Kathryn Card

Kathryn Card was an American actress born Catherine Rose Sheehan on October 4, 1892, in Butte, Montana, one of four children of Richard Sheehan and Esther McCurdy, both of Irish origin. In 1910, she married Erwin Foster Card, and the couple had a daughter, Ada Ester Card, born in 1912, who died in 1943. Card built a career spanning Broadway, radio, film, and television before her death on March 1, 1964, from a heart attack at her home in Costa Mesa, California, at the age of 71. She is interred at Harbor Lawn-Mount Olive Memorial Park in Costa Mesa.

Card's stage career included a Broadway appearance in 1930 in the play Room of Dreams. Her work in radio followed later in the decade, with roles on several NBC programs. From May 30 to September 23, 1938, she played three separate characters — Carrie, Sue, and Bess — on Just Neighbors. Beginning on December 25, 1939, she portrayed Grandma Barton on The Bartons, a role she held until September 11, 1942. During that same period she was also part of the cast of Uncle Walter's Doghouse, which ran on NBC from 1939 to 1942. In 1943 she joined the daytime serial Helpmate on NBC, and her radio credits additionally included Story of Mary Marlin, Girl Alone, and The Woman in White.

Card's screen career began in 1945 when she played Louise in Kiss and Tell, a Corliss Archer film starring Shirley Temple. The following year she appeared in Undercurrent alongside Robert Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Robert Mitchum. In 1949 she had an uncredited role in The Reckless Moment, playing a loan processor opposite Joan Bennett. Her 1954 appearance in Warner Bros.' remake of A Star Is Born cast her as a landlady at the Oleander Arms Hotel in a scene with James Mason, but the footage was cut shortly after the film's release. When film historian Ronald Haver restored the picture in 1983, no surviving footage or stills of Card's scene could be located, so Haver used a stand-in actress to create manufactured stills to accompany the recovered audio of her dialogue with Mason. Card also appeared in the 1958 Warner Bros. film Home Before Dark, and her final screen credit was the 1964 MGM musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Card made her television debut on February 8, 1954, in the I Love Lucy episode "Fan Magazine Interview," in which she played a character named Minnie Finch. She was subsequently cast in the recurring role of Mrs. McGillicuddy, Lucy's mother, a character who frequently irritated Ricky Ricardo by calling him "Mickey" and confusing him with bandleader Xavier Cugat. Card portrayed Mrs. McGillicuddy in five episodes during the 1954–1955 season and three more during the 1955–1956 season, when the Ricardos and the Mertzes traveled to Europe. The character did not appear after the couples relocated to Connecticut. Card returned to the role one final time in the 1959 episode of The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show titled "The Ricardos Go to Japan," which also featured guest star Robert Cummings.

Beyond I Love Lucy, Card guest-starred on a number of other television programs. She appeared in two 1959 episodes of Perry Mason, playing Hannah Barton in "The Case of the Deadly Toy" and Harriet Snow in "The Case of the Watery Witness." Her other television credits included The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Make Room for Daddy, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Rawhide, and an episode of Wagon Train in which she played a grandmother of thirteen.