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Versatile actress is dead at 89
By PETER B. FLINT
© 1994, The New
York Times
published with their permission
 Mildred Natwick, a versatile actress who created an engaging gallery of
eccentric, whimsical and spunky characters in plays, films and television for more than 60 years,
died Tuesday at her home in New York City. She was 89.
Miss Natwick, a small woman with sharp features and a mischievous manner, was a familiar
figure on the Broadway stage, where she appeared in about 40 productions. Among other roles, she
played an idiosyncratic secretary in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida," an extroverted
medium in Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit," and a shrewish wife in Jean Anouilh's
"Waltz of the Toreadors."
New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson, in his review of the Anouilh play in 1957,
characterized her performance as "protean" and one that' "rides the whirlwind with
a great sweep of venomous extravagance."
Miss Natwick's comic brilliance in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" prompted
Walter Kerr to acclaim her in 1963 as "the most hilarious woman in the Western
hemisphere." She further confirmed her versatility in 1970 in Harold Pinter's
"Landscape" and in1971 when, at 62, she made her debut in a singing role in a John
Kander-Fred Ebb musical, "70, Girls, 70," as the disarming leader of a circle of
elderly people seeking self-esteem by stealing furs.
Among Miss Natwick's films were four directed by John Ford. She appeared as a prostitute
in "The Long Voyage Home," a doomed mother in "The Three Godfathers," a
hard-bitten Army wife in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and a sly widow in "The Quiet
Man."
In a 1990 interview, she praised Ford as a masterly director who needed just a few words
to inspire actors and give them the right clue or insight for a scene. In contrast, she said,
Alfred Hitchcock, in directing the comedy "The Trouble With Harry," told her and the
other actors precisely what he wanted.
Miss Natwick concentrated her career on Broadway, saying she preferred plays to movies
because "on the stage, you're in control for two hours, while in a film, you do bits and
pieces, usually out of sequence."
She was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her work in the
1967 film version of "Barefoot in the Park." She also received several Tony and Emmy
nominations and was awarded an Emmy for "The Snoop Sisters," a 1973-74 television
series in which she and Helen Hayes played successful mystery writers who were obsessed with
solving real crimes.
Miss Natwick began performing at age 21 with the Vagabonds, a
nonprofessional group in Baltimore. She soon joined the celebrated University Players on Cape
Cod, Mass., trading lines with other young performers such as Henry Fonda, James Stewart,
Margaret Sullivan and Joshua Logan. She made her Broadway debut in the melodrama "Carrie
Nation" in 1932.
Among her films were "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945), "The
Late George Apley" (1947), "Cheaper by the Dozen" (1950), "The Court
Jester" (1956), "If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium" (1967), "Daisy
Miller" (1974) and "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988). |
Mildred was my father's first cousin. She was a busy character actress on stage
(her preferred work), with 31 credits on the screen and many on TV. See her 
She
appeared often in comedies, and in Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955), The
Quiet Man (1952) and in many Hitchcock TV dramas. She was Corie's mother in Neil Simon's Barefoot
in the Park on Broadway and in the 1967 movie, where she succumbed to the bohemian courting
of Charles Boyer. In that role, she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Many of us got to visit this elegant
and witty lady in her penthouse overlooking Central Park. On my last visit, she spoke of her
role as Madame De Rosemonde in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) which she confided to me 'was
a rather scandalous movie'. She told me that she and Henry Fonda had auditioned together for
their first jobs! Millie was active 'till her death on October 25, 1994 at age 89. My sister 