rdfs:comment | - Anne Revere (1903-1990) was a stage and film character actress who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award as Elizabeth Taylor's mother in National Velvet (1944). She guest starred on Sesame Street during Season 8, playing Ms. Sharpe, "a temporary worker" in Hooper's Store. Her character was part of an endeavor that season to include more women characters, and in non-stereotyped roles.
- She was born in New York City in 1903, a direct descendant of American Revolution hero Paul Revere. Revere made her Broadway debut in 1931 in "The Great Barrington". Three years later, she went to Hollywood to reprise her stage role in the film adaptation of "Double Door". She returned to Broadway to create the role of Martha Dobie in the original 1934 production of "The Children's Hour", and in later years she appeared on the New York stage in "As You Like It", "The Three Sisters", and "Toys In The Attic" (play), for which she won the 1960 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.
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abstract | - She was born in New York City in 1903, a direct descendant of American Revolution hero Paul Revere. Revere made her Broadway debut in 1931 in "The Great Barrington". Three years later, she went to Hollywood to reprise her stage role in the film adaptation of "Double Door". She returned to Broadway to create the role of Martha Dobie in the original 1934 production of "The Children's Hour", and in later years she appeared on the New York stage in "As You Like It", "The Three Sisters", and "Toys In The Attic" (play), for which she won the 1960 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. Revere worked steadily as a character actress in films, appearing in nearly three dozen between 1934 and 1951. She frequently was cast in the role of a matriarch and played mother to Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, John Garfield, and Montgomery Clift, among others. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress three times and won for her performance in "National Velvet". In 1951, Revere resigned from the board of the Screen Actors Guild after she pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She would not appear again on film for the next twenty years, finally returning to the screen in "Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon". She began appearing on television in 1960, notably in soap operas such as "The Edge Of Night", "Search For Tomorrow", and "Ryan's Hope". Revere and her husband, theatre director Samuel Rosen, moved to New York and opened an acting school, and she continued to work in summer stock and regional theater productions and on television. Revere died of pneumonia in her Locust Valley, New York home at the age of 87.
- Anne Revere (1903-1990) was a stage and film character actress who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award as Elizabeth Taylor's mother in National Velvet (1944). She guest starred on Sesame Street during Season 8, playing Ms. Sharpe, "a temporary worker" in Hooper's Store. Her character was part of an endeavor that season to include more women characters, and in non-stereotyped roles. After training with Maria Ouspenskaya at the American Laboratory School, Revere established herself on Broadway in the 1930s, most notably originating the part of Caroline Van Brett in the Gothic melodrama Double Door (1933, a part she reprised in the Hollywood film the next year) and taking a rare lead role in The Children's Hour as Martha, one of the two teachers accused of lesbianism. Due to the play's controversial subject matter, Revere participated in the legal fight for the show to play in Boston. In 1939, after a run in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Revere relocated to Hollywood, swiftly establishing herself as an in-demand player in a variety of distinguished films, most often as mothers (to a slew of top stars) or eccentric spinsters. Her credits included Men of Boys Town, The Song of Bernadette (Oscar nominated as Jennifer Jones' mother), The Meanest Man in the World (as Jack Benny's secretary), The Thin Man Goes Home (as shotgun wielding local Crazy Mary), and Dragonwyck (with Vincent Price, as Gene Tierney's mother). 1947 proved to be an especially productive year, as Revere played key roles in Body and Soul and Gentleman's Agreement (garnering her third and final Oscar nomination as Gregory Peck's mother). However, she soon found herself curtailed by the Red Scare, when she was called before the HUAC and refused to testify in 1951 (after shooting A Place in the Sun). When interviewed in later years, Revere said that during her Hollywood days, "I got to know communists and Communism [but] I knew it wasn't for me. I'm a free-thinking Yankee rebel and nobody's going to tell me what to do," an attitude she extended to the HUAC. As a result, Revere was blacklisted, returning to the stage but working only sporadically on Broadway, though she garnered a Tony-award for Best Featured Actress in Toys in the Attic (1960), and the very rare TV spot. She had a comeback of sorts in the 1970s, taking a small role in Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970, starring Liza Minnelli) and playing a rural herbalist/"witch" in Birch Interval (1975). In television, in addition to Sesame Street, she appeared on soap operas with recurring roles on Edge of Night, Search for Tomorrow, and Ryan's Hope, plus guest parts on The Six Million Dollar Man and Barretta.
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