Zeffie Tilbury

Zeffie Agnes Lydia Tilbury (20 November 1863 – 24 July 1950) was an English-American actress who worked on both the London stage and Broadway in New York City, and later built an extensive career in film. Born in Paddington, Middlesex, England, she was the only child of variety performer Lydia Thompson and John Christian Tilbury, a riding-master whose grandfather had founded the Tilbury family firm of London coachbuilders and created the Tilbury carriage. Her father died at the age of 26 in 1864 after sustaining a fractured skull and severe internal injuries when his horse, All Fours, failed to clear a fence during the South Essex Steeplechase at Brentwood, Essex, rolled on him, and caused injuries that proved fatal the following day.

Tilbury made her stage debut in 1881 in Nine Points of the Law at the Theatre Royal in Brighton, England. Her Broadway career spanned from 1904 to 1925 and included appearances in the plays Just Beyond, The Red Falcon, The Way Things Happen, The Breaking Point, and My Aunt From Ypsilanti, among other productions. In 1899, while nursing her mother Lydia Thompson through an illness, Tilbury suffered severe burns when a spirit lamp burst.

She appeared in over 70 films, with her earliest surviving silent film being the 1921 Valentino and Nazimova production of Camille. Tilbury became particularly associated with roles as wise or villainous older women, including a distinguished lady gambler in The Single Standard opposite Greta Garbo, Grandma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, and Grandma Lester in Tobacco Road. In 1936 she appeared in the Hal Roach Our Gang comedy Second Childhood, playing an elderly woman befriended by Spanky and his companions on her birthday. That same year she portrayed the Gypsy Queen in the Laurel and Hardy film The Bohemian Girl.

Tilbury was married twice. Her first marriage was to Arthur Frederick Lewis in West Derby in June 1887. She later married L. E. Woodthorpe in 1904; he died on 8 April 1915. Tilbury died in Los Angeles, California in 1950 at the age of 86.