Without a Doubt: Teresa Wright, 1918-2005

Teresa Wright (left) with Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver.

In an industry filled with famous faces more than happy to conform to any role, just to be working, Teresa Wright did not. Her resistance to the studio system of the 1940s and ’50s cost her a long-term contract that had been personally orchestrated by Sam Goldwyn. He had seen her in the 1939 Broadway hit, Life with Father, and immediately wanted her in his stable of talent. Less than 10 years later, he would tear up their deal, claiming Wright was difficult. In fact, she demanded and earned respect.

And yet, Wright — who died on 6 March, at 86, following a heart attack — worked with Alfred Hitchcock, the man who so famously said actors should be “treated like cattle.” But, by the time she starred with Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), 25-year-old Wright was already one of the most honored actresses in Hollywood. She received three Academy Award nominations for her first three films — The Little Foxes (1941), Pride of the Yankees and Mrs. Miniver (both 1942). And she won for Best Supporting Actress, alongside Best Actress Greer Garson for her work in the last.

Born in Manhattan as Muriel Teresa in 1918, Wright was a big city girl with even larger aspirations. After attending Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, she was encouraged to pursue a career in the theater. Even as a teenager, Wright was suspicious of such advice: she thought acting was limiting, that her advisors believed she lacked the intelligence to pursue other career options. But after two years at the Wharf Theater in Massachusetts and a name change (Actors Equity already had a Muriel Wright on the books), Teresa found a plum position as Dorothy McGuire’s understudy in Our Town. She went on tour with the play before playing Mary Skinner in Father‘s famous Great White Way run (Wright stayed with that show for over a year).

When Goldwyn came calling, Wright had two simple demands: she wanted to be cast opposite Bette Davis in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, then in production, and she wanted a clause in her contract stating that she did not have to pose for swimsuit or cheesecake photos. Goldwyn relented, and Wright was soon a star. William Wyler, who directed Foxes, claimed she was the most promising young actress he had ever worked with. But her reluctance to run through the standard publicity mill gave the fan magazines plenty of fodder, and some gossipers speculated there was something “physically wrong” with her.

However, the one-two combination of Pride of the Yankees and Mrs. Miniver the following year quelled most of those concerns. But, even though she was one of the few actresses ever to be nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year, she found herself locked into a wholesome but limited persona that peaked with her portrayal of Fredrick March’s daughter in the 1946 Best Picture winner, The Best Years of Our Lives.

She had a couple of major roles later, featured alongside Marlon Brando in his first film (1950’s The Men) and starring with Spencer Tracy in George Cukor’s The Actress (1953). But great movie parts were rare, then as now; eventually, television embraced her. Here she found the chance to rediscover her formidable acting skills. She earned Emmy nominations for her turns as Annie Sullivan in a Playhouse 90 production of The Miracle Worker (1957) and as famed photographer and Parkinson’s victim, Margaret Bourke-White in a biography made for Breck Sunday Showcase (1960).

Over the years, she married twice (once to Goldwyn editor and Duel in the Sun novelist Niven Busch, with whom she had two children, and later to Tea and Sympathy playwright Robert Anderson) and made several rapturous returns to the stage. She starred in the original company of Anderson’s I Never Sang for My Father (1968), and played Linda, with George C. Scott as Willie Loman, in a 1975 revival of Death of a Salesman. She returned to movies in 1977, appearing in the Merchant/Ivory production of Roseland, and then starred with Ralph Bellamy and Diane Keaton in 1988’s The Good Mother. Her last onscreen appearance would be as Miss Birdie in Francis Ford Coppola’s take on John Grisham’s The Rainmaker in 1997.

Unlike many actresses of her era and ours, Wright made no attempt to reinvent herself. She fought so hard to play level-headed, decent women with dignity, that she wasn’t about to waste her time and talent on stunt casting. As the end of the century saw a renewed celebration of WWII and the Greatest Generation, Wright was remembered again for her work in Mrs. Miniver and Best Years, turned into an icon of the good girl back home, the patient partner who’d never dream of penning a “Dear John” send-off to our brave boys fighting overseas. This was both a blessing and a curse. It kept her frozen forever in an era built on basic “family values” and patriotism, but it also made her a prisoner of a cultural past.

Wright’s work, though, was as expansive as it was consistent. She embodied stoicism as Ellie Gehrig in Pride, innocence threatened by devious Bette Davis in Foxes, and youthful idealism shattered by the discovery of her Uncle Charlie’s dark secret in Shadow. Coincidentally, Thornton Wilder helped Hitchcock craft his tale of evil in Anytown, U.S.A. And perhaps ironically, Wright will always be associated with one of the Master of Suspense’s most memorable and esteemed films. But Teresa Wright was much more than just part of the Hollywood herd. She believed she was worth much more. And no doubt about it, she was.