Jane Darwell

Biography

Palmyra, Missouri, knew her first as Patti Woodard, the railroad president’s daughter who roamed her family’s ranch humming arias she wasn’t allowed to pursue. To keep the Woodard name spotless, she invented Jane Darwell, stepped onstage at thirty-three, and four silent years later stepped in front of a movie camera in 1913. From flickering title cards to full-throated talkies, Darwell became Hollywood’s favorite silver-haired anchor, the woman whose lap you wished was your own—until she flipped the script. In 1940 she steadied the Joads as stalwart Ma, earning an Oscar for *The Grapes of Wrath*. Three years later she stirred lynch-mob fever as the venomous Ma Grier in *The Ox-Bow Incident*, and in 1950 she slammed cell doors without mercy as the isolation-wing matron of *Caged*. More than two hundred roles later, she quietly settled into the Motion Picture Country Home, curtains apparently closed. Walt Disney drove out, script in hand, and coaxed one last bow: the bird-selling governess of *Mary Poppins* in 1964. With that final curtsey she returned to privacy, dying in 1967 after a stroke and heart attack. She rests at Forest Lawn, Glendale, the ranch girl who sang anyway—just on a different stage.