As a charming young thing, the Santa Monica native starred opposite Jimmy Cagney in Here Comes the Navy & Dick Powell in Gold Diggers of 1935 & Eddie Cantor in Roman Scandals & Warner Baxter in John Ford’s The Prisoner of Shark Island & Shirley Temple in Poor Little Rich Girl, & she was James Whale’s imperiled leading lady in The Invisible Man & The Old Dark House. She was a good union gal, too—a first-year member of the Screen Actors Guild. As an older actress, she had a lovely, wordless bit, dancing with Peter O’Toole in My Favorite Year, but she will almost certainly be most remembered as the storyteller in Cameron’s Titanic, for which she became, at 87, the eldest Oscar nominee.
It was also pointed out to me that she has another Oscar distinction: With Kate Winslet, she is one of only two actors ever nominated for playing the same character in the same movie.
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