Yes, that’s her real name.
One of the joys of the Yewtybbe for me is recognizing faces from one film to another. I can be watching, say, I Wake Up Screaming, see Lady Handel at her nightclub table greeting Victor Mature and Carol Landis, and say “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that . . . “ and of course it turns out she was the housekeeper in Little Lord Fauntleroy and Mrs. Phillips in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice, not to mention the old lady who says “Who locked that door?!” in the powder room of the Casino Roof in The Women. And that would be Mae Beatty.
I lead a rich, full life!
A favorite Old Hollywood Classic to view on the Yewytybbe is the 1935 Becky Sharp, starring that naughty Miriam Hopkins. At the very beginning of the film we see Becky’s schoolmistress MIss Pinkerton, a very stern old lady with a face like a tombstone. Then watching Now, Voyager, I got a look at Bette Davis’s Aunt Hester (a non-speaking role in only two scenes). “Hey, isn’t that Miss Pinkerton?” And a trip to ye IMDB revealed that yes, yes it was Miss Pinkerton — the character actress Elspeth Dudgeon. So for no reason at all, I am creating this page to collect in one place her film performances.
Elspeth barely appears in Becky Sharp at all - after the first five minutes she’s out for good - but this was one of the first Technicolor films to come out of Hollywood, and it has a great ensemble cast: Alan Mowbray, Frances Dee, Nigel Bruce (I love Nigel Bruce), and, as Pitt Crawley, the same actor who plays the preacher reading the 23rd Psalm in the besieged Atlanta church hospital in Gone With the Wind.
In Camille with Greta Garbo, Elspeth is the matron attending the ladies room at the casino. Her scene begins at 01:26:23, but really, don’t skip the rest of the movie! Greta Garbo at her greatest, Robert Taylor at his most beautiful, Henry Daniell at his most reptilian, my beloved Laura Hope Crews (Aunt Pittypat from GWTW), and a vivacious actress we almost never see, Lenore Ulric, who plays Greta Garbo’s rival Olympe. About ten years later she had a small part in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, when she says to Cary Grant “Young men have such short memories!”
In The Moonstone of 1934 Elspeth has an actual part that goes on through the entire movie, as the querelous but loyal housekeeper Mrs. Betteredge. This is sort of a horror/mystery/comedy mashup based on the famous mystery by Wilkie Collins. It centers on a very large yellow diamond called the Moonstone that was stolen from an Indian temple by an Englishman and left to his niece. Ridiculousness ensues, but also exceedingly handsome David Manners, so it’s worth it.
Finally, something I just discovered night before last, Sh! The Octopus. Hugh Herbert (“Woo hoo! Woo hoo!”) is one of the stars, and I’m sorry, I’m just not a Hugh Herbert fan. A group of strangers are trapped in a lighthouse and besieged by a gigantic octopus and fear of a burglar named The Octopus who is trying to steal the radium ray invented by a young woman’s stepfather. “Whoever controls that ray controls the world!” Elspeth appears as Nanny, and if you thought she had a face like a tombstone to begin with, you will be amazed out of your wits at the transformation she undergoes at the end of the film - into someone’s mother-in-law!
Thanks for your indulgence.