This past weekend I attended a performance at my local theatre of playwright Jerome Kilty’s epistolary drama Dear Liar, about the flirtatious friendship of George Bernard Shaw and famed British stage actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell.  And in the way that you’re never too old to learn something — and this was my first time seeing this play — I was fascinated to discover that Mrs. Campbell had, in her later career, spent some time in Hollywood in the movies.  When I got home I ran right to the computer to find out how this woman, born in 1865, managed to end up in Tinsel Town, so many miles away from her native London.

Mrs. Patrick Campbell, born Beatrice Stella Tanner, was of a different age, born while Queen Victoria was on the throne of England, a daughter of the gentle class, who early on discovered a gift for music and drama.  Those talents would serve her well when she later found herself in need of a career after being deserted by her husband and left with two young children to support.  Taking her married name as her stage name — and she would, all through her career, continue to be known as Mrs. Patrick Campbell, or Mrs. Pat — she made her stage debut in her twenties and began to have real success after only a few years, becoming a favorite on the London stage.  Beloved for both her thespian skills and her courage and bravado in choosing sometimes controversial roles, the outspoken actress became a constant figure in the theaters of London and Europe, and shortly after the turn of the century she made her first tour of the United States.

Around 1912 Mrs. Campbell met George Bernard Shaw, the man of prodigious intellect and wit, a playwright who had turned out success after success — Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, Major Barbara, Misalliance — and the two were enchanted with each other.  Shaw wrote Pygmalion specifically for Mrs. Pat, and even though she was nearly fifty years old and out of the demo to play cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, she was a huge success in the role in London and also as she toured with it in the States.

She continued her successful stage career for many years, and after officially retiring from her theatrical career — including appearing in a revival of Pygmalion at age 55 –  when the movies found sound she made her way to Hollywood to advise a new generation of actors and actresses on acting technique.  In addition to coaching, Mrs. Campbell also appeared in a handful of movies (she had made one silent in Britain in 1920), beginning with Fox’s adaptation of Gerald Du Maurier’s play The Dancers in 1930.  Playing the role of actress Lois Moran’s Aunt Emily, the N.Y. Times noted that it was “assuredly not a part that taxes Mrs. Campbell's talents, but she succeeds in making a decidedly favorable impression in it and her diction is music to the ear.”

Next up in 1934, Mrs. Campbell appeared in MGM’s saucy drama Riptide, directed by Edmund Goulding, starring Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, and Herbert Marshall.  Mrs. Pat played Aunt Hetty, and it’s easy to see what niche she filled — the witty dowager who could put the youngsters in their places — and that she did it well.  It was probably about this time that Mrs. Campbell, who had always been known as much for her talent as for her cheeky conversation, allegedly engaged MGM head Irving Thalberg at a party, remarking about his wife, Norma Shearer: “She has such pretty little eyes — and they’re so close together!”

Her next film was One More River for Universal, directed by James Whale and co-starring other noted British Hollywoodites Diana Wynard, Colin Clive, Jane Wyatt (her screen debut), Reginald Denny, and Lionel Atwill.  The dramatization of the final Forsyte book by John Galsworthy, the intense and adult drama again brought Mrs. Campbell good notices for her witty presence.  She was actually back at MGM for her next role, also in 1934, in Outcast Lady starring Constance Bennett and Herbert Marshall.  The story of an ill-fated romance thwarted by class differences, Mrs. Pat’s role as the Lady Eve was once again ideal for her formidable strength in playing wise older gentlewomen.

Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s last movie role is probably her best remembered, that of the pawnbroker in the Josef von Sternberg-directed 1935 version of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, starring the haunting Peter Lorre as Raskolnikov, Edward Arnold and Marian Marsh.  It was perhaps ironic that she might be best recalled for this role, so unlike her usual witty and civilized performances, her character here a malevolent, haunting and distinctly unlikable woman, but her work here is characteristically fine and one wonders how many more great screen roles she might have essayed, but she was seventy years old at this time and she gave up acting for good at this point.

Despite being celebrated on two continents and now on the silver screen, Mrs. Patrick Campbell never could rest on her laurels.  A distinctly independent woman in all respects, Mrs. Campbell worked hard her whole life but found herself in diminished circumstances at the end, finally passing away in France just before the start of WW II.  Interestingly, she had wanted to return to England, but hadn’t the funds and also would not leave behind her beloved pet dog, one of a many she had loved over her long life, who would have had to been put in the long quarantine dictated by British authorities.  Mrs. Patrick Campbell died in 1940 at the age of 75.  She was a woman who had bridged the centuries and brought her artistry to both the stage and to Hollywood, and at least we do have a few movie appearances by which to remember this unique and talented woman.