Margaret McWade

Margaret McWade, born Margaret May Fish on September 3, 1871, in Chicago, Illinois, was an American actress whose career spanned stage, vaudeville, and film across more than six decades. The eldest of three daughters, she began performing in vaudeville in the early 1890s under the stage name Margaret May, a name she continued to use professionally until late 1919. On September 4, 1897, she married actor Edward McWade, with whom she had shared the stage in Boston and New York City as early as March 1892, including a production of County Fair at the Whitney Opera House.

McWade's stage career extended well beyond vaudeville. She appeared on Broadway between 1911 and 1916, with credits including Just a Woman and The Price. Her touring work was equally extensive, and she performed with various theatrical companies across the United States throughout her career, including a 1925 appearance with the William Fox Players in Bar Harbor, Maine, in The Painted Lady. Her husband Edward McWade wrote several productions in which she appeared, among them Winchester, staged at the American Theater in New York City in April 1901, a play drawing on a Civil War event, and The Land of Mystery, a romantic drama produced in 1902 by the New York Theater Company.

Among her most enduring stage work was a comedic double act she developed with actress Margaret Seddon, whom she had met in the late 1890s while both were performing in vaudeville. The two created a stage act known as the Pixilated Sisters, which became a notable success for the pair. Decades later, in 1935, producers approached both women to reprise those characters for the 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, directed by Frank Capra and starring Gary Cooper. In the film, McWade and Seddon play sisters who testify at an insanity hearing on behalf of Cooper's character. The roles generated renewed attention for both actresses, and they were subsequently billed in promotional materials as the "beloved Pixilated Sisters." The two continued to appear together in comedic film roles through the late 1930s and into the 1940s, frequently cast as spinster sisters, including in One Man's Bonus.

McWade made her screen debut in the 1914 silent film The Drama of Heyville, directed by Ashley Miller and starring Marc McDermott, while under contract to the Edison Film Company. She was later contracted by the Vitagraph Film Company and went on to appear in a total of 59 films between 1914 and 1954. A significant early film credit was the 1922 production The Blot, produced and directed by Lois Weber, in which McWade played Mrs. Griggs. Throughout her film career she was frequently cast as maternal or spinster figures, including mothers, aunts, older sisters, and grandmothers.

Margaret McWade died on April 1, 1956, in Los Angeles, two years after her final film appearance, at the age of 83. She was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago, her birthplace.