Mildred Natwick

Mildred Natwick (June 19, 1905 – October 25, 1994) was an American actress born in Baltimore, Maryland, whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across more than five decades. She received nominations for an Academy Award and two Tony Awards, and won a Primetime Emmy Award.

Natwick was the daughter of Mildred Marion (née Dawes) and Joseph Natwick, a Wisconsin-born sawmill baron and dairy farmer who owned Dunloggin Dairy Farm in Ellicott City, Maryland. The community of Dunloggin took its name from the fact that Natwick's father was "done logging" the white oaks cleared from the land. Her grandfather, Ole Natwick, arrived in Wisconsin in 1847 as one of the earliest Norwegian immigrants to the United States, and her first cousin was animator and cartoonist Grim Natwick. She attended the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore before graduating from Bennett College.

Her performing career began at age 21 with the Vagabonds, a non-professional theatre group in Baltimore. She subsequently joined the University Players on Cape Cod. Natwick made her Broadway debut in 1932 as Mrs. Noble in Carry Nation, Frank McGrath's play about temperance crusader Carrie Nation, and continued performing on Broadway through 1979. During the 1930s she appeared in a number of stage productions, frequently collaborating with actor-director-playwright Joshua Logan, and played the role of Prossy in Katharine Cornell's production of Candida. Her Broadway credits include Our Town, The Good Soup, Critic's Choice, Barefoot in the Park, and the musical 70, Girls, 70, among other productions.

Natwick earned her first Tony Award nomination in 1957 for Best Featured Actress in a Play for The Waltz of the Toreadors, and her second in 1972 for Best Actress in a Musical for 70, Girls, 70. Her film work included a debut in John Ford's The Long Voyage Home, in which she played a Cockney slattern, followed by the role of the landlady in The Enchanted Cottage (1945). She became associated with several Ford productions, appearing in 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952). She also played Miss Ivy Gravely in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955) and a sorceress in The Court Jester (1956). Her performance as the mother of Jane Fonda's character in the 1967 film adaptation of Barefoot in the Park earned Natwick her sole Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress. Her final film appearance came at age 83 in the historical drama Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

On television, Natwick starred opposite Helen Hayes in the 1971 ABC Movie of the Week Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate, in which the two played amateur sleuths. The following year they reteamed as mystery-writing and mystery-solving sisters, a pairing that led to the 1973–74 NBC series The Snoop Sisters, part of The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. For her work in that series, Natwick won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. She also appeared in a notable television role in The House Without a Christmas Tree (1972), alongside Jason Robards and Lisa Lucas, a program that generated three sequels: The Thanksgiving Treasure, The Easter Promise, and Addie and the King of Hearts. Her television guest appearances included McMillan & Wife, Family, Alice, The Love Boat, Hawaii Five-O, The Bob Newhart Show, and Murder, She Wrote. In 1981, Natwick and Hayes became the first members of the Board of Advisors to the Riverside Shakespeare Company.

Natwick never married or had children and lived for most of her life in a duplex on Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was a devout Christian Scientist. She died of cancer on October 25, 1994, at her Manhattan home at the age of 89, and is interred at Lorraine Park Cemetery in Baltimore.