Cora Witherspoon
| Cora Witherspoon | |
|---|---|
As Gypsy in Dangerous Number (1937)
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| Born |
January 5, 1890 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | November 17, 1957 (aged 67) Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Resting place | Metairie Cemetery |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1905–1954 |
Cora Witherspoon (January 5, 1890 – November 17, 1957) was an American stage and film character actress whose career spanned nearly half a century. She began in theatre where she would remain rooted even after entering motion pictures in the early 1930s. As Witherspoon’s career progressed she carved out a niche playing haughty society women or harridan housewives such as Princess Lina in Ferenc Molnár's 1928 play, Olympia, or Agatha Sousè, W. C. Fields’ domineering spouse in the 1940 film, The Bank Dick. John Springer and Jack Hamilton, authors of They Had Faces Then: Super Stars, Stars, and Starlets of the 1930's (1974), wrote that "Witherspoon was blessed with a face that might have been drawn by one of those cartoonists who specialize in dealing with the war between men and women."
She was born in New Orleans, to Cora S. Bell and Henry Edgeworth Witherspoon. Her father was an assistant surgeon with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War while her mother was an aunt of the civil rights advocate Judge John Minor Wisdom. Witherspoon was orphaned by age 10 and raised at least in part by her older sister, Maud, who, while still in her teens founded the Maud Witherspoon Rag Doll Manufacturing Company. Witherspoon's ancestors had reportedly once owned Ellington Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.
Witherspoon made her professional stage debut in 1905 with a New Orleans stock company. She first appeared in New York at the Belasco Theatre in the 1910 hit comedy, The Concert, which was Leo Ditrichstein's adaptation of the stage play, in which the 20-year-old actress portrayed the 76 years old Edith Gordon. Witherspoon appeared with Ditrichstein in September 1913 for a four-month run at the Belasco and briefly the Theatre Republic playing Fanny Lamont in The Temperamental Journey, from the comedy Pour Vivre Heureux by Andre Rivoire and Yves Mirandeis. From September 1914 into the following May at the Gaiety Theatre she played Sally McBride in Jean Webster’s comedy, Daddy Long Legs.
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