Sylvia Sidney

Sylvia Sidney, born Sophia Kosow on August 8, 1910, in the Bronx, New York, was an American actress whose work in stage, screen, and television extended across more than seven decades. Her father, Victor Kosow, was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who worked as a clothing salesman, and her mother, Rebecca, was a Romanian Jew. Her parents divorced by 1915, after which she was adopted by her stepfather, Sigmund Sidney, a dentist, and the family took his surname. Her mother subsequently renamed herself Beatrice Sidney and became a dressmaker. Sidney took up acting at age 15 as a means of overcoming shyness, training at the Theater Guild's School for Acting, where critics praised her early performances. Sidney died on July 1, 1999, from esophageal cancer at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan at age 88.

Sidney's Broadway career began in June 1926, when she appeared at age 15 in the three-act fantasy Prunella as a graduate of the Theatre Guild School. Later that year, she made her formal Broadway debut at age 16 playing the blonde ingenue Anita in Jean Bart's The Squall, which opened on November 11, 1926, at the 48th Street Theatre; she joined the cast in December 1926, taking over the role from Dorothy Stickney. In February 1927, she departed that production to star in Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymer's Crime, where the press touted her as the youngest leading lady on Broadway, though that claim was not necessarily verified. Her stage work continued across five decades, encompassing productions including The Gentle People, A Very Special Baby, Enter Laughing, The Fourposter, Me Jack, You Jill, and Barefoot in the Park, before concluding with the Tennessee Williams play Vieux Carré in 1977.

Sidney's film career gained momentum in 1926 when she made her first screen appearance as an extra in D.W. Griffith's The Sorrows of Satan. Her role as a wrongly convicted woman in City Streets launched her to wider stardom in 1931, and she followed that with An American Tragedy and Street Scene, both also released that year. She appeared in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, an early three-strip Technicolor film, and worked with prominent directors including Alfred Hitchcock on Sabotage and Fritz Lang on Fury, both in 1936. At the time of Sabotage, she was among the highest-paid actresses in the industry, earning $10,000 per week and a total of $80,000 for that production. You Only Live Once and Dead End followed in 1937. Throughout the Depression era, she frequently portrayed working-class heroines or the girlfriends and sisters of gangsters. Her career slowed during the 1940s, and in 1949 exhibitors voted her box-office poison. She received critical praise, however, for her portrayal of Fantine in the 1952 film Les Misérables, even as the film itself fell short of studio expectations.

Sidney's later screen work brought renewed recognition. In 1973, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. She played Miss Coral in the film version of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and took the role of Aunt Marion in Damien: Omen II. She appeared as Aidan Quinn's grandmother in the television production of An Early Frost, for which she won a Golden Globe Award. In Tim Burton's 1988 film Beetlejuice, she played Juno, a caseworker in the afterlife, earning a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her final screen role came in Burton's Mars Attacks!, in which she played an elderly woman whose records by Slim Whitman prove instrumental in repelling an alien invasion.

Her television work was equally extensive. She appeared three times on Playhouse 90, including a May 16, 1957, appearance as Lulu Morgan, the mother of singer Helen Morgan, in The Helen Morgan Story. She worked on series including Route 66, The Defenders, and My Three Sons during the 1960s, and later appeared on Starsky and Hutch, The Love Boat, Magnum P.I., Diagnosis Murder, and Trapper John, M.D. She played the imperious owner of a radio station in the pilot episode of WKRP in Cincinnati and appeared in an episode of Thirtysomething as Melissa's grandmother, who wished to leave her the family dress business. She also appeared at the start of each episode of the short-lived late-1990s revival of Fantasy Island as a travel clerk.

Sidney was married three times. Her first marriage, to publisher Bennett Cerf in 1935, ended in divorce six months later in 1936 on grounds of incompatibility. She married actor and acting teacher Luther Adler in 1938; together they had one child, a son named Jacob, born around 1940, who died of ALS in 1985. Sidney and Adler divorced in 1946, with Sidney stating that Adler considered himself too temperamental for married life. Both parents were granted custody of Jacob, each having him for six months of the year. On March 5, 1947, she married radio producer Carlton Alsop; attorney Melvin Belli assisted her in the subsequent divorce suit, brought on grounds of extreme cruelty, and the divorce was finalized on July 24, 1951, with Sidney waiving alimony and seeking only restoration of her maiden name. Beyond her performing career, she published two books on needlepoint and raised and showed pug dogs. In 1982, she received the George Eastman Award from George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.