Teresa Wright in Casanova Brown (1944)

Dutch postcard by J.S.A. Photo: N.V. Columbia F.B.O. Teresa Wright in Casanova Brown (Sam Wood, 1944).

American actress Teresa Wright (1918-2005) was a natural and lovely talent who was discovered for films by Samuel Goldwyn. She was the only performer nominated for Oscars for her first three films. She won the 1942 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Carol Beldon in Mrs. Miniver. Always true to herself, she earned Hollywood stardom on her unglamorous terms.

Muriel Teresa Wright was born in the Harlem district of New York City in 1918. Her parents divorced when she was young and she lived with various relatives in New York and New Jersey. An uncle of hers was a stage actor. She attended the exclusive Rosehaven School in Tenafly, New Jersey. The acting bug revealed itself when she saw the legendary Helen Hayes perform in a production of 'Victoria Regina'. After performing in school plays and graduating from Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, she pursued acting professionally. Wright apprenticed at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers of 1937 and 1938 in such plays as 'The Vinegar Tree' and 'Susan and God'. She moved to New York and changed her name to Teresa after discovering a Muriel Wright in Actors Equity. Her first New York play was Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town' wherein she played a small part but also understudied the lead ingénue role of Emily. She eventually replaced Martha Scott in the lead after the actress was escorted to Hollywood to make pictures and recreate the Emily role on film. It was during her year-long run in 'Life with Father' that Teresa was seen by Goldwyn talent scouts, was tested, and ultimately won the coveted role of Alexandra in the film The Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941).

Teresa Wright accepted an MGM starlet contract on the condition that she would not be forced to endure cheesecake publicity or photos for any type of promotion and could return to the theatre at least once a year. Oscar-nominated for her work in The Little Foxes alongside fellow cast members Bette Davis (as calculating mother Regina) and Patricia Collinge (recreating her scene-stealing Broadway role as the flighty, dipsomaniac Aunt Birdie), Teresa's star rose even higher with her next pictures. She played the good-hearted roles of the granddaughter in the war-era tearjerker Mrs. Miniver (William Wyler, 1942) and baseball icon Lou Gehrig's altruistic wife in The Pride of the Yankees (Sam Wood, 1942) opposite Gary Cooper. The pretty newcomer won both 'Best Supporting Actress' and 'Best Actress' nods respectively in the same year, ultimately taking home the supporting trophy. Teresa's fourth huge picture in a row was Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and she even received top-billing over established star Joseph Cotten who played a murdering uncle to her suspecting niece. In 1942, she married screenwriter Niven Busch. She had a slip with her fifth picture Casanova Brown (Sam Wood, 1944) but bounced right back as part of the ensemble cast in the 'Best Picture' of the year The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) portraying the assuaging daughter of Fredric March and Myrna Loy who falls in love with damaged soldier-turned-civilian Dana Andrews.

With that film, Teresa Wright's MGM contract ended. Remarkably, she made only one film for the studio (Mrs. Miniver) during that time. The rest were all loanouts. In 1947, she gave birth to her second child, a daughter Mary Kelly Busch. As a freelancing agent, the quality of her films began to dramatically decline. Pictures such as Enchantment (Irving Reis, 1948) with David Niven, Something to Live For (George Stevens, 1952) opposite Joan Fontaine and Ray Milland, California Conquest (Lew Landers, 1952), Count the Hours! (Don Diegel, 1953), Track of the Cat (William A. Wellman, 1954) starring Robert Mitchum and Escapade in Japan (Arthur Lubin, 1957) pretty much came and went. For her screenwriter husband, she appeared in the above-average Western thriller Pursued (Raoul Walsh, 1947) and crime drama The Capture (John Sturges, 1950). Her most inspired films of that post-war era were The Men (Fred Zinnemann, 1950) opposite film newcomer Marlon Brando and the lowbudgeted but intriguing The Search for Bridey Murphy (Noel Langley, 1956) which chronicled the fascinating story of an American housewife who claimed she lived a previous life. The Golden Age of TV was her salvation during these lean film years in which she appeared in fine form in several dramatic showcases. She recreated for TV the perennial holiday classic The Miracle on 34th Street (Robert Stevenson, 1955) in which she played the Maureen O'Hara role opposite Macdonald Carey and Thomas Mitchell. She was nominated three times for an Emmy Award for her guest roles, in 1957 in The Miracle Worker, in 1960 in The Margaret Bourke-White Story, and in 1989 in Dolphin Cove.

Divorced from Busch, the father of her two children, Teresa Wright made a concentrated effort to return to the stage and found consistency in such plays as 'Salt of the Earth' (1952), 'Bell, Book and Candle' (1953), 'The Country Girl' (1953), 'The Heiress' (1954), 'The Rainmaker' (1955) and 'The Dark at the Top of the Stairs' (1957) opposite Pat Hingle, in which she made a successful Broadway return. Marrying renowned playwright Robert Anderson in 1959, stage and TV continued to be her primary focuses, notably appearing under the theatre lights in her husband's emotive drama 'I Never Sang for My Father' in 1968. The couple lived on a farm in upstate New York until their divorce in 1978. By this time a mature actress now in her 50s, challenging stage work came in the form of 'The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds', 'Long Day's Journey Into Night', 'Morning's at Seven' and 'Ah, Wilderness!' Teresa also graced the stage alongside George C. Scott's Willy Loman (as wife Linda) in an acclaimed presentation of 'Death of a Salesman' (1975), and appeared opposite Scott again in her very last play, 'On Borrowed Time' (1991). After almost a decade away from films, she came back to play the touching role of an elderly landlady opposite Matt Damon in her last picture, John Grisham's The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola, 1997). Teresa Wright passed away in New Haven from a heart attack in 2005.

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Taken on: December 22, 2024

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