Mary Boland

Mary Boland
Mary Boland (c. 1915) during her tenure in silent films, 1915-20.
Born	Marie Anne Boland (1882-01-28)January 28, 1882 Girardville, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	June 23, 1965(1965-06-23) (aged 83) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1907–1955

Mary Boland (January 28, 1882 – June 23, 1965) was an American stage and film actress.

Born Marie Anne Boland in Girardville, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of repertory actor William Boland, and his wife Mary Cecilia Hatton. She had an older sister named Sara. The family later moved to Detroit.

Boland went to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Detroit. By the age of fifteen she had left school and was performing on stage. She debuted on Broadway in 1907 in the play The Ranger with Dustin Farnum and had appeared in eleven Broadway productions, notably with John Drew, before making her silent film debut for Triangle Studios in 1915. She entertained soldiers in France during World War I then returned to America. After appearing in nine movies, she left filmmaking in 1920, returning to the stage and appearing in a number of Broadway productions. She became famous as a comedian.

Boland's greatest success on the stage in the 1920s was the comedy The Cradle Snatchers (1925–26), in which she, Edna May Oliver, and Margaret Dale, having been abandoned by their husbands, take on young lovers. Boland's paramour was Humphrey Bogart in one of his first roles. She had previously performed with Bogart in the 1923 comedy Meet the Wife at the Klaw Theatre as Gertrude Lennox.

After an eleven-year absence, in 1931 she returned to Hollywood under contract to Paramount Pictures. She achieved far greater film success with her second try, becoming one of the 1930s most popular character actresses, always playing major roles in her films and often starring, notably in a series of comedies opposite Charles Ruggles.