Jody Gilbert

Jody Gilbert (March 18, 1916 – February 3, 1979) was an American actress born in Fort Worth, Texas. She trained in voice and acting at Columbia University and graduated from the Pasadena Playhouse. Her stage work included Broadway appearances between 1938 and 1946, with credits in Who's Who? and If the Shoe Fits.

Gilbert's screen career began with a series of uncredited film roles before she drew attention with a supporting part in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), in which she played a sarcastic diner waitress opposite W.C. Fields in a verbal sparring scene. Over the following decade she accumulated dozens of appearances in film, radio, and television, frequently cast in humorous supporting roles, though most of those credits remained uncredited.

Her career was derailed by the Hollywood blacklist. In November 1952, a writer named Harvey Narcisenfield testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Gilbert was a Communist. Called before the Committee herself in May 1953, she invoked the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination throughout her testimony. Her responses to counsel Frank Tavenner included jokes about her weight and a reference to the Fifth Commandment alongside the Fifth Amendment, framing the latter as a defense of her forefathers' legacy and a challenge to the Committee's legitimacy. As a consequence, Gilbert was barred from television work until 1965, and her next film role did not come until 1969, when she appeared in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Her final screen work consisted of small parts in episodes of Sanford and Son, Police Woman, Starsky and Hutch, and Switch.

Gilbert died on February 3, 1979, at the age of 62, from complications following an automobile accident she had sustained the previous autumn.