Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,052

This is the grave of Josephine Hull.

Born in 1877 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, Marie Josephine Tewkesbury got interested in the stage as a young woman. She started working as a chorus girl in 1905. That was a bit old for that kind of work, but she routinely lied about her age, hardly an unusual thing there. Heck, my mother-in-law shaved three years off her age for years and years and I have no idea when my father-in-law found this out but I think it was after they were married. Anyway, Hull had a bit of minor league success, a working singer and actress on stage tours. She married the actor Shelley Hull in 1910. He died in 1919 of the Spanish Flu and is buried here too. He was mostly a Broadway guy who did a couple of silent films, a handsome fellow popular with the ladies in the audience.

Hull retired from acting upon her marriage to Hull and did not work again until after his death. She started directing plays in the early 20s and then returned to the stage herself in 1923, now a middle aged woman. But she was a good actor and got a lot of notice for her work in George Kelly’s 1926 play Craig’s Wife, in which she played a key supporting role. That play won the Pulitzer and got Hull more work. She became a Broadway stalwart, working in some of the key plays of the next twenty years and often playing the roles for a very long time. It seems that when she found a good role, she was going to take the bread-and-butter it provided rather than search for new challenges. Nothing wrong with that, especially for an actress of her age in a less than generous industry to older women. She was cast as the matriarch in George Kaufman and Moses Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You in 1936. She stuck with that role on Broadway for the next two years, only leaving the show at the end of 1938.

After a play called An International Incident didn’t do anything in 1940 and closed within a couple of weeks, Hull debuted her classic role in Arsenic and Old Lace in early 1941 and she ran with that part until 1944. Just a few months later, she debuted in Harvey and stuck with that until 1949, doing nothing else. This was the kind of actress she was. Just about the only time she would do a movie is the adaptations of her classic stage roles for the silver screen. This is the reason she is remembered today because these are some classic films. She did not do the adaptation of You Can’t Take It With You, sticking with the stage. But when Frank Capra did Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant in the lead, Hull did the film version. Then when Henry Koster directed the film version of Harvey, in 1950, starring James Stewart, Hull did her role there and for it, she won Best Supporting Actress, stealing the picture from Stewart. These are the two roles she’s remembered for. In fact, she only appeared in seven movies total, the last being something called The Lady from Texas, in 1951. But she really wasn’t very interested in the movies. At least we have those classics though.

Hull had one more key role, a play called The Solid Gold Cadillac, written by George Kaufman, Abe Burrows, and Howard Teichmann. She did that role from 1953-55, but did not do the film version. She died in 1958, at the age of 80.

Josephine Hull is buried in Newton Cemetery, Newton, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit other Best Supporting Actor or Actress nominees for the Oscars in 1951, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Hope Emerson, nominated for Caged, is in Hawarden, Iowa. Jeff Chandler, nominated for Broken Arrow, is in Culver City, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.