Constance Cummings

Constance Cummings CBE (May 15, 1910 – November 23, 2005) was an American-British actress whose career on stage and screen extended across more than five decades. Born in Seattle, Washington, she was the younger of two children and the only daughter of Kate Logan Halverstadt, a concert soprano, and Dallas Vernon Halverstadt, a lawyer. Her older brother, Dallas Jr., was born in 1906. Her parents separated when she was ten, and she never again saw her father, who died of apoplexy in 1927. She attended St. Nicholas Girls' School in Seattle.

Cummings received her first acting opportunity from the San Diego Stock Company, which cast her in a walk-on role as a prostitute in a 1926 production of Seventh Heaven. Two years later, at eighteen, she made her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in the musical Treasure Girl (1928). Her Broadway career would continue for more than five decades, encompassing productions that included the play This Man's Town and the play Accent on Youth, among others. While working on Broadway, she was discovered by producer Samuel Goldwyn, who brought her to Hollywood in 1931. Over the following three years she appeared in more than twenty films, among them Movie Crazy (1932), in which she starred opposite Harold Lloyd, and American Madness (1932), directed by Frank Capra.

On July 3, 1933, Cummings married British playwright and screenwriter Benn Levy, and subsequently relocated to the United Kingdom, where she continued working in film and on stage. Levy wrote and directed the film The Jealous God (1939) for her, and he served in the British Parliament as the Labour MP for Eton and Slough from 1945 to 1950. The couple had a son and a daughter, and remained married until Levy's death in 1973. Among her notable stage work in Britain, Cummings played Mary Tyrone opposite Laurence Olivier in the Royal National Theatre's production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, a performance for which she received an Evening Standard Best Actress Award, and later recreated the role for television. She also took over the role of Martha in the first London run of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The film Blithe Spirit, adapted from the Noël Coward play, was among her more successful screen appearances with American audiences.

Cummings's most celebrated Broadway achievement came with Wings (1978–1979), written by Arthur Kopit, in which she starred as Emily Stilson, a former aviator struggling to recover from a stroke. The role earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, both in 1979, as well as an Obie Award and a nomination for an Olivier Award. In 1982, she received an additional Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Play for her work in The Chalk Garden.

On January 1, 1974, Cummings was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her contributions to the British entertainment industry. She served as a committee member of both the Royal Court Theatre and the Arts Council. Her star in the Motion Pictures section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard, was dedicated on February 8, 1960. Cummings resided in Britain for many decades and died on November 23, 2005, in Wardington, Oxfordshire, England, at the age of 95.