Marjorie Gateson

Marjorie Augusta Gateson (January 17, 1891 – April 17, 1977) was an American actress whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across more than five decades. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Augusta and Daniel Gateson, she grew up in a household with clerical connections on her mother's side — her maternal grandfather and brother were both clergymen. Her father's occupation is a matter of some dispute; while certain sources identify him as a clergyman as well, author Axel Nissen, in Mothers, Mammies and Old Maids: Twenty-Five Character Actresses of Golden Age Hollywood, identifies him as a contractor. Gateson attended the Packer Collegiate Institute and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, where her mother taught elocution. She credited her mother with possessing an unfulfilled desire for the stage and with instilling in her both diction and poise.

Her musical training at the Brooklyn Conservatory helped her secure a place in the chorus of The Pink Lady before she reached Broadway. Gateson made her Broadway debut on November 4, 1912, at the age of 21, appearing in the chorus of the musical The Dove of Peace, which closed after only 12 performances. Her Broadway career, which would continue until 1954, gained more substantial footing with The Little Cafe, which ran from November 12, 1913, to March 14, 1914, and in which she played multiple characters. In the 1917 Broadway musical Have a Heart, she performed two songs. Throughout the following decade she worked primarily in musical comedies, concluding that phase of her career with Oh, Ernest! in 1927, while also taking on roles in non-musical comedies and dramas. Her Broadway credits include the musical Show Boat, the musical Sweethearts, and the plays Cafe, Security, and As Good as New, the last of which she appeared in during 1930.

Following As Good as New, Gateson redirected her focus toward Hollywood, making her film debut in 1931 after more than twenty years on the stage. She built a screen career playing secondary character roles, typically portraying women of wealth and social standing who were frequently haughty and aloof. Among her most recognized film appearances is her role as the society matron who works to obstruct Mae West's character's social ambitions in the 1935 film Goin' to Town, and a more sympathetic socialite whom Harold Lloyd's character teaches to box in the 1936 film The Milky Way. Her largest film role came in The King's Vacation (1933), in which she played the female lead opposite George Arliss. Additional film credits include Bureau of Missing Persons (1933), Private Number (1936), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), International Lady (1941), and Meet the Stewarts (1942). Her film work diminished in the late 1940s as she transitioned into television.

Gateson made her television debut in 1949, appearing that year in the soap opera One Man's Family. In 1954, at the age of 63, she took on the recurring role of matriarch Grace Harris Tyrell on the daytime soap opera The Secret Storm, a part she continued to play until 1968. During the 1950s she also appeared in episodes of Hallmark Hall of Fame, Robert Montgomery Presents, and United States Steel Hour. Gateson never married, stating that her sole ambition had been to be an actress and that she had not considered pursuing both a career and marriage simultaneously. A stroke eventually ended her acting career, and she died on April 17, 1977, in Manhattan, of pneumonia, at the age of 86.