Revere, Anne (1903–1990)

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Revere, Anne (1903–1990)

American actress who won an Academy Award for her role in National Velvet but was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Born on June 25, 1903, in New York City; died of pneumonia on December 18, 1990, in Locust Valley, New York; attended Wellesley College; married Samuel Roser (a stage director), in 1935.

Selected theater:

made Broadway debut in The Great Barrington (1931); appeared in Lady With a Lamp (1931), Wild Waves (1932), Double Door (1933), The Children's Hour (1934), As You Like It (1937), The Three Sisters (1939), Cue for Passion (1958), Jolly's Progress (1959), and Toys in the Attic (1960).

Selected filmography:

Double Door (1934); One Crowded Night (1940); The Howards of Virginia (1940); The Devil Commands (1941); Men of Boys Town (1941); The Flame of New Orleans (1941); Remember the Day (1941); Meet the Stewarts (1942); The Falcon Takes Over (1942); Are Husbands Necessary? (1942); The Gay Sisters (1942); Star Spangled Rhythm (1942); The Meanest Man in the World (1943); Shantytown (1943); Old Acquaintance (1943); The Song of Bernadette (1943); Standing Room Only (1944); Rainbow Island (1944); National Velvet (1945); The Keys of the Kingdom (1945); Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1945); The Thin Man Goes Home (1945); Don Juan Quilligan (1945); Fallen Angel (1945); Dragonwyck (1946); The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947); Carnival in Costa Rica (1947); Forever Amber (1947); Secret Beyond the Door (1948); Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! (1948); Deep Waters (1948); You're My Everything (1949); The Great Missouri Raid (1951); A Place in the Sun (1951); Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970); Macho Callahan (1970); Birch Interval (1976).

A highly touted character actress and a Tony and Oscar winner, Anne Revere was born in 1903 in New York City and attended Wellesley College. She studied acting at the American Laboratory Theater and worked in stock and repertory before making her Broadway debut in 1931 in The Great Barrington. In 1933, she appeared in Double Door, then went to Hollywood to reprise her role in the film version a year later. Returning to New York, she was cast as Martha Dobie in Lillian Hellman 's first play, The Children's Hour (1934), a controversial drama which brought the subject of lesbianism to the stage for the first time. The play was explosive and ran for 691 performances. Deemed too sensational for the Pulitzer Prize, it won the newly created New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

In 1940, Revere returned to Hollywood for a more prolonged stay and over the next decade played a series of memorable characters. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Elizabeth Taylor 's mother in National Velvet (1945) and was nominated for her supporting roles in The Song of Bernadette (1943), based on the story of Bernadette of Lourdes , and Gentleman's Agreement (1947), the film adaptation of Laura Z. Hobson 's novel. Revere also turned in a solid performance in A Place in the Sun (1951), playing the mother of Montgomery Clift.

Revere's career came to a crashing halt in 1951, during the McCarthy era, when she was blacklisted by the industry for pleading the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Revere did not work for years. For a time, she and her husband Samuel Roser ran an acting school in Los Angeles; then, in the late 1950s, they moved back East, where Revere returned to the stage and appeared on television. In 1960, she won a Tony for her performance in another Hellman play, Toys in the Attic. During the late 1960s, Revere had a running part on the ABC-television soap opera "A Time for Us," but she did not have another substantial screen role until Birch Interval in 1976. Anne Revere died, age 87, in 1990.