Marjorie Gateson

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Birth name Marjorie Augusta Gateson
Nationality USA
Birth 15 january 1891 at Brooklyn (USA)
Death 17 april 1977 (at 86 years) at New York City (USA)

Marjorie Augusta Gateson (January 17, 1891 – April 17, 1977), was a stage and film actress.

She was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Augusta and Daniel Gateson. Her maternal grandfather and brother were clergymen; Some sources state her father was one too, but Axel Nissen in his book Mothers, Mammies and Old Maids: Twenty-Five Character Actresses of Golden Age Hollywood writes that he was a contractor. She attended the Packer Collegiate Institute and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, the latter being where her mother taught elocution. She believed her mother had "an inner longing for the stage", which she passed on to Marjorie, along with diction and poise.

Gateson's musical schooling came in handy, helping her land a job in the chorus in a play called The Pink Lady. She made her Broadway debut at the age of 21 in a short-lived musical called The Dove of Peace on November 4, 1912; the show closed after 12 performances. During the much longer run of her next Broadway play, The Little Cafe (November 12, 1913 – March 14, 1914), she played several of the characters. In 1917's Broadway musical Have a Heart, she got to sing a couple of songs. She performed in a steady diet of musical comedies for another decade, ending with Oh, Ernest! (1927), but also appeared in non-musical comedies and dramas. After the Broadway comedy As Good as New in 1930, she set out for Hollywood.

Gateson made her film debut in 1931, after more than two decades on the stage, playing secondary character roles as women of wealth and breeding, who were often haughty and aloof. She is perhaps best known as the society matron who attempts to thwart Mae West's character's plans for social climbing in the 1935 film Goin' to Town, and as a rather kinder socialite whom Harold Lloyd teaches to box in 1934's The Milky Way.

Other films in which she appeared include The King's Vacation (1933) (her largest role, the female lead opposite George Arliss), Bureau of Missing Persons (1933), Private Number (1936), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), International Lady (1941), and Meet The Stewarts (1942). Her film work petered out in the late 1940s and she jumped into television roles.

She mad her small screen debut in 1949. She was featured in the 1949 television soap opera One Man's Family and found success in 1954 at age 63 playing matriarch Grace Harris Tyrell on the daytime soap The Secret Storm, a role she would play until 1968. Gateson also made numerous other television appearances in the 1950s, including episodes of Hallmark Hall of Fame, Robert Montgomery Presents, and United States Steel Hour.

Gateson suffered a stroke, which ended her acting career, and died several years later in 1977 of pneumonia, at the age of 86 in Manhattan.

Biography

Marjorie Gateson entame sa carrière au théâtre et joue dans sa ville natale (à Broadway) à partir de 1912, dans huit pièces, deux revues et surtout, quatorze comédies musicales. La première, comme « Chorus Girl », est The Dove of Peace en 1912, sur une musique de Walter Damrosch. Dans deux autres, The Love Letter en 1921 et For Goodness Sake en 1922, elle a comme partenaires Adele et Fred Astaire.

Elle se produit régulièrement jusqu'en 1930 sur les planches new-yorkaises, n'y revenant ultérieurement que pour deux ultimes comédies musicales, Sweethearts en 1947, sur une musique de Victor Herbert, puis Show Boat en 1954 (avec Burl Ives), du tandem Kern-Hammerstein.

Entretemps, Marjorie Gateson se consacre au cinéma, apparaissant dans quatre-vingt-huit films américains sortis entre 1931 et 1946. Parmi eux figurent quinze films musicaux, dont L'amour vient en dansant (1941) de Sidney Lanfield, ou elle retrouve Fred Astaire en compagnie de Rita Hayworth, et Mademoiselle ma femme (1943) de Vincente Minnelli, avec Red Skelton et Eleanor Powell.

Parmi ses autres films notables, citons le drame Entrée des employés de Roy Del Ruth (1933, avec Warren William et Loretta Young) et la screwball comedy Soupe au lait de Leo McCarey (1936, avec Harold Lloyd, Adolphe Menjou et Verree Teasdale).

Après 1946, elle contribue pour la télévision à onze séries (certaines dédiées au théâtre) entre 1948 et 1958, ainsi qu'à un téléfilm, diffusé en 1952. Elle revient toutefois au grand écran pour un dernier film, la comédie Amour, Délices et Golf de Norman Taurog, avec Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin et Donna Reed, sortie en 1953.