Judith Anderson - Stage

Stage

She made her professional debut (as Francee Anderson) in 1915, playing Stephanie at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, in A Royal Divorce. Leading the company was the Scottish actor Julius Knight whom she later credited with laying the foundations of her acting skills. In the company were some American actors who convinced Anderson to try her luck in the United States. She traveled to California but was unsuccessful, then relocated to New York, with an equal lack of success. After a period of poverty and illness, she found work with the Emma Bunting Stock Company at the 14th Street Theatre in 1918–19. She toured with other stock companies until 1922 when she made her Broadway debut in On the Stairs using the name Frances Anderson. Twelve months later, she had changed her name to Judith and had her first triumph with the play Cobra co-starring Louis Calhern. She toured Australia in 1927 with three plays – Tea for Three, The Green Hat and Cobra.

By the early 1930s, she had established herself as one of the most prominent theatre actresses of her era and she was a major star on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In 1931, she played the Unknown Woman in the American premiere of Pirandello's As You Desire Me, filmed the following year with Garbo in the same role. This was followed by Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, Luigi Chiarelli's The Mask and the Face, with Humphrey Bogart, and Zoë Akins' The Old Maid from the novel by Edith Wharton, in the role later played on film by Miriam Hopkins. In 1936, Anderson played Gertrude to John Gielgud's Hamlet in a production which featured Lillian Gish as Ophelia.

In 1937, she joined the Old Vic Company in London and played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier in a production by Michel Saint-Denis, at the Old Vic and the New Theatre. In 1941, she played Lady Macbeth again in New York opposite Maurice Evans in a production staged by Margaret Webster, a role she was to reprise later on television twice (the second version of 1960 was released to theatres in Europe as a feature film, and was the first Macbeth in color).

In 1942–43, she played Olga in Chekhov's Three Sisters, in a production which also featured Katharine Cornell, Ruth Gordon, Edmund Gwenn, Dennis King, and Alexander Knox. (Kirk Douglas, playing an orderly, made his Broadway debut in the production.) The production was so illustrious, it made it to the cover of Time.

In 1947, she triumphed as Medea in a version of Euripides' tragedy, written by the poet Robinson Jeffers and produced by John Gielgud, who played Jason. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance. She toured in this role to Germany in 1951 and to France and Australia in 1955–56.

In 1953, she was directed by Charles Laughton in his own adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body with a cast also featuring Raymond Massey and Tyrone Power. In 1960, she played Madame Arkadina in Chekhov's The Seagull first at the Edinburgh Festival, and then at the Old Vic, with Tom Courtenay, Cyril Luckham and Tony Britton.

In 1970, she realized a long-held ambition to play the title role of Hamlet on a national tour of the United States and at New York's Carnegie Hall. In 1982, she returned to Medea, this time playing the Nurse opposite Zoe Caldwell in the title role. Caldwell had appeared in a small role in the Australian tour of Medea in 1955–56. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.