Teresa Wright
Actress Teresa Wright died of a heart attack at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut on March 6. She was 86.
During her 66-year career, the talented actress appeared in 28 feature films, dozens of television series and made-for-TV movies, and numerous stage productions.
On the big screen, Teresa Wright was the deceptively demure heroine who turns out to possess a fierce determination to do the right thing in films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Fred Zinnemann’s The Men, Sam Wood’s The Pride of the Yankees, and William Wyler’s The Little Foxes and The Best Years of Our Lives.
During her heyday, Wright played opposite some of the biggest stars of the 1940s and 1950s, including Bette Davis, Greer Garson, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, Joseph Cotten, Ray Milland, Fredric March, David Niven, Myrna Loy, and Marlon Brando.
Additionally, Wright remains the only performer to have had her first three roles nominated for an Academy Award. In only her second year in films, she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Greer Garson’s daughter-in-law in the 1942 war melodrama Mrs. Miniver.
Born Muriel Teresa Wright to an insurance agent and his wife in New York City on October 27, 1918, she grew up in Maplewood, N.J., often under the care of relatives. While at Columbia High School, Muriel displayed an interest in acting — she had reportedly become stagestruck after watching Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina on Broadway. Shortly after graduating in 1938, Muriel went to hone her acting skills at the prestigious Wharf Theater in Provincetown, Mass.
Following a stint in summer theater, Muriel was hired as an understudy to Dorothy McGuire, who had replaced Hollywood-bound Martha Scott in Thornton Wilder’s Broadway hit Our Town. Since there was already a stage performer registered as Muriel Wright, the aspiring actress began using her middle name, Teresa, as her first name.
After touring with Our Town, Teresa Wright was cast as the ingénue in one of Broadway’s biggest hits ever, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse’s production of Life with Father. (Her role was played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1947 film version). Impressed with Wright’s performance and reviews, producer Samuel Goldwyn brought the 22-year-old actress to Hollywood to play another ingénue, the delicate but strong-willed Alexandra Giddens in William Wyler’s masterful 1941 film adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s dysfunctional family drama The Little Foxes.
Wyler elicited a remarkably effective performance from the film novice, later referring to Wright as the most promising actress he had directed. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apparently agreed, for they nominated the newcomer for a best supporting actress Oscar, one of The Little Foxes’s 9 nominations, including best film, best director, best actress (Bette Davis), and best screenplay (Lillian Hellman). Although it failed to win a single Oscar, the film was a well-respected hit that helped to propel Teresa Wright as a Hollywood star-of-the-future.
On loan to MGM, she had a featured role in another Wyler production, Mrs. Miniver. Starring the popular team of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, this well-produced but absurd paean to the British homefront became one of the biggest commercial hits of the 1940s and the best picture Oscar winner of 1942. In the film, Wright plays a charming and sweet British aristocrat who (bravely) suffers a tragic end.
Back at Goldwyn, she had her first film lead as Gary Cooper’s wife in The Pride of the Yankees, a highly successful — and unabashedly sentimental — biopic of baseball player Lou Gehrig. As the soon-to-be-widowed Eleanor Gehrig, the "lovely, gracious" Wright (as per the New York Times) once again had to display both outer sweetness and inner strength. (Ironically, neither she nor Gary Cooper knew anything about baseball.)
For her two 1942 roles, Teresa Wright received two concurrent Oscar nominations for acting, thus becoming the second performer to be so honored. (The first double-nominee in the acting categories was Fay Bainter in 1938.) Wright won the supporting award for Mrs. Miniver, but lost the lead actress Oscar to Greer Garson for that same film.
Also in 1942, Wright married The Little Foxes’s story editor Niven Busch, author of several novels (Duel in the Sun, They Dream of Home) and screenplays (Angels with Dirty Faces, The Westerner), and nearly fifteen years her senior. (The couple would have two children.)
At the time, the 24-year-old actress seemed destined for top movie stardom. In its review of The Pride of the Yankees, Time stated that "if moviegoers like [Teresa Wright] in it, she may become cinemadom’s foremost dramatic actress. If they don’t, she can 1) try again; 2) remain what she is: one of the best young dramatic actresses Hollywood has turned up in many a talent hunt."
Even so, as per A. Scott Berg’s Goldwyn, her producer-boss wasn’t counting on his "young dramatic actress" to become a star so rapidly. In fact, Goldwyn had no starring role scheduled for Wright, though he considered casting her in his pro-Russia, anti-Nazi ensemble production The North Star. Wright was to have played a Russian peasant, but pregnancy prevented her from landing the part. (She was replaced by Anne Baxter.)
Next, Wright was loaned to Universal (after first choice Joan Fontaine became unavailable) to play the heroine in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (co-written by Our Town’s Thornton Wilder). In this subversive small-town mystery-drama, Wright, billed above co-star Joseph Cotten, gives a thoroughly believable performance as the "ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town" who comes to suspect that her visiting uncle (Cotten) is an ordinary little serial killer. Once again, before the final fadeout Wright’s character is given the chance to display unbending inner strength, even risking her life to confront her bloodthirsty relative.
Shadow of a Doubt has a strong following today, but upon its release it was greeted with lukewarm notices. In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther complained that after an appropriately creepy beginning, "the story takes a decidedly anticlimactic dip and becomes just a competent exercise in keeping a tightrope taut. It also becomes a bit too specious in making a moralistic show of the warmth of an American community toward an unsuspected rascal in its midst."
Shadow of a Doubt did, however, receive an Oscar nomination for best original story, and Hitchcock himself once called it his favorite among his films and Wright one of the most intelligent performers he had ever worked with. Shadow of a Doubt reportedly made a profit, though that was probably because it was made at a relatively low cost (approximately US$800,000).
Also in real life, Teresa Wright’s determined stance belied her fragile appearance. Her contract with Goldwyn, for instance, had a clause which stipulated that she would never have to pose for cheesecake pictures. According to the May 1942 edition of Colliers magazine, the clause in question was precisely spelled out: "The aforementioned Teresa Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind … " and so on. In fact, Wright asserted that her only salable asset was her talent, and she fought Goldwyn for better roles and for less intrusion in her private affairs.
Goldwyn did consider having Wright play opposite David Niven in The Bishop’s Wife, but the best the producer could come up with at the time for his Oscar-winning contract player was to loan her out to International Pictures for Casanova Brown (1944), a weak comedy about a recently divorced couple who become parents after the split. Although Wright was reunited with Gary Cooper, there were no major sparks this time around. She was off the screen for a year, until Goldwyn and William Wyler brought her back for what is probably her best-known film, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
In that Oscar-winning drama about returning World War II soldiers, Wright plays the daughter of Fredric March and Myrna Loy. Although she is once again sweet and demure, she is also determined to go ahead romancing married war veteran Dana Andrews, who will soon be dumped by the selfish Virginia Mayo.
Critic James Agee wrote in The Nation: "This new performance of [Teresa Wright's], entirely lacking in big scenes, tricks, or obstreperousness — one can hardly think of it as acting — seems to me one of the wisest and most beautiful pieces of work I have seen in years. If the picture had none of the hundreds of other things it has to recommend it, I could watch it a dozen times over for that personality and its mastery alone."
The Best Years of Our Lives became the biggest box-office hit of the year, but either Wright or Goldwyn — or both — failed to capitalize on its success. The whimsical The Bishop’s Wife, however sappy, could have helped to solidify Wright’s standing in the industry since she would be co-starred with David Niven and Cary Grant, but the actress got pregnant once again and was replaced by Loretta Young. (The film turned out to be a huge moneymaker and received an Academy Award nomination for best picture.)
Instead of Niven or Grant, Wright was seen with another British actor in 1947, Ray Milland, with whom she appeared in two Paramount pictures (both of which had reportedly been shot in 1945): The ineffectual historical drama, The Imperfect Lady, in which Wright was utterly miscast as a 19th-century dancer, and the minor screwball comedy The Trouble with Women.
Despite Milland’s prestige — he had won the 1945 best actor Oscar for The Lost Weekend — neither film caused much of a stir with either critics or audiences. ("Best thing in the show:" wrote Time about The Trouble with Women, "Iris Adrian as a stripteaser, uttering shrill little growls of self-esteem as she does — or rather, undoes — her stuff.")
Wright’s other 1947 film, Pursued, was written by her husband. This psychological Western about revenge and redemption was directed by Raoul Walsh and co-starred Robert Mitchum in his first important leading role.
In Lee Server’s Robert Mitchum: "Baby I Don’t Care," supporting player Harry Carey Jr., recalls that Wright found Mitchum "physically overpowering, and with that sort of bad boy sexuality, she just became out of sorts when he was near her." (If Carey’s story is true, that could be the reason for her uncomfortable look throughout the film.)
Pursued was well-received by critics, but Wright’s part was hardly the sort of stellar role she needed.
Her next vehicle did nothing to help matters. Despite a cast that included David Niven, Evelyn Keyes, and Goldwyn discovery Farley Granger, Enchantment (1948) was anything but, as far as critics and audiences were concerned. ("A crabby reviewer might take exception … to the obvious intoxicating purpose of the film’s gauzy sentiment," wrote Bosley Crowther in the New
York Times, though he did remark on Wright’s "breathless, bright-eyed rapture.")
Perhaps aware that her latest vehicle wasn’t going to be the hit she needed, Wright, claiming illness, refused to go to New York to promote the film. At that juncture, Goldwyn unceremoniously fired her.
The actress said she did not mind losing her (reported) $5,000 weekly paycheck, adding that "the type of contract between players and producers is, I feel, antiquated in form and abstract in concept. … We have no privacies which producers cannot invade, they trade us like cattle, boss us like children."
True, Goldwyn had not done nearly as much for his Academy Award-winning contract player as he could have, and perhaps Wright could do better for herself by signing up with a major studio. The problem was that 1948 marked the beginning of the end of the studio era: An anti-monopoly lawsuit demanded that studios sell off their theaters, and, more alarmingly, millions of avid filmgoers were rapidly being transformed into millions of avid television
watchers.
After a two-year hiatus, Teresa Wright was back on screen in a couple of 1950 productions: The Capture was a minor Western directed by John Sturges from a screenplay (and novel) by Niven Busch, whereas The Men (above) was Fred Zinnemann’s prestigious study of the plight of a paraplegic war veteran played by stage import Marlon Brando.
In a later interview with the Toronto Star, Wright admitted, "So I turned down a big-paying role to do The Men for far less money, and all I proved was that I was an actress who would work for $25,000 instead of $200,000."
After another long absence, Wright, looking quite matronly at 34, could be seen in three 1952 releases. Two of these were programmers: the Western California Conquest, opposite Cornel Wilde, and the thriller The Steel Cage with Joseph Cotten. The third one was an A production directed by George Stevens, Something to Live For, in which Wright has a minor role as the faithful wife of unfaithful husband Ray Milland, who has been having an affair with dipsomaniac Joan Fontaine.
Despite the high pedigree of all involved, Wright’s poor luck with her choice of material held out, as this heavy-handed melodrama turned out to be a weak follow-up to Stevens’ successful A Place in the Sun the year before.
Also in 1952, she divorced Niven Busch, accusing him of making her feel useless "by refusing to allow me the right to have anything to say in the care and raising of my children and the running of our house." (Busch died in August 1991.)
Throughout the 1950s, Wright continued to work in films, mostly in supporting roles. She was the wife of a migrant farm worker in Don Siegel’s Count the Hours (1953), the wife of Spencer Tracy (18 years her senior) and the mother of Jean Simmons (10 years her junior) in George Cukor’s The Actress (1953), and Robert Mitchum’s old-maid sister in William A. Wellman’s experimental Track of the Cat (1954).
She also kept busy on television, appearing in a number of shows and anthologies including Studio 57, Playhouse 90, and The Loretta Young Show.
Additionally, Wright returned to the stage, starring on Broadway in William Inge’s 1957 family drama The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, under the guidance of Elia Kazan. (In the 1960 film version, Dorothy McGuire played Wright’s stage role.)
In 1959, she married playwright and screenwriter Robert Anderson, best known for his long-running Broadway hit Tea and Sympathy. Apart from a few television appearances, Wright stopped acting until a 1962 return to the New York stage in Mary, Mary.
From then on, she continued acting steadily in films, on television, and onstage, only slowing her pace after the mid-1980s.
Among her later acting jobs were, on Broadway: I Never Sang for My Father (1968), written by Anderson (they split up in the early 1970s, though they remained friends); a 1975 revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman opposite George C. Scott, for which she received excellent reviews; and On Borrowed Time (1991) again with Scott.
Her later feature films include Hail, Hero! (1969), outstanding as Michael Douglas‘ adulterous mother; The Happy Ending (1969), once again as Jean Simmons‘ mother; James Ivory’s poorly received Roseland (1977), in which Wright’s performance inspired Pauline Kael to write, "You can’t relax when she’s on the screen — she’s reaching out, grabbing you, pelting you with her tender frailty"; the romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time (1980), starring Christopher Reeve; the Diane Keaton vehicle The Good Mother (1988); and her last film, Francis Ford Coppola’s dreadful The Rainmaker (1997), as Matt Damon’s quirky landlady.
Her numerous small-screen appearances include roles in TV-movies such as The Elevator (1974), in which she gets stuck in same with the likes of Roddy McDowall, Carol Lynley, and her The Best Years of Our Lives mother, Myrna Loy; the all-star disaster flick Flood! (1976), with Robert Culp, Richard Basehart, and Barbara Hershey, plus both Lynley and McDowall; Bill: On His Own (1983) with Mickey Rooney; and Perry Mason: The Case of the Desperate Deception (1990), with Raymond Burr.
Additionally, Wright guested in dozens of TV shows and series, from Bonanza to Picket Fences. She earned three Emmy nominations along the way: In 1957, for her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in the Playhouse 90 production of "The Miracle Worker" (which was later adapted into a stage play and a 1962 motion picture, with Anne Bancroft as Sullivan); in 1959-60, for her performance in Breck Sunday Showcase’s "The Margaret Bourke-White Story," about the Life Magazine photographer who developed Parkinson’s disease; and in 1988-89, for her guest spot in "The Elders," an episode of the CBS drama series Dolphin Cove.
Wright spent most of the last ten years of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. One of those took place in 1998 at New York’s Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch. It was the Pride of the Yankees star’s first visit to the stadium, and that sparked a personal interest in baseball. She also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the ALS Association. (Lou Gehrig died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.)
In 2003, she was seen at the 75th Annual Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past.
Her grandson, Jonah Smith, co-produced Matthew Ryan Hoge’s political drama The United States of Leland (2003) and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000), which garnered Ellen Burstyn a best actress Academy Award nomination.
With Teresa Wright’s passing, there is no surviving Oscar nominee in the acting categories for 1942. Sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are the only surviving nominated performers of 1941.
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This biography was very enjoyable to read.
Very informative, wonderful pictures.
However, I would like to bring one small
Mistake to your attention.
In the movie ” Somewhere in time. ”
Your article states , Diane Keaton starred
With Christopher Reeves. And if I’m not mistaken,
He starred with Jane Seymour.
Thank you for your attention.
Oscar,
Thanks for writing.
That paragraph actually reads:
“… the romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time (1980), starring Christopher Reeve; the Diane Keaton vehicle The Good Mother (1988); …”
Diane Keaton starred in The Good Mother (there’s a “;” before her name).
And yes, Jane Seymour was Christopher Reeve’s co-star in “Somewhere in Time.”