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The Telegraph (11/Mar/2005) - Obituary: Teresa Wright

(c) Telegraph (11/Mar/2005)

Teresa Wright

Teresa Wright, who died on Sunday aged 86, epitomised wholesome family values in Hollywood films of the wartime and post-war years, while eschewing the glamour treatment then customarily reserved for rising stars.

She secured Oscar nominations for her first three pictures - The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs Miniver and Pride of the Yankees (both 1942), and was nominated both as best actress (in Pride of the Yankees) and best supporting actress (Mrs Miniver), clinching the award for the latter.

It gave her tremendous clout early in her career, and she used it to write into her contract with Samuel Goldwyn a clause of unprecedented audacity. "The aforementioned Teresa Wright," it stipulated, "shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed on the beach with hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: in shorts; playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding sky rockets for the Fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at a turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf; or assuming an athletic stance while pretending to hit something with a bow and arrow."

Not only was this exceptionally demanding; it had the effrontery to poke fun at the system. Sam Goldwyn swallowed his pride and signed it because she was then a hot property whom he needed - but he never forgave her. It was immediately clear that the arrangement would end in grief - and it did, in 1948.

After filming Enchantment, a simpering romantic drama, the actress declined to tour America promoting it, pleading ill health. Goldwyn fired her, saying that he was "sick and tired of what is going on in this town, where people have no respect for the company for which they work".

For her part, Teresa Wright issued a public statement that marked the first crack in the power of the studios. "When we sign such contracts", she said, "we say, in effect, 'We have no privacy that cannot be invaded. Treat us like cattle and speak to us like children. Send us wherever you like and work us as long as you want.' I have worked for Mr Goldwyn because I considered him a great producer and he has paid me well. But in the future I shall be glad to work for less if by so doing I can retain the common decency without which the most acclaimed job becomes intolerable. "

In challenging the studios, she was ahead of her time. It hurt her career, and the might of the movie moguls was to last at least through the next decade. But it was a chink in the edifice, and it came from an unlikely quarter. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, much tougher personalities, had tried and failed. Teresa Wright seemed almost too "nice" to be paddling in such waters.

"Nice" girls were her forte, and she managed to invest them with such virtues as decency, honesty and integrity, while avoiding any hint of smugness. But she had grit, too. In one of her most surprising scenes, she declares in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) that she is going to break Dana Andrews's marriage to Virginia Mayo.

Her strongest suit was her everyday appearance. She never underwent the transformation that turned Ava Gardner and Lana Turner into "love goddesses". Teresa Wright always looked the kind of girl who really could be a secretary or the neighbour's daughter.

Her "normality" reached its peak in The Best Years of Our Lives, the classic William Wyler film about servicemen returning from the war. Hers was not the biggest role, but it was the key one because she represented everything the men had been fighting for - the values they hoped were awaiting them on their return.

But the mood of 1946 was fleeting. As America moved into the 1950s, the chocolate-box charms of Sandra Dee came to be seen as every boy's dream of the girl next door. By 1958, in The Restless Years, Teresa Wright was playing Sandra Dee's mother. After that, she drifted out of pictures and did her best work in the theatre.

She was born Muriel Teresa Wright on October 27 1918 in New York City and was educated at Rosehaven School and Columbia High School, both in New Jersey. She was apprenticed at the Wharf theatre at Provincetown, Massachusetts, and made her Broadway début in 1938 as Martha Scott's understudy in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. In 1939 she appeared in summer stock with the Tamworth Barnstormers in New Hampshire, while her ingénue role in Life with Father (1940) caught the eye of Samuel Goldwyn and led to a long-term screen contract.

She was rushed into The Little Foxes (1941), playing Bette Davis's daughter. It proved to be an auspicious beginning in that she was required to express all the emotions - anger, remorse, passion, impetuosity - that were absent from Davis's icy performance.

Audiences took Teresa Wright instantly to their hearts. The same thing happened the following year. Dying a tragic death is one of the best ways to win an Oscar; being married to someone dying such a death is almost as good.

In Pride of the Yankees she played the valiant wife of the doomed baseball player Lou Gehrig; in Mrs Miniver she was Greer Garson's beloved daughter-in-law, killed in the early days of the war.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest American films, with a wonderful part for Teresa Wright as the teenager Charlie Newton, who idolises her namesake, Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten), unaware that he is a psychotic killer. The gradual realisation of her uncle's true nature is reflected in one of the actress's most moving performances. It was followed, in 1946, by The Best Years of Our Lives.

Then, in 1947, she played her most remarkable role in Pursued, a little-known Western with Robert Mitchum. Those who thought her limited to milk-and-water parts were taken aback. It was a revenge story with overtones of Greek tragedy in which she married her half-brother with intent to murder him at the height of passion.

After the break with Samuel Goldwyn in 1948, her film career began to peter out. The Capture (1950) was a pacifist story starring the real-life conscientious objector Lew Ayres. It was a worthy Western from a script by Niven Busch (Wright's husband).

The Men (1950) offered her a role similar to the one in Pride of the Yankees as the girlfriend of a stricken hero - this time Marlon Brando, in his screen début, as a wartime paraplegic. Hers was an excellent performance, confronting the reality of a long-term commitment without sexual satisfaction.

In the early 1950s, her most memorable work was in The Actress (1953) and Track of the Cat (1954). In the former, based on an autobiographical play by Ruth Gordon, she was cast as aspiring actress Jean Simmons's mother. Track of the Cat was an experimental Western shot in colour in the snowbound winter in which the only colours were black and white. Unusually, Teresa Wright played an unsympathetic role as a shrew.

In the later 1950s she chose her roles badly, appearing in now forgotten films such as Escapade in Japan (1957) and The Wonderful Years (1958). She made no further movies for 11 years, staging a partial comeback in Hail, Hero and The Happy Ending. Her subsequent film career was distinguished by only two roles - in James Ivory's Roseland (1977) and in Somewhere in Time (1980).

She continued to appear on stage and television, for which she was nominated for an Emmy award in The Miracle Worker. Theatrical appearances included The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Death of a Salesman, Ah, Wilderness! and Morning's at Seven.

Teresa Wright was first married (1942-52) to the novelist and screenwriter Niven Busch, with whom she had a son and a daughter. Her second husband was the playwright Robert Anderson. They divorced, remarried and divorced again.

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