Katharine Elizabeth "Betty" Garde (September 19, 1905 – December 25, 1989) was an American stage, radio, film and television actress.

Biography

Katherine Elizabeth Garde was born in Philadelphia and worked in New York for most of her acting career. On the stage since the early 1920s, she made her Broadway debut as Alma Borden in Easy Come, Easy Go and played character roles in productions including The Social Register and The Primrose Path. Betty Garde created the role of Aunt Eller in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma!.

In the 1930s she began to work extensively in radio, performing on some three dozen shows including Lorenzo Jones, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, The Big Story, The Eddie Cantor Show, Front Page Farrell, Perry Mason, Theatre Guild on the Air and The Fat Man. In 1934 Garde worked with Orson Welles on the CBS Radio series The American School of the Air, and she later performed in Welles radio series including Les Misérables, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, The Campbell Playhouse and Ceiling Unlimited.

Her most notable film role was probably in Call Northside 777 (1948), in which she played a prosecution witness whose testimony convicted an innocent man. The 5'10" Garde also had a major role in the 1950 movie Caged, as a murderous prison inmate, and in Cry of the City (1948). Her television credits include appearances on The Honeymooners (as the Kramdens' maid, Thelma) and two episodes of The Twilight Zone, including "The Midnight Sun" episode opposite Lois Nettleton.

Betty Garde died at the age of 84 in a hospital in Sherman Oaks, California. No cause was given and there were no immediate survivors.