Miriam Hopkins

Ellen Miriam Hopkins was born on October 18, 1902, in Savannah, Georgia, to Homer Hopkins and Ellen Cutler, and was raised in Bainbridge, near the Alabama border. Her maternal great-grandfather served as the fourth mayor of Bainbridge and helped establish St. John's Episcopal Church there, where Hopkins sang in the choir as a child. She had an older sister, Ruby, born in 1900. In 1909, the family briefly relocated to Mexico. Following her parents' separation, Hopkins moved with her mother to Syracuse, New York, to be near her paternal uncle, Thomas Cramer Hopkins, who headed the geology department at Syracuse University. She attended Goddard Seminary in Plainfield, Vermont, and Syracuse University.

Hopkins began her professional life as a chorus girl in New York City around age twenty and acted regularly on stage throughout the 1920s. Her Broadway career spanned from 1921 to 1957 and included productions such as Anatol, His Majesty's Car, and the 1926 stage adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. In 1930, she starred on Broadway in Ritzy, written by Sidney Toler. She took the lead role in Jezebel, a 1933 play by Owen Davis, and later appeared in The Perfect Marriage and Message for Margaret. When Jezebel was adapted into a 1938 film, Hopkins was disappointed that Bette Davis was cast in the role she had originated on stage, a slight that contributed to a well-publicized feud between the two actresses that the motion picture studios amplified for promotional purposes.

Hopkins signed with Paramount Pictures in 1930 and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose. Her first major screen success came in Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 horror drama Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which she played Ivy Pearson, a character entangled with Jekyll and Hyde, earning strong critical notices including praise from New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall. The following year she appeared in Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, playing a charming and jealous pickpocket. During the pre-Code Hollywood era of the early 1930s, Hopkins appeared in a series of films that addressed subject matter later prohibited under strict enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code. The Story of Temple Drake included a rape scene, and Design for Living, which co-starred Fredric March and Gary Cooper, depicted a ménage à trois. Design for Living ranked among the ten highest-grossing films of 1933. She also appeared in The Smiling Lieutenant during this period.

Her career continued to build through the mid-1930s with The Richest Girl in the World in 1934 and Barbary Coast in 1935. For the 1935 historical drama Becky Sharp, Hopkins received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first performer nominated for a role in a color film. She also appeared in These Three in 1936, the first of four films she made with director William Wyler, and co-starred with Bette Davis in The Old Maid in 1939. Hopkins was among the early actresses considered for the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night, a part she declined and that ultimately went to Claudette Colbert. She also auditioned for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind and was the only candidate who was a native Georgian, though the role was given to British actress Vivien Leigh.

Hopkins and Davis co-starred again in Old Acquaintance in 1943, a production marked by tension between them. Hopkins believed Davis was having an affair with her then-husband, director Anatole Litvak, and Davis later recalled having enjoyed a scene in which she shook Hopkins's character. Press photographs staged the two actresses in a boxing ring with director Vincent Sherman positioned between them. Davis, in later interviews, described Hopkins as a talented but jealous actress. Following Old Acquaintance, Hopkins did not appear in films again until The Heiress in 1949, in which she played the lead character's aunt and received a Golden Globe nomination. In Mitchell Leisen's 1951 comedy The Mating Season, she played the mother of Gene Tierney's character. She returned to work with Wyler in The Children's Hour in 1961, a remake of These Three, this time playing the aunt to Shirley MacLaine, who took the role Hopkins had originated. Her later film appearances included the role of Robert Redford's mother in The Chase in 1966 and a part in the horror film Savage Intruder in 1970. Hopkins co-starred with Joel McCrea in five films across her career.

Hopkins also became an early figure in television drama, performing in teleplays from the late 1940s through the late 1960s. Her television credits included The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre in 1949, Pulitzer Prize Playhouse in 1951, Lux Video Theatre between 1951 and 1955, and episodes of The Investigators in 1961, The Outer Limits in 1964, and The Flying Nun in 1969. She holds two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for film at 1709 Vine Street and one for television at 1716 Vine Street.

Hopkins married four times. Her first husband was actor Brandon Peters, followed by aviator and screenwriter Austin Parker, then director Anatole Litvak, and finally war correspondent Raymond B. Brock. Between her second and third marriages, she had a relationship with Random House publisher Bennett Cerf. In 1932, she adopted a son, Michael T. Hopkins, born March 29, 1932, who pursued a career in the U.S. Air Force and died on October 5, 2010. Hopkins was known for hosting gatherings that drew guests from literary, musical, and artistic circles, and was a committed Democrat who supported the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. She died of a heart attack in New York City on October 9, 1972, nine days before her seventieth birthday, and is buried in Oak City Cemetery in Bainbridge, Georgia.