Edna Best

Edna Clara Best (3 March 1900 – 18 September 1974) was a British actress born in Hove, Sussex, England, who built a career spanning stage, film, and television across several decades. She received her education in Brighton and trained in dramatic acting under Kate Rorke, the first professor of Drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Outside the theatre, Best also distinguished herself as the lady swimming champion of Sussex, winning a silver swimming cup in that competition.

Best made her stage debut at the Grand Theatre in Southampton in 1917, appearing in Charley's Aunt, and went on to establish herself as a recognized presence on the London stage before transitioning to film work beginning in 1921. Her Broadway career extended from 1925 to 1954 and included productions such as Quadrille, Mademoiselle Colombe, Jane, There's Always Juliet, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, and These Charming People, among others. She appeared alongside her then-husband Herbert Marshall in John Van Druten's 1931 play There's Always Juliet, which ran on both Broadway and in London.

Her film work encompassed both British and Hollywood productions. For Gainsborough Pictures, she starred opposite Marshall in the melodramas Michael and Mary and The Faithful Heart. She is perhaps most widely remembered for her role as the mother in Alfred Hitchcock's 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much. Her subsequent screen credits included Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939), Swiss Family Robinson (1940), The Late George Apley (1947), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), and The Iron Curtain (1948).

Best's television work began as early as 1938, when she appeared in a live production of Love from a Stranger, adapted by Frank Vosper from Agatha Christie's short story "Philomel Cottage." In 1957, she received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the Ford Star Jubilee adaptation of This Happy Breed. In 1960, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with a motion pictures star placed at 6124 Hollywood Boulevard.

Best was married three times and divorced twice. Her first marriage, to William Seymour Beard, ended in divorce in 1928, with the London Divorce Court awarding Beard custody of the couple's twin sons, James and John. She subsequently married actor Herbert Marshall on 28 November 1928; that marriage lasted until 1940 and produced a daughter, actress Sarah Marshall. Best married talent agent Nat Wolff on 7 February 1940 in Las Vegas, with the same judge who granted her divorce from Marshall performing the marriage ceremony shortly afterward. Best suffered a stroke in 1959 and died in Geneva, Switzerland in 1974 at the age of 74.