Rose Hobart

Acting

Rose Hobart

Born 1906-05-01 · New York City, New York, USA

Rose Hobart (born Rose Kefer) was an American actress and Screen Actors Guild official. When Hobart was 15, she debuted professionally in Cappy Ricks, a Chautauqua production. She was accepted for the 18-week tour because she told officials that she was 18. At that same age, she was cast in Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, which opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hobart's Broadway stage debut was on September 17, 1923 at the Knickerbocker Theater, playing a young girl in Lullaby. In 1925, she played Charmian in Caesar and Cleopatra. Hobart was an original member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. In 1928, she made her London debut, playing Nona Rolf in The Comic Artist. During her career in theater, she toured with Noël Coward in The Vortex and was cast opposite Helen Hayes in What Every Woman Knows. Her performance as Grazia in Death Takes a Holiday won her a Hollywood contract. Hobart appeared in more than 40 motion pictures over a 20-year period. Her first film role was the part of Julie in the first talking picture version of Liliom, made by Fox Film Corporation in 1930, starring Charles Farrell in the title role, and directed by Frank Borzage. Under contract to Universal, Hobart starred in A Lady Surrenders, East of Borneo, and Scandal for Sale. On loan to other studios, she appeared in Chances and Compromised. In 1931, she co-starred with Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins in Rouben Mamoulian's original film version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She played the role of Muriel, Jekyll's fiancée. In 1936, Surrealist artist Joseph Cornell, who bought a print of East of Borneo to screen at home, became smitten with the actress, and cut out nearly all the parts that did not include her. He also showed the film at silent film speed and projected it through a blue-tinted lens. He named the resulting work Rose Hobart. Hobart often played the "other woman" in movies during the 1940s, with her last major film role in Bride of Vengeance. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hobart in 1949, effectively ending her career. She believed that she first came to the attention of anti-Communist activists because of her commitment to improving working conditions for actors in Hollywood.

Acting credits

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde poster
7.2

Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that there are two distinct sides to men: one that is good and one that is evil. He believes that by separating the two, man can become liberated. He succeeds in his experiments with chemicals to accomplish this and transforms into Hyde to commit horrendous crimes. When he discontinues use of the drug, it is already too late.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

1931

Ziegfeld Girl poster
6.6

Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.

Ziegfeld Girl

1941

Convention Girl poster
8.0

Wily hotel 'hostess' Babe LaVal navigates booming business, cabaret calls and shady deals in Atlantic City. She meets a soup magnate, and begins to feel it might be 'the real thing'.

Convention Girl

1935

Canyon Passage poster
6.7

In 1850s Oregon, a businessman is torn between his love of two very different women and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.

Canyon Passage

1946

Conflict poster
6.7

Unhappily married Richard Mason concocts a meticulous scheme to kill his shrewish wife so that he'll be free to marry her sister.

Conflict

1945

The Farmer's Daughter poster
7.1

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

The Farmer's Daughter

1947

Susan and God poster
6.5

A flighty socialite neglects her family to promote a new religious group.

Susan and God

1940

Cass Timberlane poster
6.0

Judge Cass Timberlane marries a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Virginia Marshland. A baby is stillborn and she turns more and more to attorney friend of of Cass' Brad Criley. While quarreling the Judge tells Virginia to stay with Brad, but when she becomes sick he brings her home.

Cass Timberlane

1947

The Crime Doctor’s Strangest Case poster
5.2

The Crime Doctor gets involved in the case of the poisoning of a wealthy industrialist.

The Crime Doctor’s Strangest Case

1943

Gallant Lady poster
6.5

A female doctor is sent to prison for a mercy killing. She manages to escape, get married and lead a model life, but one day her secret is exposed.

Gallant Lady

1942

Nothing but the Truth poster
7.3

A stockbroker bets his new partners $10,000 that he can tell the truth, and only the truth, for twenty-four hours.

Nothing but the Truth

1941

East of Borneo poster
5.8

Mrs. Linda Randolph treks through darkened jungles to the land of Maradu to find her missing husband Allan, who'd left her years before when he believed she was in love with another. She finds Allan the drunken court physician to a devious prince-- Whose designs on the pair don't include a happy ending.

East of Borneo

1931

Tower of London poster
6.1

In the 15th century, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, aided by his club-footed executioner Mord, eliminates those ahead of him in succession to the throne, then occupied by his brother, King Edward IV of England.

Tower of London

1939

Bride of Vengeance poster
5.4

The tiny independent duchy of Ferrara is located between Casare Borgia's Rome and Venice, and Borgia has plans to conquer Venice via Ferrara. He murders his sister's husband and makes it appear that Alfonso D'Este of Ferrara was behind the killing. To avenge herself against Ferrara and D'Este, Lucretia Borgia marries D'Este and intends to poison him. But...she falls in love with him.

Bride of Vengeance

1949

Universal Horror poster
7.1

A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.

Universal Horror

1998

Singapore Woman poster
7.2

A fallen woman seeks redemption at a Singapore rubber plantation. Melodrama.

Singapore Woman

1941

Rose Hobart poster
5.5

Cornell employs clips from 1931's jungle melodrama East of Borneo – more specifically, clips of its lead actress, Rose Hobart – to disquieting effect. Through Cornell's collage editing, Hobart becomes a singular object of desire and dread, trapped in an exotic paradise.

Rose Hobart

1936

The Brighton Strangler poster
6.3

After suffering a head injury during the London Blitz, theatre actor John Loder comes to believe himself to be the Brighton Strangler, the murderer he was playing onstage.

The Brighton Strangler

1945

Song of the Open Road poster
8.0

A beautiful child star tires of life in the spotlight and so disguises herself and sneaks off to join a Civilian Conservation Corps camp to work with normal kids. It doesn't take her long to discover that being "normal" isn't easy as it looks. When a crop is in danger of being ruined because there are not enough people to harvest it, the girl employs some of her famous colleagues to lend a hand. Songs include: "Too Much in Love," "Here It Is Monday," "Delightfully Dangerous," "Hawaiian War Chant" and "Notre Dame."

Song of the Open Road

1944

Lady Be Good poster
5.5

Married songwriters almost split up while putting on a big show.

Lady Be Good

1941

The Mad Ghoul poster
5.9

A university chemistry professor experiments with an ancient Mayan gas on a medical student, turning the would-be surgeon into a murdering ghoul as part of a plan to steal his lover.

The Mad Ghoul

1943

Swing Shift Maisie poster
6.8

Street-smart Maisie from Brooklyn lands a job at an airplane assembly plant during WWII and falls in love with handsome pilot "Breezy" McLaughlin. Breezy, however, falling in love with and getting engaged to Maisie's conniving roommate Iris, doesn't realize she's using him and it's up to Maisie to convince him.

Swing Shift Maisie

1943

Isle of the Dead poster
6.0

On a Greek island during the 1912 war, several people are trapped by quarantine for the plague. If that isn't enough worry, one of the people—a superstitious old peasant—suspects a young woman of being a vampiric demon.

Isle of the Dead

1945

The Cat Creeps poster
5.0

A black cat is suspected of being possessed by the spirit of a elderly murdered woman.

The Cat Creeps

1946