Clara Blandick
Clara Blandick was an American stage and screen actress best known for her role as Aunt Em in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.
As a character actress, she often played eccentric elderly matriarchs.
Early life
She was born Clara Blanchard Dickey, the daughter of Isaac B. and Hattie Dickey, aboard the Willard Mudgett – an American ship captained by her father, and docked in Victoria Harbour, British Hong Kong. She was delivered by Captain William H. Blanchard, whose ship, "Wealthy Pendleton," was anchored nearby. His wife, Clara Pendleton Blanchard, was present, as well. To thank the Blanchards, Captain and Mrs. Dickey named their daughter Clara Blanchard Dickey. When she became successful as an actress, she took the first syllable of "Blanchard" and the first syllable of "Dickey" to create her stage name, "Clara Blandick". While she often used 1880 as her year of birth for professional purposes, she was actually born in 1876. According to the newspaper Daily Alta California, both the Willard Mudgett and the Wealthy Pendleton were in Hong Kong Harbor in June 1876. By 1880, Captain Dickey was in command of a different ship, and the rest of the family was in Quincy, Massachusetts.Her parents had settled in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1879 or 1880. Sources vary on when the Dickeys settled there, and Clara may have been two or three years old when they made the move. In nearby Boston she met the Shakespearean actor E. H. Sothern, with whom she appeared in a production of Richard Lovelace. She moved from Boston to New York City by 1900, and began pursuing acting as a career.
Acting
Her first professional appearance came in 1901, when she was cast as Jehanneton in the play If I Were King, which ran for 56 performances at Garden Theatre. She achieved acclaim for her role in The Christian.In 1903 she played Gwendolyn in the Broadway premiere of E. W. Hornung's Raffles The Amateur Cracksman opposite Kyrle Bellew. She started in pictures with the 'Kalem company in 1908 and made a number of appearances like in The Maid's Double in 1911. Blandick finally broke onto Broadway in 1912, when she was cast as Dolores Pennington in Widow By Proxy which ran for 88 performances through early 1913 at George M. Cohan's Theatre on Broadway. During this same period she appeared on stages throughout the Northeastern United States as a member of Sylvester Poli's stock theater company, The Poli Players. She continued to achieve acclaim for her stage work, playing a number of starring roles, including the lead in Madame Butterfly. By 1914, she was back on the silver screen, as Emily Mason in the film Mrs. Black is Back.
During World War I, Blandick performed some overseas volunteer work for the American Expeditionary Force in France. She also continued to act on stage and occasionally in silent pictures. In 1924, she earned rave reviews for her supporting role in the Pulitzer Prize winning play Hell-Bent Fer Heaven, which ran for 122 performances at the Klaw Theatre in New York.
In 1929, Blandick moved to Hollywood. By the 1930s, she was well known in theatrical and film circles as an established supporting actress. Though she landed roles like Aunt Polly in the 1930 film Tom Sawyer, she spent much of the decade as a character actor, often going uncredited. In Pre-Code films she often played mothers, including those of characters played by Joan Crawford and Joan Blondell. At a time when many actors were permanently attached to a single studio, she played a wide number of bit parts for almost every major Hollywood studio. In 1930, she acted in nine films. In 1931 she was in thirteen films. As is the case with some other busy character actors, it is difficult to make an exact tally of the films in which Blandick appeared but a reasonable estimate would fall between 150 and 200.
''The Wizard of Oz'' and later years
In 1939, Blandick landed her most memorable minor role yet – Aunt Em in MGM's classic The Wizard of Oz. Though it was a small part, the character was an important symbol of protagonist Dorothy's quest to return home to her beloved aunt and uncle. Blandick beat out May Robson, Janet Beecher, and Sarah Padden for the role, and earned $750 per week. Some believed Aunt Em's alter ego was to be Glinda, the Good Witch of the North but the studio opted to use different actresses for each role rather than have a dual role for this. The reason was they wanted someone younger looking to contrast the good witch from the bad witches, although Billie Burke, who played Glinda, was only eight years younger. Blandick is only credited in the movie's closing credits.After The Wizard of Oz, Blandick returned to her staple of character acting in supporting and bit roles. She would continue to act in a wide variety of roles in dozens of films. She played the spiteful Mrs. Pringle in 1940s Anne of Windy Poplars, a department store customer in the 1941 Marx Brothers film The Big Store, a fashionable socialite in the 1944 musical Can't Help Singing, and a cold-blooded murderer in the 1947 mystery Philo Vance Returns. Her final two roles both came in 1950 – playing a housekeeper and a landlady in Key to the City and Love That Brute, respectively. She retired from acting at the age of 69 and went into seclusion at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Personal life and death
Blandick was married on December 7, 1905, in Manhattan, to mining engineer Harry Stanton Elliott. Prior to his mining career, he had been an actor, and they had starred together in "The Christian". They separated by 1910, and are said to have divorced in 1912. They had no children.Throughout the 1950s, Blandick's health steadily began to deteriorate. Her eyesight began to fail and she was suffering from severe, painful arthritis. On April 15, 1962, she returned home from Palm Sunday services at her church. She began rearranging her room, placing her favorite photos and memorabilia in prominent places. She laid out her resume and a collection of press clippings from her lengthy career. She dressed immaculately in an elegant royal blue dressing gown, and with her hair properly styled, she took an overdose of sleeping pills. She lay down on a couch, covered herself with a gold blanket over her shoulders, and tied a plastic bag over her head. She left the following note: “I am now about to make the great adventure. I cannot endure this agonizing pain any longer. It is all over my body. Neither can I face the impending blindness. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”
Blandick's landlady, Helen Mason, found her body Sunday morning. In preparing to die, she had disposed of all her medicines the previous week. She was survived by a niece, Catherine Hopkins, of Camarillo, California. Her ashes were interred at the Great Mausoleum, Columbarium of Security at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale along with those of her sister, Marcia D. Young, and Marcia's husband, George A. Young.
Blandick's ashes lie just yards from those of Charley Grapewin, her on-screen husband in The Wizard of Oz.
Stage
Note: The list below is limited to New York/Broadway theatrical productions| Date | Title | Role | |
| Oct 14, 1901 - Dec 1901 | If I Were King | Jehanneton | |
| Oct 27, 1903 - Mar 1904 | Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman | Gwendolyn Conron | |
| Dec 21, 1903 - Jan 1904 | The Sacrament of Judas | Jeffick Gillou | |
| Mar 28, 1904 - May 1904 | The Two Orphans | Marianne | |
| Apr 06, 1908 - May 1908 | The Royal Mounted | Rosa Larabee | |
| Feb 24, 1913 - May 1913 | Widow by Proxy | Dolores Pennington | |
| Apr 21, 1913 - May 1913 | Mrs. Peckham's Carouse | ||
| Aug 23, 1915 - Oct 1915 | No. 13 Washington Square | ||
| Feb 01, 1917 - May 1917 | The Wanderer | ||
| Mar 31, 1923 - May 1923 | The Enchanted Cottage | Mrs. Minnett, First Witch | |
| Jan 04, 1924 - Apr 1924 | Hell-Bent Fer Heaven | Meg Hunt | |
| Sep 28, 1925 - Dec 12, 1925 | Applesauce | Mrs. Jennie Baldwin | |
| Oct 05, 1926 - Oct 1926 | The Good Fellow | Mrs. Kent | |
| Apr 01, 1927 - Apr 1927 | Fog-Bound | Mrs. Penny | |
| May 11, 1927 - Jun 1927 | Kempy | "Ma" Bence | |
| Nov 01, 1927 - Nov 1927 | Ink | Hester Trevelyan | |
| Feb 01, 1928 - Feb 1928 | La Gringa | Sarah Bowditch | |
| Mar 14, 1928 - Mar 1928 | The Buzzard | Mrs. Burns | |
| May 21, 1928 - Jul 1929 | Skidding | Mrs. Hardy | |
| Jan 11, 1929 - Jan 1929 | Skyrocket | Mrs. Ewing |