May Whitty

Distinguished British actress.

Whitty first stepped onto the London stage in 1882 and after a spell as an understudy at the St. James Theatre soon found herself playing leading roles in a travelling repertory company. After nearly 25 years as one of the leading actresses of the British stage, she appeared in her first film, Enoch Arden, in 1914. She didn’t enjoy the experience, and appeared in only a few silent films in the years that followed.

After a string of 1930s Broadway successes, however, Whitty went to Hollywood, like so many of her contemporaries, and became a star late in life in a variety of crotchety, imperious, but often warm-hearted upper-class roles.

Her credits include Night Must Fall (a re-creation of a stage smash, 1937), Greta Garbo’s Conquest (1937), The Thirteenth Chair (1937), Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (as Miss Froy, the title character, 1938), Raffles (1939), A Bill of Divorcement (1940), Suspicion (another Hitchcock classic, 1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942, for which she received an Oscar nomination), The Constant Nymph (1943), Madame Curie (1943) and Gaslight (1944).

This is a superb glossy sepia vintage photograph (8" x 10) of Whitty as Mrs Bramson in Night Must Fall (1937), nicely signed and inscribed ("To Eddy from May Whitty") in black ink. In amazingly good condition for its age. VERY RARE