"Information presented regarding birth, death, film credits and analyzes each player's unique talents, signature roles and career development. Representative range of backgrounds, character types and career experiences including actresses such as Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Beulah Bondi, Sara Allgood, and Jessie Ralph, among others. A fascinating tour through Hollywood's big studio era and the lives of its characters"--Provided by publisher.

Dame Maggie Smith stands as a remarkable example of the concomitance – in a performer’s career – of typecasting and characterisation, that is the ability to impersonate ‘against type’ infinitely various screen or stage characters. This book of appreciation essentially aims at correcting the preconceived image that the general public has of Dame Maggie Smith. Focusing on the last twenty-five years, it examines, through the many parts she has played since the early 1990s, her ability to go beyond typecasting and give, thanks to her chameleon skills, nuanced and convincing portrays of infinitely diverse characters. From The Importance of Being Earnest to Gosford Park and Becoming Jane, to Downton Abbey and Sister Act, to The Last September and the Harry Potter saga, Dame Maggie Smith has had a wide spanning career in TV and Film. Not to mention her theatrical work on the stage. Author Caroline Fevrier lives in Paris, France and has a passion for theatre and performing. Caroline holds a PhD in Literature and Humanities and an MA in Literature and Drama. She was also trained as a professional performer and has been involved in several stage productions and short movies. Caroline regularly gives lectures on theatre and performance to academic audiences and had published several books on literature and humanities, and now focuses closely on the performing arts.

Born into an upper-crust family in New Orleans, Cora Bell Witherspoon (1890-1957) was an orphan by the age of 10 and a professional actress by 15. She was seen on Broadway from 1910 till 1946 in 36 productions and was a popular character actress in Hollywood between 1931 and 1954. On stage she played roles like Sallie McBride in Daddy Long Legs, Josephine Trent in The Awful Truth, Martha Culver in The Constant Wife, Prudence in Camille, and Mrs. Grant in The Front Page. Like many Hollywood supporting players, her screen time was limited. She made the most of it, whether as W.C. Fields's shrewish wife in The Bank Dick, Bette Davis's fair weather friend Carrie in Dark Victory, the earthy, amorous maid Patty in Quality Street, or the overbearing dowager Mrs. Williamson in The Mating Season. On both stage and screen, Witherspoon portrayed a range of stereotypes of older women. In the end, though, she created her own type, incarnating the fashionable, frivolous, flighty, and fawning society woman, often with a thinly veiled libidinous quality. In addition to a detailed account of Witherspoon's theater and film career, this groundbreaking biography reveals her upbringing and family background and discusses her struggle with substance abuse, which resulted in two highly publicized arrests and one conviction.

Gail Marshall argues that the professional and personal history of the Victorian actress was largely defined by her negotiation with the sculptural metaphor, and that this was authorized and determined by the Ovidian myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Drawing on evidence of theatrical fictions, visual representations and popular culture's assimilation of the sculptural image, as well as theatrical productions, she examines some of the manifestations of the sculptural metaphor on the legitimate English stage, and its implications for the actress in the later nineteenth century. Within the legitimate theatre, the 'Galatea-aesthetic' positioned actresses as predominantly visual and sexual commodities whose opportunities for interpretative engagement with their plays were minimal. This dominant aesthetic was effectively challenged only at the end of the century, with the advent of the 'New' drama, and the emergence of a body of autobiographical writings by actresses.

Kierkegaard has long been known as a philosopher and theologian, but his contributions to psychology, anthropology and sociology have also made an important impact on these fields. In many of the works of his complex authorship, Kierkegaard presents his intriguing and unique vision of the nature and mental life of human beings individually and collectively. The articles featured in the present volume explore the reception of Kierkegaard's thought in the social sciences. Of these fields Kierkegaard is perhaps best known in psychology, where The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death have been the two most influential texts. With regard to the field of sociology, social criticism, or social theory, Kierkegaard's Literary Review of Two Ages has also been regarded as offering valuable insights about some important dynamics of modern society..

Like the works already published, these latest volumes of the Biographical Dictionary deal with theatre people of every ilk, ranging from dressers and one-performance actors to trumpeter John Shore (inventor of the tuning fork) and the incomparable Sarah Siddons. Also prominent is Susanna Rowson, a novelist, actress, and early female playwright. Although born into a British military family, Rowson often wrote plays that dealt with patriotic American themes and spent much of her career on the American stage. The theatrical jewel of these volumes is the "divine Sarah" Siddons: "She raised the tragedy to the skies," wrote William Hazlitt, and "embodied to our imagination the fables of mythology, of the heroic and dignified mortals of elder time." She endured much tragedy herself, including a crippling debilitating illness and the deaths of five of her seven children. Siddons played major roles in both comedy and tragedy, not the least of which was a performance as Hamlet.