Margalo Gillmore

Margalo Gillmore (31 May 1897 – 30 June 1986) was an English-born American stage actress whose Broadway career spanned more than four decades, from 1917 to 1961. Born Margaret Lorraine Gillmore in London, England, she came from a family with deep roots in the theatrical profession. Her father, Frank Gillmore, was a founder and former president of Actors' Equity, and her mother, Laura MacGillivray, was also an actress. Her sister Ruth Gillmore pursued the same profession, and her great-aunt was the British actor-manager Sarah Thorne, while her great-uncles Thomas Thorne and George Thorne were likewise actors. A fourth-generation actress on her father's side, Gillmore trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Her stage career began with The Scrap of Paper in 1917, and she first drew significant critical attention two years later in the 1919 play The Famous Mrs. Fair, in which she appeared alongside Henry Miller and Blanche Bates. In 1921 she took on the role of the tubercular patient Eileen Carmody in Eugene O'Neill's The Straw, and in 1922 she portrayed Consuelo in the United States premiere of Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped. She appeared regularly with the Theatre Guild throughout her career, and during the summer of 1933 she performed in the stock company at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado.

Gillmore originated two notable roles in landmark American plays. In 1936 she created the role of Mary Haines in Clare Boothe Luce's The Women, and in 1945 she originated the role of Kay Thorndyke in the Pulitzer Prize-winning State of the Union. She also starred in No Time for Comedy and appeared in Kind Sir, among other productions. During World War II, she joined the traveling production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street, which was headed by Katharine Cornell and directed by Cornell's husband Guthrie McClintic. The production entertained troops in Italy, France, and England, reaching within a few miles of the front in the Netherlands, and the cast visited military hospitals daily. She played Mrs. Darling in both the Broadway production and the televised version of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin, and she was a member of the Algonquin Round Table. Her Broadway career concluded with Noël Coward's musical Sail Away in 1961.

Gillmore's screen work began early, with an uncredited appearance as an extra for Vitagraph Studios in 1913 and a short film, The Home Girl, in 1928. Her sound-film debut came in 1932 with Wayward, after which she did not return to the screen until the 1950s, appearing in Perfect Strangers (1950), Cause for Alarm! (1951), Woman's World (1954), High Society (1956), and Upstairs and Downstairs (1959). She also worked in television, primarily during the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1964 Gillmore published her autobiography, Four Flights Up, through Houghton Mifflin. She died of cancer on 30 June 1986 in her New York City apartment at the age of 89.