Mignon Anderson

Biography

Baltimore, 1892: the city handed a spotlight to Mignon Anderson the instant she drew breath. At six months old she was already propped onstage as the leading lady’s infant, a prelude belted out by two ex-vaudevillians—her father, once an opera-baritone, now selling policies, and her mother, Hallie Howard, who traded applause for lullabies. By her teens, painters fought to catch the angle of her cheekbones on canvas; cameras would soon line up for the same privilege. Thanhouser’s doors swung open in 1911 and Anderson stepped through as the doomed Irish patriot’s wife in Robert Emmet. Fans swooned, coworkers smirked: off-set she was “Filet Mignon,” juicy gossip on two legs, linked first to song-and-dance man Val Hush, then to leading man Irving Cummings. A ring appeared, vanished, and in its place arrived fellow Thanhouser player J. Morris Foster—husband from 1915 until death parted them fifty-one years later. Universal lured her away in 1917; twelve quick months delivered The Hunted Man and A Young Patriot before she bolted from the lot. Independence suited her: Metro’s The Claim (1918), Republic’s Mountain Madness (1920), Peerless’ The Heart of a Woman (1920) kept her face on screens while majors looked the other way. Between shoots she and Foster traded flicker for footlights, taking two stage sabbaticals—one in 1919, another when talkies were tipping the world on its ear. Los Angeles finally dimmed the marquee on 25 February 1983, but the celluloid still flickers, preserving the Baltimore baby who never needed a second take on living large.