1879-1942
Long an actress of the stage who later in her career became a character actor of films, Laura Hope Crews was born on this day in San Francisco. Her parents were theater people--her father a sets builder and her mother an actress--so it is hardly surprising that she started acting at an early age. She was, in fact, just four years old when she made her professional acting debut. She grew up in San Francisco and San Jose and stopped acting to attend school, but returned to the stage as a young adult. In 1900, she moved with her mother, to New York City and began to act there on the stage. It was there that she made her film debut in 1915 in the lead role of the Jesse L. Lasky produced melodrama The Fighting Hope. She was in one other 1915 Lasky production, Blackbirds; but like so many serious actors of the stage, she found silent film acting not at all to her taste. She did not appear in another film until 1929 with the coming of sound. She had supporting role in the Paramount domestic melodrama Charming Sinners, a full sound film released August. She then went back to the stage for a couple of years before turning up the Charles Brabin directed film New Morals for Old in 1932 with Robert Young, Myrna Loy and Lewis Stone. After this point she worked steadily in films. When she appeared in the film version of The Silver Cord, in 1933, she was reprising her role from the a Broadway production of the Sidney Howard play; the only other member of the production that was a part of the stage production was director John Cromwell. Without a doubt, her most famous role came as Aunt "Pittypat" in Gone With the Wind. George Cukor apparently recommended her for the role, but she already knew Clark Gable from the 1920's and had been instrumnetal in helping him get a start on the stage. It was her last film of the decade. She appeared in seven films in the early 1940's, the last of which was New York Town, where her appearance went uncredited. She passed away at 62 in New York City on the 13th of November following a sort illness. She was returned to the west coast and laid to rest at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California. Her lasting legacy was her contribution to stage performance; she had worked in some of the biggest venues on both coasts and had over 200 hundred appearances on Broadway. She also worked as a vocal coach from time to time and was hired by Gloria Swanson to help her make the transition from silent to talking cinema. This came about on the set of Swanson's 1929 self produced talkie The Trespasser, for which Crews has an editorial associate credit.
[Source: Scott G (Find A Grave)]
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