with the prestigious Cleveland Playhouse. In 1933, Hamilton was invited to repeat her stage role of the sarcastic daughter-in-law in the Broadway play Another Language for the MGM film version. Though only in her early '30s, the gloriously unpretty Hamilton subsequently played dozens of busybodies, gossips, old maids, and housekeepers in films bearing such titles as Hat, Coat and Glove (1934), Way Down East (1935) and These Three (1936). She proved an excellent foil for such comedians as W.C. Fields (in 1940's My Little Chickadee) and Harold Lloyd (in 1946's The Sin of Harold Diddlebock). Her most famous film assignment was the dual role of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in the imperishable 1939 gem The Wizard of Oz -- a role which nearly cost her her life when her green copper makeup caught fire during one of her "disappearance" scenes. She played several smaller but no less impressive roles at 20th Century-Fox, including the first-scene plot motivator in People Will Talk (1951) and Carrie Nation in Wabash Avenue (1950). She alternated her film work with stage assignments in the 1950s and 1960s, frequently returning to her home base at the Cleveland Playhouse. Achieving "icon" status in the 1970s by virtue of The Wizard of Oz, Hamilton sometimes found herself being cast for "camp" effect (e.g. Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud), but also enjoyed some of her best-ever parts, including the role of professorial occult expert in the 1972 TV movie The Night Strangler. Despite her menacing demeanor, Hamilton was a gentle, soft-spoken woman; she was especially fond of children, and showed up regularly on such PBS programs as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. In the 1970s, Margaret Hamilton added another sharply etched portrayal to her gallery of characters as general-store proprietor Cora on a popular series of Maxwell House coffee commercials -- one of which ran during a telecast of The Wizard of Oz! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1934
John Barrymore wisely turned down this contrived courtroom melodrama that instead trapped poor Ricardo Cortez. He plays Robert Mitchell, an attorney who runs into his estranged wife Dorothea (Barbara Robbins) and her lover, artist Jerry Hutchins (John Beal), in a department store, the three of them purchasing, respectively, a hat, a coat, and a pair of gloves. All these accoutrements later turn up at Jerry's murder trial, the struggling artist having been accused of killing a former girlfriend (Dorothy Burgess). Dorothea persuades Robert to represent her former lover and the ace attorney not only wins an acquittal but also the love of his no longer estranged wife. Hat, Coat and Glove marked the screen debut of Broadway ingénue Barbara Robbins, whose only feature film it would prove to be. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ricardo Cortez, John Beal, (more)
- 1933
Given the usual pedestal upon which mothers were placed by MGM head Louis Mayer, it's all the more amazing that Mayer gave the go-ahead for Another Language. Louise Closser Hale plays a domineering matriarch who controls the lives of her grown, married sons, using a fabricated heart condition to keep them in line. Helen Hayes marries youngest son Robert Montgomery, only to sit by in mute horror as Mother exerts her authority over her timorous offspring at a weekly family get-together. At the end, only Hayes and Montgomery's nephew John Beal have the courage to break the apron strings, but not without the formidable opposition of Monster Mom. Based on the Broadway play by Rose Franken, Another Language represented the screen debut of Margaret Hamilton, recreating the supporting role she'd played on stage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helen Hayes, Robert Montgomery, (more)
