Josephine Hutchinson

Josephine Hutchinson (October 12, 1903 – June 4, 1998) was an American actress born in Seattle, Washington, whose career spanned theater, film, and television across more than five decades. Her mother, Leona Roberts, was herself an actress, recognized for playing Mrs. Meade in Gone with the Wind. Through her mother's professional connections, Hutchinson made her film debut at age 13 in the 1917 Mary Pickford vehicle The Little Princess. She later studied at the Cornish School in Seattle, earning a diploma in 1929, before relocating to New York City to pursue a stage career.

Hutchinson's Broadway debut came in The Bird Cage in 1925, and she remained active on Broadway through 1933. Her stage credits during this period were extensive, encompassing A Man's Man (1925), Twelfth Night (1926), The Unchastened Woman (1926), Inheritors (1927), The Cradle Song (1927), The Good Hope (1927), 2 x 2 = 5 (1927), Improvisations in June (1928), The First Stone (1928), Hedda Gabler (1928), Peter Pan (1928), multiple productions of The Cherry Orchard (1928, 1929, and 1933), The Seagull (1929), The Living Corpse (1929), Mademoiselle Bourrat (1929), The Women Have Their Way (1930), two productions of Alison's House (1930 and 1931), Camille (1931), Dear Jane (1932), and Alice in Wonderland (1932). In 1926, Hutchinson became acquainted with actress Eva Le Gallienne and joined Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre company, which accounted for many of these credits. By 1927 the two women were engaged in a romantic relationship. Hutchinson had married stage director Robert W. Bell in Washington, D.C., on August 12, 1924; the couple separated in 1928 and divorced in 1930. The press of the era referred to Hutchinson as Le Gallienne's "shadow," a term then used to denote a lesbian relationship. Both women continued their careers following the public attention the relationship attracted.

In 1934, Hutchinson moved to Hollywood under contract with Warner Bros., making her sound-era film debut in Happiness Ahead opposite Dick Powell. She appeared on the cover of Film Weekly on August 23, 1935, and had a role in The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1936. At Universal, she took on the role of Elsa von Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein (1939), appearing alongside Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi. She played the sister of the antagonist Vandamm, using the alias "Mrs. Townsend," in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), and also appeared in Love Is Better Than Ever opposite Elizabeth Taylor. In the 1957 western Gun for a Coward, she was cast as the mother of Fred MacMurray's character, despite being only five years MacMurray's senior.

Hutchinson's television work was equally prolific. She made four guest appearances on Perry Mason between 1958 and 1962, playing a different character in each episode: Leona Walsh in "The Case of the Screaming Woman" (1958), murderer Miriam Baker in "The Case of the Spanish Cross" (1959), Miss Sarah McKay in "The Case of the Barefaced Witness" (1961), and Amelia Corning in "The Case of the Mystified Miner" (1962). She appeared in a 1959 episode of Gunsmoke, a 1960 episode of The Rifleman, and a 1961 episode of The Real McCoys. In 1962, she guest-starred on both Rawhide and The Twilight Zone, the latter in the episode "I Sing the Body Electric." She appeared in a 1963 episode of GE True and a 1967 episode featuring the character of Reverend Mother Sister Ellen. In 1970 she played Martha Randolph in a Bonanza episode, and in 1971 she appeared in the television film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story as Mamie Baldwin, one of two sisters who produced moonshine whiskey. In 1974 she played Amy Hearn in an episode of Little House on the Prairie.

Hutchinson married three times in total. Her second marriage, to James F. Townsend, took place in 1935 and later ended in divorce. Her third and final marriage was to actor Staats Cotsworth in 1972; Cotsworth died in 1979. Hutchinson died on June 4, 1998, at the Florence Nightingale Nursing Home in Manhattan at the age of 94. Her ashes were scattered near her niece's home in Springfield, Oregon.