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Mary Wickes
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Mary Isabella Wickes (13 June 1910 – 22 October 1995) was an American film and television actress.
Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she joined the Phi Mu women's fraternity. Wickes' first Broadway appearance was in Marc Connelly's The Farmer Takes a Wife in 1934 with Henry Fonda. She began acting in films in the late 1930s, and was also a member of the Orson Welles troupe on his radio drama Mercury Theatre of the Air.
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Mary Isabella Wickes (13 June 1910 – 22 October 1995) was an American film and television actress.
Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she joined the Phi Mu women's fraternity. Wickes' first Broadway appearance was in Marc Connelly's The Farmer Takes a Wife in 1934 with Henry Fonda. She began acting in films in the late 1930s, and was also a member of the Orson Welles troupe on his radio drama Mercury Theatre of the Air. One of her earliest significant film appearances was in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), reprising her stage role of "Nurse Preen".
A tall (5'10"), gangling woman with a distinctive voice, Wickes would ultimately prove herself adept as a comedienne, but she first attracted attention in the film Now, Voyager (1942), as the wisecracking nurse who helped Bette Davis' character during her mother's illness. (She appeared with Davis again in June Bride.) The same year she had a large part in the Abbott and Costello comedy Who Done It?. She continued playing supporting roles in films during the next decade, usually playing wisecracking characters. A prime example was her deadpan characterization of Stella, the harassed housekeeper, in the Doris Day vehicles By the Light of the Silvery Moon and On Moonlight Bay. She played similar roles in two later movies with Rosalind Russell: The Trouble with Angels and Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows in the mid 1960s.
Moving to the new medium of television in the 1950s, Wickes played the warm, yet jocular maid Katie in the Mickey Mouse Club serial Walt Disney Presents: Annette and regular roles in the sitcoms Make Room for Daddy and Dennis The Menace, as well as appearing as Emma the housekeeper in the holiday classic White Christmas (1954), starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. She served as the live-action reference model for Cruella De Vil in Walt Disney film One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and played Mrs. Squires in the film adaptation of Meredith Willson's The Music Man (1962).
In 1953, Wickes played the housekeeper, Martha, to Ezio Pinza's character in NBC's short-lived Bonino series. Pinza portrayed an Italian-American opera singer trying to rear six children. Among the child actors on the program were Van Dyke Parks and Chet Allen.
In the 1961-1962 season, she appeared as Maxfield with Gertrude Berg in CBS's Mrs. G. Goes to College. For her work in the sitcom, Wickes was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actress".
A lifelong friend of Lucille Ball, Wickes played frequent guest roles in Ball's three CBS television series, I Love Lucy, Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show. In 1970-1971, she guest starred on CBS's The Doris Day Show. (Day was another of her long-term friends.) She was also a regular on the Sid and Marty Krofft children's television show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and the sitcom Doc. By the 1980s, her appearances in television series such as Our Man Higgins, M*A*S*H, The Love Boat, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Murder, She Wrote had made her a widely recognizable character actress. She also appeared in a variety of Broadway shows, including a 1979 revival of Oklahoma!, where she portrayed Aunt Eller.
She was cast as Shirley MacLaine's character's mother in the 1990 film Postcards from the Edge and from 1989 to 1991, portrayed Marie Murkin in the television movie and series adaptations of Father Dowling Mysteries. She played Sister Mary Lazarus in Sister Act (1992) and in the sequel Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She appeared in the 1994 film version of Little Women before she became ill.
She was hospitalized the following year suffering from numerous ailments, including renal failure, massive gastrointestinal bleeding, severe hypotension, ischemic cardiomyopathy, anemia and breast cancer (stage of cancer unknown), which cumulatively resulted in her death during surgery in 1995. Her final film role, voicing the gargoyle Laverne in the animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released posthumously in 1996. She was interred beside her parents at the Shiloh Valley Cemetery in Shiloh in St. Clair County in Illinois.
Although the nature of their relationship has been disputed, she was for many years the companion of playwright Abby Conrad. A registered Republican who never married, Wickes left a large estate and made a $2 million bequest, in memory of her parents, for the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts.
In 2004, Wickes was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She resembled another character actress, Maudie Prickett.
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