Marjorie Rambeau

Marjorie Burnet Rambeau, born July 15, 1889, in San Francisco, California, was an American actress whose career spanned stage and screen across several decades. She died on July 6, 1970, at her home in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 80, and was buried at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City.

Rambeau's early life was marked by considerable movement and unconventional circumstances. After her parents separated during her childhood, she and her mother traveled to Nome, Alaska, where the young Rambeau performed in saloons and music halls. Her mother required her to dress as a boy while performing in those venues to discourage unwanted attention from adult men. She began appearing on stage at age 12 and accumulated theatrical experience as a traveling performer before establishing herself in more formal theatrical settings.

Her Broadway career began with a tryout of Willard Mack's play Kick In on March 10, 1913, and she went on to appear on Broadway from 1914 to 1926. During those years she starred in Eyes of Youth and appeared in additional productions including Just Life, The Night Duel, and Antonia. She also starred in the 1915 comedy Sadie Love. In 1921, Dorothy Parker wrote a verse tribute to Rambeau's capacity for emotional performance on stage.

Before transitioning fully to sound films, Rambeau appeared in silent pictures with the Mutual company, including Mary Moreland and The Greater Woman, both from 1917. Her first sound film was Her Man, released in 1930. As talkies became the industry standard, she moved into character roles, appearing in Min and Bill (1930) alongside Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery, The Secret Six (1931) with Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, Laughing Sinners (1931) with Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, Grand Canary (1934) with Warner Baxter and Madge Evans, and Palooka (1934) with Jimmy Durante. She received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Primrose Path (1940), which starred Ginger Rogers and Joel McCrea. That same year she appeared in 20 Mule Team with second billing under Wallace Beery, played an Italian mother in East of the River alongside John Garfield and Brenda Marshall, and replaced the late Marie Dressler in Tugboat Annie Sails Again, a film that also featured Alan Hale Sr., Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan, and Chill Wills.

Her subsequent film work included second billing in Tobacco Road (1941), Broadway (1942) with George Raft and Pat O'Brien, and In Old Oklahoma (1943) with John Wayne, Martha Scott, and Gabby Hayes. In 1953 she earned her second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Torch Song. She appeared in A Man Called Peter (1955) with Richard Todd and Jean Peters, and received the 1955 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performances in that film and in The View from Pompey's Head. In 1957 she appeared in Man of a Thousand Faces, a biographical film about Lon Chaney Sr. in which James Cagney portrayed Chaney. Rambeau holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6336 Hollywood Blvd.

Rambeau was married three times and had no children. Her first marriage, in 1913, was to Canadian writer, actor, and director Willard Mack; they divorced in 1917. She subsequently married actor Hugh Dillman McGaughey in 1919, a union that ended in divorce in 1923. Her third and final marriage was to Francis Asbury Gudger in 1931. The couple divided their time between Asheville, North Carolina and Sebring, Florida, and remained together until Gudger's death in 1967.

In 1945, a truck collided with the automobile carrying Rambeau and her sister. The car struck a tree, killing her sister. Rambeau herself suffered multiple injuries, including crushed legs and a possible skull fracture. Physicians told her she might not walk again, and she used a wheelchair for a year before recovering and returning to acting.

Rambeau was a descendant of Peter Gunnarsson Rambo, a colonial-era immigrant who traveled from Sweden to New Sweden in the 1600s and served as a justice of the Governor's Council. She is also connected to one of the origin stories of the Reuben sandwich; author and theatre critic Bernard Sobel attributed the sandwich's invention to a visit Rambeau made to Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen in New York City.