Hollywood
In Hollywood, her opportunities were limited to supporting character actress work. She naturally preferred the stage in any event. In particular, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940). As the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, Judith Anderson was required to mentally torment the young bride, the "second Mrs. de Winter" (Joan Fontaine), even encouraging her to commit suicide; and taunt her husband (Laurence Olivier) with the memory of his first wife, the never-seen "Rebecca" of the title. This role led to several film appearances during the 1940s in such films as Lady Scarface (1941), Kings Row (1942), All Through the Night (1942), Otto Preminger's Laura (1944) with Gene Tierney, Ben Hecht's Specter of the Rose (1946), Jean Renoir's The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and a particularly memorable turn as Emily Brent in René Clair's And Then There Were None (1945).
She continued to act on the New York stage, winning a Tony Award in 1948 for her performance in the title role of Medea. Her stage and film work continued and by the 1950s she was also appearing in television productions. On the big screen, she played a golddigger in Anthony Mann's western The Furies (1950), Herodias in Salome (1953) and Memnet in Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments (1956).
She recorded many spoken word record albums for Caedmon Audio in the 1950s through the 1970s, including her performance as Lady Macbeth (opposite Anthony Quayle). Other recordings include an adaption of Madea, Robert Louis Stevenson verses, and readings from The Bible. She received a Grammy nomination for her work on the Wuthering Heights recording.
Read more about this topic: Judith Anderson
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