Judith Evelyn

Judith Evelyn, born Evelyn Morris on March 20, 1909, in Seneca, South Dakota, was an American-born Canadian stage and film actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1941 to 1959. Raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she grew up with a stepfather who worked as a professional stage actor. She studied at the University of Manitoba, where she participated actively in drama, and later refined her craft at Hart House, University of Toronto.

Before reaching Broadway, Evelyn accumulated experience across several performance contexts. In 1932 she toured as part of a Canadian Chautauqua unit, and the following year she performed with the Pasadena Community Playhouse in California. She also worked in radio for both the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Her Broadway debut came in December 1941 with Angel Street, in which she played Bella Manningham, a role she sustained through December 1944. The Drama League recognized her performance in that production with its Distinguished Performance Award in 1942, an honor given each season to a single performer selected from more than sixty nominees drawn from Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. She returned to Broadway in The Rich Full Life, which ran from November 9 to December 1, 1945, followed by a revival of Craig's Wife, which played from February 12 to April 12, 1947. Her most prominent Broadway role came in The Shrike, where she played Ann Downs during the production's run from January 15 to May 31, 1952. She also appeared in The Ivy Green. All four of her principal Broadway productions were subsequently adapted into films, though Evelyn did not appear in any of those screen versions.

Her film work nonetheless produced several notable performances. She portrayed Miss Lonelyhearts, a lonely alcoholic, in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, and in 1956 she played Nancy Lynnton in George Stevens' Giant. She appeared briefly as Queen Mother Taia in Michael Curtiz's The Egyptian and was featured alongside Vincent Price in The Tingler in 1959, which marked her final film role. On television, she played Clara Keller in the 1958 Behind Closed Doors episode "Man in the Moon" and appeared in two episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo. Her last credited screen role was as Mrs. Bullock in the 1962 episode "Cry a Little for Mary Too" of The Eleventh Hour.

Evelyn's life included a remarkable wartime episode: on September 3, 1939, she and her then-fiancé, Canadian radio producer Andrew Allan, survived the sinking of the SS Athenia, the first British passenger liner torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine during World War II. The two never married. Allan's elderly father, who had been in the same lifeboat, died when that vessel was accidentally struck and sunk by a rescue ship.

Evelyn died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on May 7, 1967, at the age of 58. She is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.