Virginia Grey spent four decades being the woman the film was not about: the cool society wife, the assistant with the quick answer, standing a step to one side of stars from Gable to Magnani. She was never less than professional, and rarely allowed to be anything more.
Fi1m perspective
Look for her at the edge of the frame. Grey was cast, over and over, as the icy society woman or the wisecracking assistant, and she played both from the same place: composed, unhurried, the line delivered without a lean or a wink. She did not ask the camera to come to her. The soap melodramas she settled into in the 1950s needed a woman like that, someone who could be unkind at a party and make it sound like good manners, and she supplied it for years.
The career is a long one and oddly shaped. She was a child in silent pictures, including Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927), came back in the 1930s as an extra and a bit-part player, and signed with MGM, where she supported in the A-pictures and led in the Bs. The Women (1939) gave her a place, as Pat, among Crawford and Shearer. She left the studio in 1942 and freelanced, most often for the producer Ross Hunter, with whom she made five films, All That Heaven Allows (1955) among them. Television took much of her time from the 1950s on. Airport (1970), in which she plays Mrs Schultz, was her last feature, and she retired in the 1970s.
The two films of hers we have reviewed tell the story honestly. In Test Pilot (1938) she is Sarah, and our review is about the aeroplanes and about Spencer Tracy saying almost nothing. In The Rose Tattoo (1955) she is Estelle Hohengarten, the other woman, one of the largest dramatic parts she was given, and our review is about Anna Magnani, because Daniel Mann's film is about Anna Magnani. We went back to both looking for Grey and found, a little guiltily, that we had been watching the stars, as the films intend. That is the fate of the reliable supporting player: to be exactly as visible as the picture needs.
She was, by her own account, a professional first. "I consider myself a professional who acts -- not to express my soul or elevate the cinema -- but to entertain and get paid for it." Some observers thought a certain brittleness kept her from bigger parts; the second features and the supporting roles were, in the end, the whole career, and she never became a star. We are not sure she was trying to. If you want to see what she did, All That Heaven Allows and The Rose Tattoo are the places to look, and you will have to look on purpose.
Biography
Virginia Grey (22 March 1917 – 31 July 2004) was an American actress. Born in Edendale, California, the daughter of director Ray Grey, she made her film debut at the age of ten as Little Eva in the 1927 silent film Uncle Tom's Cabin. She returned to acting in the 1930s after time away for education, signing with MGM and appearing in films including Another Thin Man (1939), The Women (1939) and The Hardys Ride High (1939).
Grey worked steadily across studios in supporting roles. In the 1950s and 1960s she appeared frequently in producer Ross Hunter’s melodramas such as All That Heaven Allows (1955), Back Street (1961) and Madame X (1966). Her other credits include The Naked Kiss (1964), Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942) and Airport (1970). She acted in more than 100 films and on television into the 1970s.
