Mary Wickes (born Mary Isabella Wickenhauser; June 13, 1910 – October 22, 1995) was an American actress. She often played supporting roles as prim, professional women, secretaries, nurses, nuns, therapists, teachers and housekeepers, who made sarcastic quips when the leading characters fell short of her high standards.
Early life
Wickes was born to Frank Wickenhauser and his wife Mary Isabella (née Shannon) in St. Louis, Missouri of German, Scottish, and Irish extraction, and raised Protestant.[1][2] Her parents were theater buffs, and they took her to plays from the time that she could stay awake through a matinee. An excellent student, she skipped two grades and graduated at 16 from Beaumont High School. She was accepted into Washington University in St. Louis, where she joined the debate team and the Phi Mu sorority, and she was initiated into Mortar Board in 1929. She graduated in 1930 with a double major in English literature and political science. Although she had planned a career in law, a favorite professor encouraged her to try drama.[3]
A tall (5 ft 10 in, 1.78 m) woman with a distinctive voice, Wickes proved to be an adept comedienne. She attracted attention in Now, Voyager (1942) as the wisecracking nurse who helped Bette Davis's character during her mother's illness. She appeared earlier that year with Davis in The Man Who Came to Dinner and joined her six years later in June Bride. Wickes and Davis reteamed in 1965 when Wickes played a supporting role to Davis in a television pilot titled The Decorator.[5])
In 1964, she appeared as Ida Goff in five episodes of the series Temple Houston.[7] She played Adeline Ashley in "The Social Climbers", a 1967 episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. In the 1960s, she appeared in commercials for Ajax.
Wickes's career had a resurgence in the late 1980s and 1990s. She was cast as the mother of Shirley MacLaine's character in the film Postcards from the Edge (1990) and portrayed Marie Murkin in the television movie and series adaptations of The Father Dowling Mysteries (1989–1991). She played notable roles in these years when she was cast as 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.
Death and legacy
Wickes suffered from numerous ailments in the last years of her life that cumulatively resulted in her hospitalization, where she fell and broke her hip. She died of complications following hip surgery on October 22, 1995, at the age of 85 at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.[8][9]
Her final film role, voicing Laverne in Disney's animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was released posthumously in 1996. Wickes reportedly had only one voice recording session left for the film when she died. Jane Withers came in to finish the character's remaining six lines of dialogue.
Wickes left a large estate and made a $2 million bequest in memory of her parents, establishing the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.[11] Wickes was a lifelong Republican.[12]
In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"[16]
^Maltin, Leonard (host) (2008). Walt Disney Treasures: The Mickey Mouse Club Presents Annette (DVD). Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
^Billy Hathorn, "Roy Bean, Temple Houston, Bill Longley, Ranald Mackenzie, Buffalo Bill, Jr., and the Texas Rangers: Depictions of West Texans in Series Television, 1955 to 1967", West Texas Historical Review, Vol. 89 (2013), p. 107
