Hope Emerson

Hope Emerson (October 29, 1897 – April 24, 1960) was an American actress, vaudevillian, nightclub performer, and strongwoman born in Hawarden, Iowa, to John Alvin Emerson, who worked as a boot and shoe salesman before becoming town marshal and city assessor, and Josephine "Josie" Washburn Emerson, a vaudeville performer who also engaged in church activities and social work. Emerson had a brother and a sister, both of whom died shortly after birth. She never married.

Emerson's earliest exposure to performance came at age three, when she participated in her mother's vaudeville act. She later recalled being promised a debut appearance but refusing to go onstage unless she was paid, forcing the stage manager to send out for a doll as a bribe. As a child, she played piano at her uncle's opera house to accompany road shows, and by age ten she was promoting sheet music by performing on piano at a ten-cent store in Des Moines, Iowa, where her family relocated during her high school years. She completed her secondary education at West High School in Des Moines in 1916. After graduation, she performed stock music in Omaha, Nebraska, Sioux City, Iowa, and Denver, Colorado, and built an early reputation as an actress, singer, and comedian through nightclub and stage work. She also spent part of her early career playing piano in bars and clubs and performing blues music.

Emerson made her Broadway debut in Lysistrata in 1930, a credit verified in her stage record. According to the Hawarden Gazette, she was performing in vaudeville in Baltimore when her manager summoned her to New York. She initially declined the role of Lampito in the classical Greek drama, but producer Norman Bel Geddes saw her and insisted she accept. Her performance was an immediate success. Despite that reception, Emerson was not initially drawn to stage work on that scale. She nonetheless appeared in the short-lived 1932 Broadway musical Smiling Faces, playing the secretary to Dorothy Stone's character in both comedic and musical scenes. Her Broadway career continued through 1948 and included additional productions such as Swing Your Lady, The New Moon, and The Cup of Trembling.

Beyond the stage, Emerson worked extensively in radio, film, and television. She was the voice of Elsie the Cow in radio commercials for Borden Milk and appeared on 1940s radio programs including The Adventures of Topper and Happy Island. Her feature film debut was an uncredited role in Rascals in 1938. Among her most recognized film performances were her portrayal of a circus strongwoman in Adam's Rib (1949), a nefarious masseuse-conspirator in Cry of the City (1948), and a mail-order bride in Westward the Women (1952). During the filming of Cry of the City, Emerson was uncomfortable performing a scene in which she had to choke actor Richard Conte. Her other film credits included Thieves' Highway, Rosanna McCoy, House of Strangers, and Dancing in the Dark. In the 1951 film Double Crossbones, she played the pirate Anne Bonny, and during production she accidentally pinned actor Donald O'Connor against a ship's rail, resulting in a cracked rib.

Her most celebrated screen role was the sadistic prison matron Evelyn Harper in Caged (1950), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The book Female Masculinity noted that her work in that film became the standard model for women's prison films. On television, Emerson was a panelist on the ABC game show Quizzing the News from 1948 to 1949 and played the hillbilly host Maw Shufflebottom on the CBS variety program Kobb's Corner in 1948. She was also featured on an episode of This Is Your Life, in which family members, friends, and colleagues recounted her life before a live studio audience. From 1958 to 1961 she held a recurring role as Mother on the detective series Peter Gunn, a performance that earned her an Emmy nomination. After the show's first season she departed to take a starring role on the CBS sitcom The Dennis O'Keefe Show, which ran from 1959 to 1960.

Emerson stood six feet two inches tall and weighed approximately 230 pounds. In a 1936 interview with the New York World-Telegram, she addressed questions about her size directly, stating that she had experienced far more laughter than hardship because of it and that she would not trade her life at six foot three for a smaller stature. She was most frequently cast in villainous roles across comedy and drama throughout her career.

Emerson suffered from a prolonged liver ailment in her final years. She was well enough to drive from Phoenix to Hollywood on her own on April 17, 1960, but was admitted to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital on April 22 and died two days later, on April 24, 1960. She is buried in Hawarden alongside her parents.