1. Mary Wickes often played supporting roles as prim, professional women, secretaries, nurses, nuns, therapists, teachers and housekeepers, who made sarcastic quips when the leading characters fell short of her high standards.
24 Facts About Mary Wickes
1. 2.
Wickes was born to Frank Wickenhauser and his wife, Mary Isabella, in University City which is a suburb of Saint Louis County Missouri on June 13,1910, of German, Scottish, and Irish extraction, and raised Protestant.
3.
Mary Wickes's parents were theater buffs, and they took her to plays from the time that she could stay awake through a matinee.
4.
Mary Wickes was accepted into Washington University in St Louis, where she joined the debate team and the Phi Mu sorority, and she was initiated into Mortar Board in 1929.
5.
Mary Wickes graduated in 1930 with a double major in English literature and political science.
6.
Mary Wickes began acting in films in the late 1930s and became a member of the Orson Welles troupe on his radio drama The Mercury Theatre on the Air; she appeared in Welles's film Too Much Johnson.
7.
Mary Wickes attracted attention in Now, Voyager as the wisecracking nurse who helped Bette Davis's character during her mother's illness.
8.
Mary Wickes played similar roles in two later movies with Rosalind Russell in the 1960s: The Trouble with Angels and Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows.
9.
Mary Wickes played the part of a ballet teacher in the I Love Lucy episode "The Ballet".
10.
Mary Wickes served as the live-action reference model for Cruella De Vil in Walt Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and played Mrs Squires in the film adaptation of Meredith Willson's The Music Man.
11.
In 1953, Mary Wickes played Martha the housekeeper to Ezio Pinza's character in the short-lived Bonino.
12.
In 1956, Mary Wickes appeared with Thelma Ritter in "The Babysitter" episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
13.
Mary Wickes played Adeline Ashley in "The Social Climbers", a 1967 episode of The Beverly Hillbillies.
14.
Mary Wickes was a regular on the Sid and Marty Krofft children's television show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and the sitcom Doc.
15.
Mary Wickes made numerous appearances as a celebrity panelist on the game show Match Game.
16.
Mary Wickes's career had a resurgence in the late 1980s and 1990s.
17.
Mary Wickes was cast as the mother of Shirley MacLaine's character in the film Postcards from the Edge and portrayed Marie Murkin in the television movie and series adaptations of The Father Dowling Mysteries.
18.
Mary Wickes played notable roles in these years when she was cast as Sister Mary Lazarus in Sister Act and in the sequel Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
19.
Mary Wickes played Aunt March in the 1994 film version of Little Women.
20.
Mary Wickes suffered from numerous ailments in the last years of her life that cumulatively resulted in her hospitalization, where she fell and broke her hip.
21.
Mary Wickes died of complications following hip surgery on October 22,1995, at the age of 85 at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.
22.
Mary Wickes reportedly had only one voice recording session left for the film when she died.
23.
Mary Wickes was inducted posthumously into the St Louis Walk of Fame in 2004.
24.
Mary Wickes never married, nor did she have any children.