Jessie Royce Landis(1896-1972)
- Actress
Jessie Royce Landis was called "an international star" in her New York
Times obituary. She was 20 when she made her stage debut at the
Playhouse in Chicago as the young countess in "The Highwayman". Soon
she was on Broadway. In 1950 she went to London for "Larger Than Life",
a dramatization of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, "Theatre". There she received an
award for the best performance of the year. The following year in
London she had the prima donna role (a singing part) in "And So To
Bed". In 1954, she published her autobiography, "You Won't Be So
Pretty". Then in the mid-1950s her film career took off after she was
Grace Kelly's mother in To Catch a Thief (1955) and Cary Grant's mother in North by Northwest (1959). Although
she claimed to have been born the same year as Grant, she was actually
more than seven years older.