Anne Elstner

Anne Elstner
Anne Elstner (left) and Stella Dallas co-star Vivian Smolen
Born	January 22, 1899 Lake Charles, Louisiana
Died	January 29, 1981, age 82 Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Other names	Anne Matthews
Occupation	Actress
Spouse(s)	Jack Matthews, Jr.
Parent(s)	Joseph and Sallie Elstner

Anne Elstner Matthews (January 22, 1899 – January 29, 1981) was an American actress best known for her role in the radio soap opera Stella Dallas during its entire run from 1937 to 1955. For 18 years, Elstner voiced the serial's title character, described by The New York Times as "the beautiful daughter of an impoverished farmhand who had married above her station in life."

Elstner was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Joseph and Sallie Elstner. She moved from her childhood home at the age of seven, and began a series of moves across the country with her family, including "a number of years" in San Benito, Texas, as her father, an accountant, moved from job to job.

She attended Senn High School in Chicago for her freshman year before transferring to Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy, a private Catholic all-girls school in Wheeling, West Virginia that was her mother's alma mater, where she played lead roles in school performances and plays before graduating from the school in 1918.

Moving to New York City, Elstner worked a variety of jobs and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A role as an understudy in the play Liliom led to her breakout role on Broadway in the 1923 production of Sun-Up. A July 27, 1923, review in The Wall Street Journal commended Elstner "for her faithful delineation of the unattractive but moving mountain girl."

She married Jack Matthews, Jr., at Manhattan's Little Church Around the Corner, after which she left the stage and moved with her husband to a farm in Maryland. When the farming didn't work out, she returned to New York in 1928 and was given the opportunity to reprise her lead role in Sun-Up.