Maude Simmons

Maude Simmons (October 2, 1893 – September 30, 1951) was an American actress and singer whose career spanned stage, screen, and recordings over more than two decades. Born in Augusta, Georgia, she received a Roland Hayes scholarship to Howard University, where she studied under Lulu Vere Childers before relocating to New York City to pursue a professional career.

Simmons's Broadway career extended from 1932 to 1950 and encompassed a range of musical and dramatic productions. Her first major stage credit came with the original Broadway production of Show Boat, which opened on May 19, 1932, and in which she performed as part of the ensemble. She remained with the production for four years. In 1937, she contributed to Virginia, singing original Negro spirituals composed by Arthur Schwartz as a member of Will Vodery's choir. That same year she joined Sing Out the News, which ran through 1938, portraying the fortune teller and guest. In 1940, she appeared alongside Paul Robeson in John Henry, playing his mother. Three years later, she took on the role of Mother Kanda in a 1943 revival of Run, Little Chillun.

Beginning in 1947, Simmons was part of the original Broadway cast of Finian's Rainbow. For the production's original cast recording, she performed the song "Necessity" alongside Dolores Martin and the Lyn Murray Singers, with an orchestra conducted by Ray Charles. She subsequently toured with the production, appearing at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1949 before continuing on to San Francisco. She took a leave of absence from the tour after being cast in the film No Way Out. Her final Broadway credit was The Wisteria Trees, which she joined in 1950.

Simmons also built a parallel career in film. She appeared as Lady in Junction 88, a musical produced by Alfred N. Sack and directed by George P. Quigley, with songs by J. Augustus Smith. Her first prominent film role came in the 1948 production Portrait of Jennie, starring Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Lillian Gish, and Ethel Barrymore. Producer David O. Selznick, filming in New York, recruited Simmons along with her Finian's Rainbow castmates David Wayne and Albert Sharpe to work on both projects simultaneously. Selznick cast Simmons over Hattie McDaniel in the role of Clara Morgan, described as a kindly theatre dresser who had known Jennie as a child. Her final screen appearance was in the 1950 film No Way Out, adapted from a novel by Lesser Samuels, in which she played the mother of Dr. Luther Brooks — a character portrayed by Sidney Poitier in his film debut. Over the course of her career, Simmons had played the mother of characters portrayed by both Robeson and Poitier.

Simmons died in New York City on September 30, 1951, two days before what would have been her fifty-eighth birthday.