Marjorie Eaton

Marjorie Lee Eaton (February 5, 1901 – April 21, 1986) was an American character actress, painter, and photographer born in Oakland, California and raised in Palo Alto. She attended the Katherine Delmar Burke School, graduating in 1920, and subsequently pursued formal art training at The Art Institute of Boston, in Florence, Italy, and in Paris.

Despite training in the Stanislavsky method of acting, Eaton initially pursued careers in architecture and commercial art. From 1928 to 1932 she was part of the art colony in Taos, New Mexico, and from 1933 to 1935 she lived and worked in Mexico, collaborating with Diego Rivera on locations in northern Mexico. Her painting from this period earned her a reputation for modernist figural work characterized by bold lines, strong color, and Cubist influence. Her canvas "Taos Ceremony" was included in a December 2008 retrospective exhibition titled "Colorado and the Old West," which featured nineteenth- and twentieth-century artworks connected to Colorado and New Mexico. Finding it impossible to sustain a living as a woman artist, she abandoned painting and turned to acting.

Eaton's personal and artistic life intersected with several prominent figures of the era. She took painting classes with Hans Hofmann at the Art Students League of New York and afterward shared a studio with sculptor Louise Nevelson, whom she had met at the League. The two shared a residence directly below Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and all four became close friends. In 1925, her stepmother, Edith Cox Eaton, purchased the historic Palo Alto house of Juana Briones de Miranda, which functioned as a celebrated art colony and family home until its demolition in 2011. Artist Lucretia Van Horn and Louise Nevelson both spent significant periods there. In 1939, Eaton designed and built her own adobe near the Briones house, working closely with architect Gregory Ain.

Her screen career began with an uncredited appearance in Anna and the King of Siam in 1946. Subsequent film roles included Hester Forstye in That Forsyte Woman (1949), Madame Romanovitch in Night Tide (1961), the lead role of Hetty March in the science fiction film Monstrosity (1963), Miss Persimmon in Mary Poppins (1964), and Sister Ursula in The Trouble with Angels (1966). In 1979, at the age of 78, Eaton filmed a scene for The Empire Strikes Back portraying Emperor Palpatine under heavy makeup. She was one of two actresses to shoot the scene in that makeup, the other being Elaine Baker, wife of makeup artist Rick Baker. The completed character featured superimposed chimpanzee eyes and was voiced by Clive Revill. Neither actress received on-screen credit, and sources disagree about which of the two appears in the final film. When the film was released on DVD in 2004, the scene was reshot with Ian McDiarmid, who portrayed Emperor Palpatine in all other films in which the character appears.

On Broadway, Eaton appeared in One Eye Closed in 1954 and In the Summer House in 1953. In March 1986, she suffered a stroke and died on April 21, 1986, at her childhood home in Palo Alto, survived by two nieces and a nephew by marriage. Following memorial services, her cremated remains were divided between the Palo Alto property where she grew up and Taos, New Mexico, where she had spent years as a working artist.