Isabel Randolph

Isabel Randolph
As Mrs. Uppington in Fibber McGee and Molly
Born	(1889-12-04)December 4, 1889 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	January 11, 1973(1973-01-11) (aged 83) Burbank, California, U.S.
Resting place	California
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1910–1966
Children	2

Isabel Randolph (December 4, 1889 – January 11, 1973) was an American character actress in radio and film from the 1940s through the 1960s and in television from the early 1950s to the middle 1960s.

Born in 1889 in Chicago Randolph had an extensive acting career in regional theater all over the American Midwest, from the pre-World War I era right up through to the start of her radio career in the mid-1930s — for example, she was at the Princess Theater in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1918,</ref> and, in 1931, at the Loyola Community Theater in Chicago.

Isabel Randolph gained nationwide popularity on the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly (on the air 1935-1959), where she began in various "snooty" roles January 13, 1936, eventually becoming the long-running series character, the pompous Mrs. Abigail Uppington, a snooty society matron whom Fibber addressed as "Uppy", and whose pretensions Fibber delighted in deflating. She stayed with the comedy series for seven years, but was gone when the show began its eighth season in the fall of 1943.

She also starred as the wife in NBC's soap opera Dan Harding's Wife (on the air January 20, 1936 thru February 10, 1939), and was in the cast of another NBC soap opera One Man's Family (on the air 1932-59) during the 1940s.

Even while young, Randolph specialized in middle-aged "grand dame" roles on stage and radio, continuing in these roles when she entered films in 1940. She re-created her character of Mrs. Uppington in RKO's Look Who's Laughing in 1941 and Here We Go Again in 1942, both spin-offs of the Fibber McGee and Molly radio series. In 1943, she co-starred in the Republic musical O, My Darling Clementine.

She worked in more than a few 1940s films with Lucille Ball. She played many small roles in major pictures, and starred in major (though stereotypical) roles in B-pictures — though, in at least one Republic Studios western of the early 1950s (Thundering Caravans, one of the Sheriff Rocky Lane film series), she was cast against type as an evil criminal mastermind.