
Acting
Edna May Oliver
Born — Died
1883-11-08 — 1942-11-09
Place of birth
Malden, Massachusetts, USA
Known for
Acting
Credits
50 titles
Edna May Oliver (November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942) was an American stage and film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the best-known character actresses in American films, often playing tart-tongued spinsters. She was born Edna May Nutter in Malden, Massachusetts. The daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the 6th American president John Quincy Adams. Miss Oliver took an early interest in the stage, and she would quit school at the age of 14 to pursue her ambitions in the theater. Despite abandoning traditional schooling, Edna continued to study the performing arts, including speech and piano. One of her first jobs was as pianist with an all femal…
Known for
6.8Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Little Women
1933
6.9In early 19th century England, Mr and Mrs Bennet's five unmarried daughters vie for the affections of rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, who have moved into their neighbourhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to eldest daughter Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with second-eldest Elizabeth.
Pride and Prejudice
1940
6.9Set against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.
A Tale of Two Cities
1935
6.1In Victorian England, a bored young girl dreams that she has entered a fantasy world called Wonderland, populated by even more fantastic characters.
Alice in Wonderland
1933
6.5Albany, New York, 1776. After marrying, Gil and Lana travel north to settle on a small farm in the Mohawk River Valley, but soon their growing prosperity and happiness are threatened by the sinister sound of drums that announce dark times of revolution and war.
Drums Along the Mohawk
1939
7.0In 1911, minor stage comic, Vernon Castle meets the stage-struck Irene Foote. A few misadventures later, they marry and then abandon comedy to attempt a dancing career together. While they're performing in Paris, an agent sees them rehearse and starts them on their brilliant career as the world's foremost ballroom dancers. However, at the height of their fame, World War I begins.
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
1939
Film credits
1940s · 2 titles
6.9In early 19th century England, Mr and Mrs Bennet's five unmarried daughters vie for the affections of rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, who have moved into their neighbourhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to eldest daughter Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with second-eldest Elizabeth.
Pride and Prejudice
1940
6.5Lydia MacMillan, a wealthy woman who has never married, invites several men her own age to her home to reminisce about the times when they were young and courted her. In memory, each romance seemed splendid and destined for happiness, but in each case, Lydia realizes, the truth was less romantic, and ill-starred.
Lydia
1941
1930s · 35 titles
6.8Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Little Women
1933
6.9Set against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.
A Tale of Two Cities
1935
6.1In Victorian England, a bored young girl dreams that she has entered a fantasy world called Wonderland, populated by even more fantastic characters.
Alice in Wonderland
1933
6.5Albany, New York, 1776. After marrying, Gil and Lana travel north to settle on a small farm in the Mohawk River Valley, but soon their growing prosperity and happiness are threatened by the sinister sound of drums that announce dark times of revolution and war.
Drums Along the Mohawk
1939
7.0In 1911, minor stage comic, Vernon Castle meets the stage-struck Irene Foote. A few misadventures later, they marry and then abandon comedy to attempt a dancing career together. While they're performing in Paris, an agent sees them rehearse and starts them on their brilliant career as the world's foremost ballroom dancers. However, at the height of their fame, World War I begins.
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
1939
6.3Young love is poisoned by a generations long feud between two noble families.
Romeo and Juliet
1936
6.5An amateur sleuth suspects foul play when a fellow passenger on a seaplane suddenly dies. The third and final film with Edna May Oliver and James Gleason as the astute schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers and the New York Police Inspector Oscar Piper busy solving crimes.
Murder on a Honeymoon
1935
6.7A young man journeys from a difficult childhood to maturity, exploring social injustice, personal development, and the complexities of human relationships.
David Copperfield
1935
5.5When the government opens up the Oklahoma territory for settlement, restless Yancey Cravat claims a plot of the free land for himself and moves his family there from Wichita. A newspaperman, lawyer, and just about everything else, Cravat soon becomes a leading citizen of the boom town of Osage. Once the town is established, however, he begins to feel confined once again, and heads for the Cherokee Strip, leaving his family behind. During this and other absences, his wife Sabra must learn to take care of herself and soon becomes prominent in her own right.
Cimarron
1931
6.5An orphan is provisionally adopted by the manager of a hotel populated by show business people. The hotel's owner doesn't like the entertainers and wants the girl returned to the orphanage.
Little Miss Broadway
1938
6.4There are plenty of guilty secrets at the school where Hildegarde Withers teaches. When she finds the body of the pretty music teacher, she calls in her old friend Inspector Piper, who promptly arrests the obvious suspect. Clues multiply and everyone looks suspicious as Piper and Miss Withers continue their battle of the sexes.
Murder on the Blackboard
1934
8.0To impress his fiancee's aunt, a young man tries to become king in a small kingdom, but the people there have already crowned one, who has won this honor by gambling. So he plans a coup d'etat. He tries to achieve this with a bomb, but then something goes wrong...
Cracked Nuts
1931
5.9New York schoolmarm Hildegarde Withers assists a detective when a body of unscrupulous stockbroker Gerald Parker suddenly appears in the penguin tank at the aquarium.
The Penguin Pool Murder
1932
5.8After a love affair ending in an abortion, a young prison reformer submerges herself in her work. She then falls for a controversial and married judge and scandal looms again.
Ann Vickers
1933
7.1On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young businessman is about to commit suicide. With a note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices an envelope addressed to him on his desk. As he begins to read, we're taken back to World War One and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.
Only Yesterday
1933
4.6Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell struggles to free his country from English rule, but his relationship with married Katie O'Shea threatens to ruin all his dreams of freedom.
Parnell
1937
5.1Studio publicist discovers Minnesota skating teacher and takes her to Hollywood. She goes back to Minnesota but he follows her.
Second Fiddle
1939
6.8Two yokels are framed and sent to prison, but wind up playing football on the warden's championship team.
Hold 'Em Jail
1932
6.2A polo-playing grandmother and her broke brood get back in the money with a Wall Street bet.
We're Rich Again
1934
6.0Two soldiers go absent without leave in Paris during World War I.
Half Shot at Sunrise
1930
6.6British nurse Edith Cavell is stationed at a hospital in Brussels during World War I. When the son of a former patient escapes from a German prisoner-of-war camp, she helps him flee to Holland. Outraged at the number of soldiers detained in the camps, Edith, along with a group of sympathizers, devises a plan to help the prisoners escape. As the group works to free the soldiers, Edith must keep her activities secret from the Germans
Nurse Edith Cavell
1939
8.0Albert Stuyvesant Spottiswood and his cousin Harriet Winthrop Spottiswood arrive separately at their long abandoned and very much run down family manor, each unaware that the other is going to be there, and since both have become penniless, they are forced to move into the dilapidated house. When Albert receives a letter from old acquaintances Lord and Lady Fetherstone advising the Spottiswoods of their impending visit to the manor, the cousins are at wit's end as to how to exercise non-existent skills required to make the old house acceptable for guest reception.
The Poor Rich
1934
6.0West Point cadet Dick Thorpe falls in love with a girl, who turns out to be a princess from an European kingdom.
Rosalie
1937
6.8Society matron Mrs. Livingston Baldwin Crane is selected as a juror in the trial of former chorus girl Yvette Gordon, who's accused of murdering her rich older husband. In court and during deliberations, Mrs. Crane proves to be a disruptive and unorthodox juror.
Ladies of the Jury
1932
6.5An aviator who crash landed on an island in the South Pacific returns home to find that he is the last fertile man left on Earth after an epidemic of masculitus.
It's Great to Be Alive
1933
5.3A charlatan posing as Baron Munchhausen is invited to be guest speaker at a girls' school.
Meet the Baron
1933
5.0In New England circa 1933, a niece is reported missing and presumed dead and Cabot Barr (George Arliss) summons his relatives to the family estate for a memorial service. Once there, Barr taunts each one, claiming their only interest in him is his money, and sends them away when the report about the niece proves to be false. Only niece Marjorie, who has ridiculed one of his pet eccentricities, seems to be the object of any sentimental affection.
The Last Gentleman
1934
5.6A newlywed couple journeys west to make their fortune, and begins a banking empire.
The Conquerors
1932
5.0A society girl tries to reform her playboy husband by making him jealous.
No More Ladies
1935
6.2A young woman inherits a newspaper whose editor refuses to hire lady reporters.
My Dear Miss Aldrich
1937
4.3Two small town widows bring their children to Hollywood, where their children become competing film stars. The girl is sweet, the boy is a killjoy sissy. For publicity, the rival families go to London to meet a middle European boy King. The three kids decide they need to escape their stifling lives and run away to the docks and join a gang.
Newly Rich
1931
7.4A businessman mingles with German laborers to learn more about their lives.
Paradise for Three
1938
6.0An inept inventor and his stoic wife believe an oil well investment has paid off and that they've become wealthy overnight.
Laugh and Get Rich
1931
7.0A vaudeville performer has trouble dividing her time equally between her career and her two daughters.
Fanny Foley Herself
1931
8.0Generational saga about a failed streetcar conductor, who finds success as an Atlantic City fortune teller, and his son.
The Great Jasper
1933
1920s · 11 titles
8.0College football star Billy Dexter is prone to getting into public fights. His father demands he reform and sends him to mend his ways with a devout old woman who deals in hymnals. She turns out to be devoutly drunk and a saloon brawler, leading to Billy's imprisonment. He tells his fiancée he's doing missionary work on a pacific island. He escapes and persuades her to marry him, all the while dodging the police who pursue him.
Let's Get Married
1926
9.0During a carnival in Venice, Horace Pierpont, a wealthy American (Lewis Stone), falls in love with Fay Kennion (Virginia Valli). Their romance is derailed when she goes over to his apartment and finds the vampy Fifi (Nita Naldi) there. Fay goes down to Algiers, where she marries a former sweetheart, Dr. Alan Mortimer (Edward Earle).
The Lady Who Lied
1925
4.8Mayme and sister Janie are salesgirls in Ginsberg's Department Store. Mayme is in love with store clerk Bill, but Janie tries to steal him from her. Hazel, another salesgirl, is Jean Harlow's first credited role.
The Saturday Night Kid
1929
7.0Impulsive flapper Elizabeth Winthrop, rebels against her parents and moves to New York after breaking with her fiance, Clayton Webster. Hugo Von Strohm, a wealthy playboy, procures Elizabeth a job as a chorus dancer and secretly pays her salary. After he tries to seduce her, Elizabeth sees through his kindnesses and returns to her parents and Clayton.
Three O'Clock in the Morning
1923
8.0Wealthy orphan Philippa L'Estrange loves handsome Norman Arleigh and is confident of marrying him until he discloses that he has only brotherly affection for her. Determined to have revenge, Philippa introduces Arleigh to Madeline Dornham and reveals on their wedding day that Madeline, his bride, is the daughter of the man who killed his mother. In the end it is learned that Madeline is Mrs. Dornham's daughter from a previous marriage, not the daughter of a criminal.
Wife in Name Only
1923
8.0A lost film - Mary Gray, whose father manufactures cold cream, is engaged to sappy Horace Niles, the son of Hugo Niles, the elder Gray's most competitive rival in the cosmetics business. Chip Armstrong, a hot-shot public relations man, quits the employ of Hugo Niles and goes to work for Gray, persuading Mary to enter the Miss America contest at Atlantic City, with the intention of using her to endorse her father's cold cream should she win. Mary breaks her engagement with Horace. When it appears that she will win the contest, Hugo lures her home on the pretext that her father is ill, and she misses the contest. Chip and Mary return to Atlantic City, discovering that the new Miss America has told the world that she owes all her success to Gray's cold cream. On this note, Chip and Mary decide to get married.
The American Venus
1926
7.2Richard Dix, a displayer in a department store, enters a raffle and wins the so-called 'hoodoo' bad-luck automobile formerly owned by the store owner's son, a soul seemingly always in trouble with cops and women. Well, suddenly Dix begins to have the same problem, only he also gets mixed up in the life of Esther Ralston and her Aunt Edna May Oliver. Hilarious misunderstandings and undertakings become the fodder for the day!
The Lucky Devil
1925
1924 picture directed by Gregory La Cava.
Restless Wives
1924
9.0Ben Jordan runs away after accidentally setting fire to a barn in his small New England community. He returns when his mother dies to find that she has left everything to her ward, Jane Crosby.
Icebound
1924
6.5A wealthy New Yorker falls in love with a burglar's sister.
Manhattan
1924
8.0Lovers in Quarantine is an extant 1925 silent film comedy starring Bebe Daniels and directed by Frank Tuttle. It was produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. the film is based on a 1924 Broadway play Quarantine by F. Tennyson Jesse. It is preserved at the Library of Congress.
Lovers in Quarantine
1925


