Frieda Inescort

Frieda Inescort, born Frieda Wrightman on 29 June 1901 in Edinburgh, Scotland, was an actress whose career spanned Broadway, Hollywood film, and television across more than three decades. The daughter of journalist John "Jock" Wrightman and actress Elaine Inescourt, whose own heritage was German and Polish, Inescort adopted her mother's surname as her professional name. Her parents, who had married in 1896, separated while she was still a young child. Before pursuing acting full time, Inescort worked in London as a journalist and as secretary to Lord Astor, and after relocating to the United States she served as associate editor of The Exporter's Encyclopedia.

Her Broadway debut came in 1922 with The Truth About Blayds, presented at the Booth Theatre. Over the following years she accumulated an extensive list of stage credits, among them You and I (1923), The Woman on the Jury (1923), Windows (1923), The Fake (1924), Ariadne (1925), Love in a Mist (1926), Mozart (1926), and Trelawny of the Wells (1927). One of her most notable stage achievements came in 1925 when she originated the role of Sorel Bliss in Noël Coward's Hay Fever on Broadway. In John Galsworthy's 1927 Broadway production Escape, she played the shingled lady, a run that continued into 1928. Her later Broadway work included Napi (1931), Company's Coming (1931), Springtime for Henry (1931–1932), When Ladies Meet (1933), False Dreams, Farewell (1934), Lady Jane (1934), Soldier's Wife (1944–1945), The Mermaids Singing (1945–1946), and You Never Can Tell (1948), her final Broadway appearance.

Inescort made her film debut in The Dark Angel in 1935, having moved to Hollywood. Her subsequent screen credits included Mary of Scotland (1936), Give Me Your Heart (1936), Beauty for the Asking (1939), and The Letter (1940). In the 1940 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, she appeared alongside Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in the role of the conniving Caroline Bingley. She took a leading role in Call It a Day (1937), a production that also featured Olivia de Havilland, Bonita Granville, Roland Young, and Ian Hunter. Additional film appearances included The Trial of Mary Dugan (1941), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), A Place in the Sun (1951), and Foxfire (1955), in which she played Mrs. Lawrence opposite Jeff Chandler and Jane Russell. On television, she appeared in a 1961 episode of Perry Mason, playing Hope Quentin in the season five premiere, "The Case of the Jealous Journalist."

Inescort had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1932. In 1926 she married writer Ben Ray Redman, who worked for the Saturday Review and contributed to translations of European classics into English. On 2 August 1961, after the couple had dined out together, Redman returned home ahead of her and telephoned to tell her he had taken twelve sedative pills; he died before paramedics could reach him, a suicide at the age of 65. Following her husband's death, Inescort's multiple sclerosis progressed more rapidly, and by the mid-1960s she required a wheelchair. Her estranged mother, Elaine Inescourt, died in Brighton, England, on 7 July 1964, at the age of 87. Inescort devoted considerable effort to raising funds for multiple sclerosis research, and was frequently seen in the Hollywood area collecting donations from a wheelchair outside supermarkets and in shopping malls. She died on 26 February 1976 at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California, from multiple sclerosis, at the age of 74.