Esther Dale

Acting

Esther Dale

Born 1885-11-10 · Beaufort, South Carolina, USA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Esther Dale (November 10, 1885 – July 23, 1961) was an American actress, best known perhaps for her role as Aunt Genevieve in the 1935 Shirley Temple vehicle, Curly Top. On the stage, Dale starred in Carrie Nation on Broadway in 1933. Her other Broadway credits include Harvest of Years (1947), And Be My Love (1944), and Another Language (1932). Dale's first film was Crime Without Passion (1934) in an uncredited role. She was a familiar face in films of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, frequently playing stern, authoritarian characters such as prison matrons and head nurses, although she was equally adept at playing grande dames and ladies of the aristocracy. Dale played many roles in television over the years. In the 1958-1959 season of The Donna Reed Show, Dale played a job-seeking housekeeper who is frightened from the Stone home by Jeff Stone's pet mouse, and she appeared in the 1957 Maverick episode "According to Hoyle" opposite James Garner.

Acting credits

On Moonlight Bay poster
6.5

The Winfield family moves into a new house in a small town in Indiana. Tomboy Marjorie Winfield begins a romance with William Sherman who lives across the street. Marjorie has to learn how to dance and act like a proper young lady. Unfortunately William Sherman has unconventional ideas for the time. His ideas include not believing in marriage or money, which causes friction with Marjorie's father, who is the local bank vice president

On Moonlight Bay

1951

The Mortal Storm poster
7.3

The Roth family leads a quiet life in a small village in the German Alps during the early 1930s. After the Nazis come to power, the family is divided and Martin Breitner, a family friend, is caught up in the turmoil.

The Mortal Storm

1940

The Women poster
7.2

A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.

The Women

1939

Monkey Business poster
6.7

Research chemist Barnaby Fulton works on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company. One of the labs chimps gets loose in the laboratory and mixes chemicals, but then pours the mix into the water cooler. When trying one of his own samples, washed down with water from the cooler, Fulton begins to act just like a twenty-year-old and believes his potion is working. Soon his wife and boss are also behaving like children.

Monkey Business

1952

North to Alaska poster
6.5

After striking gold in Alaska, the romantic George sends his womanizing partner Sam to bring his fiancée up from Seattle. When Sam finds that she has already married, he returns instead with Angel, a dancer originally from France.

North to Alaska

1960

The Awful Truth poster
7.2

Unfounded suspicions lead a married couple to begin divorce proceedings, whereupon they start undermining each other's attempts to find new romance.

The Awful Truth

1937

Arise, My Love poster
6.3

A dashing pilot and a vivacious reporter have romantic and dramatic adventures in Europe as World War II begins.

Arise, My Love

1940

Holiday Affair poster
6.9

Just before Christmas, department store clerk Steve Mason meets big spending customer Connie Ennis, who's actually a comparison shopper sent by another store. Steve lets her go, which gets him fired. They spend the afternoon together, which doesn't sit well with Connie's steady suitor, Carl, when he finds out, but delights her young son Timmy, who quickly takes to Steve.

Holiday Affair

1949

A Stolen Life poster
6.4

When a woman’s twin sister is drowned, she assumes her identity in order to be close to the man she feels her sister took from her years before.

A Stolen Life

1946

Mr. & Mrs. Smith poster
5.9

Happily married for three years, Ann and David Smith live in New York. One morning Ann asks David if he had to do it over again, would he marry her? To her shock, he answers, "No". Later that day, they separately discover that, due to a legal complication, they are not legally married.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

1941

Stolen Heaven poster
7.0

Two attractive jewel thieves, one female (Olympe Bradna), one male (Gene Raymond) escape together after their latest escapade and hide out in the home of an aged concert pianist (Lewis Stone). To cover their tracks and keep the old man from turning them in, the thieves pretend to arrange his comeback concert. The artifice becomes reality, the pianist makes a triumphant return, and the thieves reform. This 1938 film is not a remake of 1932's Stolen Heaven, which wove an entirely different story about a suicide pact.

Stolen Heaven

1938

Dead End poster
7.0

The lives of a young man and woman, an infamous gangster and a group of street kids converge one day in a volatile New York City slum.

Dead End

1937

The Oklahoman poster
5.8

After his wife dies in childbirth, a doctor settles down in the small Oklahoma town of Cherokee Wells to raise his newborn daughter. Unfortunately, not all the citizens there are hospitable, especially when the doctor hires a pretty Indian teenager as his child's nanny.

The Oklahoman

1957

Back Street poster
7.3

In turn-of-the-century Cincinnati, vibrant shop girl Ray Smith falls in love with banker Walter Saxel, who is engaged to a socially prominent woman. Inadvertently prevented from running away with Walter, Ray remains single but reunites with him five years later. Despite Walter being married and having a son, Ray becomes his mistress, and over the years suffers social ostracism and long stretches of solitude while waiting for their brief interludes together.

Back Street

1941

Fury poster
7.5

Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.

Fury

1936

Made for Each Other poster
6.1

A couple struggle to find happiness after a whirlwind courtship.

Made for Each Other

1939

Curly Top poster
6.5

Wealthy Edward Morgan becomes charmed with a curly-haired orphan and her pretty older sister Mary and arranges to adopt both under the alias of "Mr. Jones". As he spends more time with them, he soon finds himself falling in love with Mary.

Curly Top

1935

The Sound and the Fury poster
6.8

The once-prominent Compson family of Jefferson, Miss., has been reduced to near-penury by generations of alcoholism and sin. Levelheaded Jason struggles to keep the family together, but his teenage stepsister, Quentin, chafes against his strictures. When Quentin's estranged mother reappears in town, and carnival worker Charles attempts to seduce the virginal teen, the family may finally be headed for complete collapse.

The Sound and the Fury

1959

A Song Is Born poster
6.4

The story of seven scholars in search of an expert to teach them about swing music. They seem to have found the perfect candidate in winsome nightclub singer Honey Swanson. But Honey's gangster boyfriend doesn't want to give her up.

A Song Is Born

1948

Opened by Mistake poster
7.0

A wise-guy reporter and a tippling sportswriter acquire an unclaimed trunk with a corpse inside.

Opened by Mistake

1940

A Child is Born poster
7.1

A pregnant prison inmate shares her problems with the patients in a maternity ward.

A Child is Born

1939

Outcast poster
8.0

A physician in a small town suddenly finds himself the object of vilification and persecution when one of his patients commits suicide.

Outcast

1937

Walk Softly, Stranger poster
5.1

Fugitive Chris Hale starts over in a small Midwestern town in Ohio, where he befriends Elaine Corelli, a kind-hearted heiress left disabled after a skiing accident. As love blossoms, Hale vows to change his ways, but escaping his past may mean one last job.

Walk Softly, Stranger

1950

The Wedding Night poster
5.9

While working on a novel in his country home in Connecticut, married writer Tony Barrett develops romantic feelings for Manya Novak, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. Manya is unhappily engaged to Frederik Sobieski. After a snowstorm, Tony and Manya get trapped together in his house overnight. The next day, Manya's father insists that her wedding to Frederik take place in spite of Manya's misgivings. Drunkenness and jealousy result in tragedy at the wedding reception that night.

The Wedding Night

1935