Mary Wickes

I watched Little Women (1994) last night and Mary made a marvelous Aunt March. Nice that in her later years she had good roles in LW, Postcards from the Edge and the Sister Act movies. She was a treasure.

This is OP bumping this up. Is there not more love for Mary Wickes on DL?

I loved her dry humor types scenes in the Sister Act movies.

She was wonderful in Now, Voyager with our Bette Davis

She was quite good in an episode of The Lucy Show. She played Lucy's overbearing aunt who everyone thought was wealthy. As it turns out, she wasn't rich but poor and lonely.

And of course, she was Madame Lamond.

She and Lucille Ball were very good friends going way back. I believe Mary worked on a few episodes of all the different incarnations of Lucy's shows.

Her finest performance was on "Tattletales" with a character actor queen named Elliott Reid who claimed to be her "companion."

God, I loved those lavender "couples" on TATTLETALES. Even little eight-year-old me knew there was no kissy-kissy going on there.

Charles Nelson Reilly was once on Tattletales with Julie Harris.

r9 Jiminy Glick was once a personal secretary to Charles Nelson Reilly

Mary was considered for Ethel. Terrible, terrible casting. She was also in the final Lucy show "Lucy Calls The President".

Cruella?

I was watching the news today on some channel from Scranton Wilkes-Barre. On the crawler at the bottom of the screen the were listing school cancellations and there was one ending with the word Mary, like Heart of Mary, Wilkes-Barre. I was half paying attention and I thought there was a newsflash about Mary Wickes.

Her first movie role was in “Now, Voyager.” Heck of a start. Bette Davis tells her character, “I believe you’re a treasure.”’

She was Miss Preen, another nurse in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942).

[quote] God, I loved those lavender "couples" on TATTLETALES.

Dick Sargent and Fannie Flagg!

[quote]Bette Davis tells her character, “I believe you’re a treasure.”’

The actual line Davis says to her is even more hilariously arch:

'Dora, I suspect you're a treasure."

Sheridan Whiteside: [opening a box of candy] Ah, pecan butternut fudge!

Nurse Preen: Oh, my, you mustn't eat candy, Mr. Whiteside, it's very bad for you.

Sheridan Whiteside: My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life. She lived to be 102 and when she'd been dead three days she looked better than you do NOW.

Sheridan Whiteside: Go in and read the life of Florence Nightingale and learn how unfitted you are for your chosen profession.

Sheriden Whiteside: Will you take your clammy hand off my chair? You have the touch of a love-starved cobra.

Nurse Preen: I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you , Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on , anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!

[quote]Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!

Why would Preen make that mistake?

[quote]If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!

I thought Clara Barton founded the Red Cross.

She will always be the bus driver in Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows...

Mary and Lucy went to see Vivian when Viv was just a short time away from dying from cancer. Mary said, later on, that Lucy cried all the way home from the visit.

I saw her on B'way as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!. She had a looong career.

R25, true. Also true that whenever Wickes did Lucy's show (and Ball had her on pretty frequently), she always had to work for scale. One of Ball's best friends.

I loved her as the housekeeper in ON MOONLIGHT BAY and BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON.

Leon Ames: (looking in the oven) That turkey looks delicious, Stella. How long will it be before it's ready?

Mary Wickes: I don't know - I've never cooked one with the oven door open before.

Heel toe! Heel toe! Heel toe!

Victim! Rescuer! Victim! Rescuer! Victim! Rescuer!

Dora! I want Dora!

Yes, your many.

Fluff my labia!

Her signature role was in the original Broadway production, in 1939, of the Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner." She was Miss Preen, the nurse who became the principal object of Monty Woolley's disdain: "Miss Bedpan," he called her. Ms. Wickes repeated the role opposite Woolley (as Sheridan Whiteside) in the film version. Years later she was Miss Preen again in a television production, with Orson Welles as Whiteside.

The real highlight of this thread is R13 mentioning a S/WB TV station in response to this OP.

Unless R13 is somehow OP, then of course, less of a highlight.

Related: I wonder how long a DL thread listing the lavender couples of TattleTales could get?

The NYT obit has nothing about her personal life.

Dora, fluff my pubes!

I want Dora!

Yes, your highness?

Lick my labia!

It is often forgotten Mary Wickes was the first to play Mary Poppins. It was an early live television broadcast (not a musical) which sadly appears to be lost to time; only three photographs survive. No kinescopes have been found. P.L. Travers seemed to actually approve of this version as it was closer to what she intended, unlike the Disney version.

Also, her appearance in one episode of "Sanford and Son" is an early highlight of the series.

Which Sanford episode?

She was no Thelma Ritter.

I saw her in the LACLO Wonderful Town with Nanette Fabray. Even though her name was in the program, no one connected the name with the face. When she made her entrance the entire audience went "ohhhhhh"

She was George Kaufman's favorite actor. But she had to fuck him to get the role of Miss Preen otherwise it was going to Mary Astor. So she was no lesbian.

Loved her as the clueless aunt in Sigmund and the Sea Monsters!

I went to a TCM screening of Postcards from the Edge once at their festival. Ben M. interviewed Richard Dreyfuss.

At the end of the film as the credits flashed on the screen (MERYL STREEP, SHIRLEY MACLAINE, GENE HACKMAN ETC.) there was a bunch of murmuring when Mary Wickes came up. (Like oh yeah, that's who that was etc.)

Ben M. came out and said you know you are at a TCM event when Mary Wickes gets a bigger response than Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine. I thought that was funny.

I’m into Marjorie Main

For some reason, I most remember her for the TV show Doc with Barnard Hughes. When she’s mentioned, that’s the first image that pops into my mind.

I always think of her as the housekeeper from "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters."

Howdy's got worms!

Mary seems like she would have been a good antagonist for Marjorie Main in the Kettle movie she did.

Marg scared me.

1983 interview

R7, Elliott (friends called him Ted) and Mary bearded for each other.

R10 - Loved Skip E. Lowe's cable interview shows. Rest gently, Skippy.

After her mother died, Lucie Arnaz discovered numerous intimate letters from Mary to Lucy among her papers.

She did a great guest role on a Columbo- she and Peter Falk improvised most of the sequence with Mary playing the landlady of a young artist murdered by an art critic - fun episode with another scene featuring a twink parking attendant looking like he just wandered off the set of a 70’s porn film. I love Columbo!

[quote]named Elliott Reid who claimed to be her "companion."

Do tell...

Mary and Madonna were tight

R53, define "intimate"...was Lucy writing to Mary how she longed to sniff her muff?

Little interview

[quote]I watched Little Women (1994) last night and Mary made a marvelous Aunt March. Nice that in her later years she had good roles in LW, Postcards from the Edge and the Sister Act movies.

Don't forget Disney's THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, her last film role, which was posthumously released.

She just showed up in the Elvis Presley movie I was watching, "Fun in Acapulco" - nice little part.

A lengthy resume...

r60 She is not listed in the cast of that film.

Maybe she went uncredited like Kathleen Turner in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?

R62 - then it's missing from her filmography. She plays a tourist who, with her husband, stops to talk to the female matador in the nightclub and they invite her to their house in Atlanta.

R62 - I stand corrected, it was Mary Treen, not Mary Wickes.

Now, Voyager was of course not the only project where Mary worked with Bette.

This pilot (incredibly, not picked up to series) was another one.

Ohhhhhhhh...

R66 - produced by Aeron spelling. The way seeing Davis' face is delayed at the beginning is like a horror movie.

68 replies and none of you fags mentioned Josephine the Plumber?!?!?

that was Jane Withers.

R68, In the dance scene, Bette is wearing a dress very similar to the Edith Head creation she wore as Margo Channing for Bill's coming home party in "All About Eve".

What's all the stuff Mary picks up that Bette has presumed left behind her?

Poor Mary doesn't get the filtered closeups Bette does.

Why is everyone yelling on the show?

"Quintessential" is ever so MARY! Wickes.

Lord.

Character actor is a polite way to say they are not a STAR.

Bette has more powder on her face than Ann Miller.

I actually thought it was Margaret Hamilton and not Wickes when I first saw “White Christmas.” But I was only 15.