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The Times-Picayune (26/Oct/1994) - Versatile actress is dead at 89

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Versatile actress is dead at 89

Mildred Natwick, a versatile actress who created an engaging gallery of eccentric, whimsical and spunky characters in plays, films and television for more than 60 years, died Tuesday at her home in New York City. She was 89.

Miss Natwick, a small woman with sharp features and a mischievous manner, was a familiar figure on the Broadway stage, where she appeared in about 40 productions. Among other roles, she played an idiosyncratic secretary in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida," an extroverted medium in Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit," and a shrewish wife in Jean Anouilh's "Waltz of the Toreadors."

New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson, in his review of the Anouilh play in 1957, characterized her performance as "protean" and one that "rides the whirlwind with a great sweep of venomous extravagance."

Miss Natwick's comic brilliance in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" prompted Walter Kerr to acclaim her in 1963 as "the most hilarious woman in the Western hemisphere." She further confirmed her versatility in 1970 in Harold Pinter's "Landscape" and in 1971 when, at 62, she made her debut in a singing role in a John Kander-Fred Ebb musical, "70, Girls, 70," as the disarming leader of a circle of elderly people seeking self-esteem by stealing furs.

Among Miss Natwick's films were four directed by John Ford. She appeared as a prostitute in "The Long Voyage Home," a doomed mother in "The Three Godfathers," a hard-bitten Army wife in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and a sly widow in "The Quiet Man."

In a 1990 interview, she praised Ford as a masterly director who needed just a few words to inspire actors and give them the right clue or insight for a scene. In contrast, she said, Alfred Hitchcock, in directing the comedy "The Trouble With Harry," told her and the other actors precisely what he wanted.

Miss Natwick concentrated her career on Broadway, saying she preferred plays to movies because "on the stage, you're in control for two hours, while in a film, you do bits and pieces, usually out of sequence."

She was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her work in the 1967 film version of "Barefoot in the Park." She also received several Tony and Emmy nominations and was awarded an Emmy for "The Snoop Sisters," a 1973-74 television series in which she and Helen Hayes played successful mystery writers who were obsessed with solving real crimes.

Miss Natwick began performing at age 21 with the Vagabonds, a nonprofessional group in Baltimore. She soon joined the celebrated University Players on Cape Cod, Mass., trading lines with other young performers such as Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and Joshua Logan. She made her Broadway debut in the melodrama "Carry Nation" in 1932.

Among her films were "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945), "The Late George Apley" (1947), "Cheaper by the Dozen" (1950), "The Court Jester" (1956), "If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium" (1967), "Daisy Miller" (1974) and "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988).

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