Margaret Wycherly

Biography

London’s docklands echoed with the October fog the day Margaret Wycherly arrived in 1881, and the scent of greasepaint soon eclipsed the river’s salt. She conquered boards before cameras, keeping one foot onstage even after celluloid beckoned. At thirty-four she stepped before Mitchell’s crank for The Fight (1915), vanished for fourteen years, then re-emerged, coolly seance-ready, in The Thirteenth Chair (1929). Character sorcery became her trademark: watch her tilt Gary Cooper’s conscience as Ma York in Sergeant York (1941), cradle the boy’s fawn-torn heart in The Yearling (1946), or poison Restoration splendor with a whisper in Forever Amber (1947). When television flickered awake, she materialized in The Philco Television Playhouse (1948), proving phantoms adapt. A final curtsy came as Andrew Jackson’s housekeeper in The President’s Lady (1953); at seventy-two she folded her scripts and slipped away. On June 6, 1956, the curtain fell for good—seventy-four candles, three years of quiet retirement, and a legacy that still murmurs from wings to screen.