Laura Hope Crews makes flustered women worth watching. We like her comic timing, and value the parts that give her some authority: a mother who will not let go, or a parishioner whose approval matters.
Fi1m perspective
Prudence Duvernoy is one of the fluttery women Laura Hope Crews plays so well, bringing comedy to the formal romance of Camille (1936). We enjoyed her fussing because the timing keeps the film from becoming too solemn about its lovers. George Cukor gives Greta Garbo room to be funny and vulnerable; Crews has the smaller, useful job of supplying another kind of comedy. Garbo is the reason to begin with this film, but Crews is worth noticing among the supporting players. The part draws on a familiar speciality, and the pleasure is in how well she times it.
A long stage career preceded her move into sound films with Charming Sinners (1929), and theatre remained part of her working life. The 1930s established her as a film character actress, often playing eccentric older women, dowagers and matriarchs. There was also a less comforting use for that maternal presence. In The Silver Cord (1933), she reprised her stage role as Mrs Phelps, the possessive mother. Set that beside Aunt Pittypat Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), her best-known film part, before deciding that she was employed simply to be harmless.
Irving Rapper's One Foot in Heaven (1941) offers a quieter reason to pay attention to her. Crews and Gene Lockhart play the Thurstons, the moneyed couple whose approval a small church cannot do without. Lockhart's smile carries much of what we need to know about Preston; Crews, as Mrs Preston Thurston, completes a household with influence. The part allows an older woman to matter because of her position in the parish. It is modest work, and appropriate to a mild, episodic film held together by Fredric March.
The risk with these parts is that fluttering can become a complete description of a woman. We value Crews's timing, but we want a character with something to do beyond being eccentric. Neither of these films should be approached as a vehicle for her. Start with Camille; save One Foot in Heaven for an evening when a mild film and a slow beginning do not feel like an imposition.
Biography
Laura Hope Crews was an American actress who worked extensively on stage and in film. Born in San Francisco on 12 December 1879, she made her stage debut at the age of four and appeared in numerous Broadway productions from the early 1900s onwards, including a long run in Arsenic and Old Lace shortly before her death.
She began appearing in films in the late 1920s and became known for character roles in the 1930s and 1940s. Her screen credits include Prudence Duvernoy in Camille (1936), Aunt 'Pittypat' Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mrs. Luxury in The Blue Bird (1940) and Mrs. Preston Thurston in One Foot in Heaven (1941). She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Crews died in New York City on 12 November 1942.
