Ethel Owen
| Ethel Owen | |
|---|---|
Owen in 1952
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| Born |
March 30, 1893 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | February 16, 1997 (aged 103) Savannah, Georgia, U.S. |
| Years active | 1945-1956 |
| Spouse(s) | Raymond G. Owens (?-1942) his death John Hale Almy |
| Children | Mary Owens Virginia Owens Pamela Britton (Armilda Jane Owens) (1923-1974) |
Ethel Owen (March 30, 1893 – February 16, 1997) was an American actress with a lengthy career on stage as well as radio and television. In her early sixties, during the mid-1950s, she had a memorable recurring TV role on The Honeymooners, playing Mrs. Gibson, Ralph Kramden's sharp-tongued, interfering mother-in-law.
Born in Chicago, Ethel Waite started performing around the time of her fourteenth birthday in 1907. Although she is credited with appearances on a number of vaudeville circuits, her primary venue was the legitimate stage, mostly as a member of regional touring theatre groups. Following marriage, in her early twenties, to a Wisconsin physician, Raymond G. Owens, she had three daughters, and while the eldest, Mary, would move to Texas, upon deciding on a career as a social worker in Fort Worth, the younger girls, Virginia and Armilda Jane, followed their mother into show business as actresses.
While raising a family, Ethel Waite continued to maintain her career and adopted Ethel Owen, the shortened version of her married surname, as a new stage name. She continued to perform in summer stock, and Armilda Jane, born in Milwaukee in 1923, began as a child actress in her mother's plays. Well known in by her tenth birthday, she was even offered a film contract at a time when the success of Shirley Temple's first starring films in 1934 caused studios to conduct searches for other talented performing youngsters, but her mother decided against the move. In succeeding years, she became a teenage performer in musical comedy and, changing her stage name to Pamela Britton, had co-starring roles on Broadway and in a few films, including two classics, the 1945 musical Anchors Aweigh, playing Frank Sinatra's Brooklyn-accented girlfriend, and the 1950 noir, D.O.A., eventually moving to TV sitcoms as the scatterbrained title character in 1957's Blondie and, from 1963 to 1966, as the inquisitive landlady, Mrs. Brown, in My Favorite Martian.
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