Jessie Ralph

Jessie Ralph

Born: November 4, 1864
Died: May 30, 1944
in Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jessie Ralph (born Jessie Ralph Chambers, November 5, 1864 – May 30, 1944) was an American stage and screen actress, best known for her matronly roles in many classic motion pictures.

She was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1864. She made her acting debut in 1880, at the age of sixteen. She made it to Broadway, where George M. Cohan cast her in many of his musicals, but she also excelled at dramatic roles. Although she made her Hollywood debut in 1916, in a motion picture career that would eventually span 25 years, she only became a permanent Hollywood actress in 1933. She was nearly 70 at this time, so her roles were limited to matronly roles, but her expertise at stealing scenes captured the imagination of cinema-goers of the time. Her best-known roles are as Greta Garbo's maid in Camille, as W.C. Fields' battle-axe of a mother-in-law in The Bank Dick, as Myrna Loy's supercilious aunt Katherine in After the Thin Man, and as Nurse Peggotty in David Copperfield. She starred in 55 movies altogether, 52 between 1933 and 1941.

Jessie Ralph retired from Hollywood in 1941, after her leg was amputated. She died four years later in her home town of Gloucester at the age of 79. She was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Movies for Jessie Ralph...

They Met in Bombay
Title: They Met in Bombay
Character: Duchess of Beltravers
Released: June 27, 1941
Type: Movie
A jewel thief and a con artist are rivals in the theft of a valuable diamond and gem necklace in Bombay and as the Japanese Army invades China.
bee
The Lady from Cheyenne
Title: The Lady from Cheyenne
Character: Mrs. McGuinness
Released: April 11, 1941
Type: Movie
Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused the sleeping giant of feminism!
bee
The Bank Dick
Title: The Bank Dick
Character: Mrs. Hermisillo Brunch
Released: November 29, 1940
Type: Movie
Egbert Sousé becomes an unexpected hero when a bank robber falls over a bench he's occupying. Now considered brave, Egbert is given a job as a bank guard. Soon, he is approached by charlatan J. Frothingham Waterbury about buying shares in a mining company. Egbert persuades teller Og Oggilby to lend him bank money, to be returned when the scheme pays off. Unfortunately, bank inspector Snoopington then makes a surprise appearance.
bee
I Want a Divorce
Title: I Want a Divorce
Character: Grandma Brokaw
Released: September 20, 1940
Type: Movie
Comedy about newlyweds wondering if their marriage was a mistake.
bee
The Girl from Avenue A
Title: The Girl from Avenue A
Character: Mrs. Van Dyne
Released: August 9, 1940
Type: Movie
A tough girl raised in the streets finds that her dialect and manners are helpful as source material for a playwright.
bee
I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby
Title: I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby
Character: Mama McGann
Released: May 1, 1940
Type: Movie
In I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby, Broderick Crawford plays a sentimental gangster who abducts songwriter Johnny Downs and forces him to write a love ballad. It is Crawford's hope that the song will reach out and touch his long-lost childhood sweetheart. I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby was based on James Edward Grant's short story Trouble in B Flat; echoes of the basic premise later resurfaced in the 1957 "A" picture The Girl Can't Help It.
bee
Star Dust
Title: Star Dust
Character: Aunt Martha Parker
Released: April 6, 1940
Type: Movie
When Hollywood film studios reject her because she's too young, an Arkansas woman sets out to build a career as an actress on her own.
bee
The Blue Bird
Title: The Blue Bird
Character: Fairy Berylune
Released: January 15, 1940
Type: Movie
An ungrateful girl and her little brother are transported in their dreams by a fairy to a wonderland, tasked with finding the mythical blue bird of happiness, meeting friends and foes along the way.
bee
Drums Along the Mohawk
Title: Drums Along the Mohawk
Character: Mrs. Weaver
Released: November 10, 1939
Type: Movie
Albany, 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.
bee
Mickey the Kid
Title: Mickey the Kid
Character: Veronica Hudson
Released: July 3, 1939
Type: Movie
A bank robber and his boy make a run for it during winter in a bus full of children.
bee
The Kid From Texas
Title: The Kid From Texas
Character: Aunt Minetta
Released: April 14, 1939
Type: Movie
A loud-mouthed Texas cowpuncher tries his hand at polo finding himself at odds with high society and trying to save a floundering Wild West show.
bee
Cafe Society
Title: Cafe Society
Character: Mrs. De Witt
Released: March 3, 1939
Type: Movie
A pampered heiress (Madeleine Carroll) elopes with a shipboard reporter (Fred MacMurray) just to get her name in a society column.
bee
St. Louis Blues
Title: St. Louis Blues
Character: Aunt Tibbie
Released: February 3, 1939
Type: Movie
A Broadway musical comedy star tires of the same old grind and flees the city. She runs into the skipper of a showboat who befriends her, and they make plans to put together a musical revue. But a competing carnival owner hatches a scheme to put an end to the show before it begins.
bee
Four Girls in White
Title: Four Girls in White
Character: Miss Tobias
Released: January 27, 1939
Type: Movie
Young Women go through Nursing School together, each with their own motivation for being there. They learn more than how to be a Nurse.
bee
Port of Seven Seas
Title: Port of Seven Seas
Character: Honorine
Released: July 1, 1938
Type: Movie
In the French port of Marseille, a young woman named Madelon is in love with a young sailor, Marius. Discovering she is pregnant after Marius sets out to sea for several years, she marries another man to prevent the child being born out of wedlock.
bee
Hold That Kiss
Title: Hold That Kiss
Character: Aunt Lucy
Released: May 13, 1938
Type: Movie
Two young people meet at a wedding and begin dating, each thinking the other is extremely wealthy. Comedy.
bee
Love Is a Headache
Title: Love Is a Headache
Character: Sheriff Janet Winfield
Released: January 14, 1938
Type: Movie
A press agent for a Broadway actress whose career is going downhill, attempts to get her some publicity by having her adopt two orphans, without her knowledge.
bee
Double Wedding
Title: Double Wedding
Character: Mrs. Kensington-Bly
Released: October 15, 1937
Type: Movie
A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-controlling sister in the process.
bee
The Romance of Celluloid
Title: The Romance of Celluloid
Character: Self
Released: August 27, 1937
Type: Movie
Several behind the scenes aspects of the movie-making business, which results in the enjoyment the movie going public has in going to the theater, are presented. They include: the production of celluloid aka film stock, the materials used in the production of which include cotton and silver; construction crews who build sets including those to look like cities, towns and villages around the world; a visit with Jack Dawn who demonstrates the process of creating a makeup design; the screen testing process, where many an acting hopeful gets his/her start; the work of the candid camera man, the prying eyes behind the movie camera; a visit with Adrian, who designs the clothes worn by many of the stars on screen; and a visit with Herbert Stothart as he conducts his musical score for Conquest (1937). These behind the scenes looks provide the opportunity to get acquainted with the cavalcade of MGM stars and their productions that will grace the silver screen in the 1937/38 movie season.
bee
The Good Earth
Title: The Good Earth
Character: Cuckoo
Released: June 2, 1937
Type: Movie
China, during the rule of the Qing Dynasty. The arranged marriage between Wang Lung, a humble farmer, and O-Lan, a domestic slave, will endure the many hardships of life over the years; but the temptations of a fragile prosperity will endanger their love and the survival of their entire family.
bee
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
Title: The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
Character: The Duchess of Ebley
Released: February 19, 1937
Type: Movie
A chic American jewel thief falls in love with one of her marks, an English lord.
bee
Camille
Title: Camille
Character: Nanine
Released: December 26, 1936
Type: Movie
Life in 1847 Paris is as spirited as champagne and as unforgiving as the gray morning after. In gambling dens and lavish soirees, men of means exert their wills and women turned courtesans exult in pleasure. One such woman is Marguerite Gautier, who begins a sumptuous romance with Armand Duval.
bee
After the Thin Man
Title: After the Thin Man
Character: Aunt Katherine Forrest
Released: December 25, 1936
Type: Movie
Nick and Nora Charles investigate when Nora's cousin reports her disreputable husband is missing, and find themselves in a mystery involving the shady owners of a popular nightclub, a singer and her dark brother, the cousin's forsaken true love, and Nora's bombastic and controlling aunt.
bee
Walking on Air
Title: Walking on Air
Character: Evelyn Bennett
Released: September 11, 1936
Type: Movie
A strong-willed young woman hires a student to impersonate a boorish French count and brings him home to meet her parents.
bee
San Francisco
Title: San Francisco
Character: Mrs. Maisie Burley
Released: June 26, 1936
Type: Movie
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.
bee
Bunker Bean
Title: Bunker Bean
Character: Grandmother
Released: June 26, 1936
Type: Movie
A shy office worker becomes a hero when a fortune teller calls him another Napoleon.
bee
The Unguarded Hour
Title: The Unguarded Hour
Character: Lady Agatha Hathaway
Released: April 10, 1936
Type: Movie
A blackmailer tries to stop a woman from revealing evidence that could save a condemned man.
bee
Yellow Dust
Title: Yellow Dust
Character: Mrs. Brian
Released: March 12, 1936
Type: Movie
After he's accused of a series of stagecoach robberies, an innocent man has to find the real crooks.
bee
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Title: Little Lord Fauntleroy
Character: Applewoman
Released: March 6, 1936
Type: Movie
An American boy turns out to be the heir of a wealthy British earl. He is sent to live with the irritable and unsentimental aristocrat, his grandfather.
bee
The Garden Murder Case
Title: The Garden Murder Case
Character: Mrs. Hammle
Released: February 21, 1936
Type: Movie
Detective Philo Vance is in charge of the investigation of several mysterious murders. Things take a turn when he gathers evidence against Major Fenwicke-Ralston.
bee
Captain Blood
Title: Captain Blood
Character: Mrs. Barlow
Released: December 26, 1935
Type: Movie
Dr. Peter Blood, unjustly convicted of treason and exiled from England, becomes a notorious pirate.
bee
I Found Stella Parish
Title: I Found Stella Parish
Character: Nana
Released: November 16, 1935
Type: Movie
A blackmailer preys on an actress who is trying to protect her daughter from her past.
bee
Metropolitan
Title: Metropolitan
Character: Charwoman
Released: October 17, 1935
Type: Movie
Opera prima donna leaves the Metropolitan to form her own company with Tibbett as leading man. She leaves this company too which means Tibbett and company must carry on without her.
bee
I Live My Life
Title: I Live My Life
Character: Mrs. O.H.B. Gage, Kay's Grandmother
Released: October 4, 1935
Type: Movie
A society girl tries to make a go of her marriage to an archaeologist.
bee
Jalna
Title: Jalna
Character: Gran Whiteoaks
Released: August 9, 1935
Type: Movie
A young poet, accompanied by his new bride, returns home to his large family at their Canadian farm.
bee
Paris in Spring
Title: Paris in Spring
Character: Countess de Charelle
Released: May 27, 1935
Type: Movie
Afraid of marriage, Simone (Mary Ellis) breaks off her long term engagement with her fiancé Paul de Lille (Tullio Carminati). Paul heads to the top of The Eiffel Tower with thoughts of suicide. In another part of Paris and also afraid of marriage, Mignon (Ida Lupino) breaks it off from her young lover (James Blakely). Despairing, Mignon also climbs to the top of the The Eiffel Tower intending to leap to her death. There she meets Paul and the two compare stories. After discussion, Paul dissuades her from leaping and the two conspire to make their respective partners jealous by pretending to have an affair with each other.
bee
Mark of the Vampire
Title: Mark of the Vampire
Character: Midwife
Released: April 26, 1935
Type: Movie
Sir Borotyn, a prominent Prague resident, is discovered murdered in his home, with all indications pointing to a vampire assault. The victim's friend, Baron Otto, and the physician who analyzes the body are certain that the vampire is the mysterious Count Mora, or perhaps his daughter, but receive little help from the law. Professor Zelen, an expert in the occult, is called in to assist with the investigation.
bee
Les Misérables
Title: Les Misérables
Character: Madame Magloire
Released: April 20, 1935
Type: Movie
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
bee
Vanessa: Her Love Story
Title: Vanessa: Her Love Story
Character: Lady Mullion
Released: March 1, 1935
Type: Movie
The Victorian wife of a mad baron waits years for a British soldier sent to Egypt.
bee
Enchanted April
Title: Enchanted April
Character: Mrs. Phoebe Fisher
Released: February 1, 1935
Type: Movie
Mrs. Lotty Wilkins is an unhappily wife whom's life husband and romance have departed. In order to possibly salvage some of the missing elements in her life she rents an old Italian mansion and sharing it with three women. Here the four women plan to spend the month of April away from the cares of home, husbands and the everyday monotony.
bee
David Copperfield
Title: David Copperfield
Character: Clara Peggotty
Released: January 18, 1935
Type: Movie
Charles Dickens' timeless tale of an ordinary young man who lives an extraordinary life, filled with people who help and hinder him.
bee
Evelyn Prentice
Title: Evelyn Prentice
Character: Mrs. Blake
Released: November 9, 1934
Type: Movie
A criminal lawyer's wife is blackmailed when she is falsely accused of infidelity.
bee
We Live Again
Title: We Live Again
Character: Matrona Pavlovna
Released: November 1, 1934
Type: Movie
Nekhludoff, a Russian nobleman serving on a jury, discovers that the young girl on trial, Katusha, is someone he once seduced and abandoned and that he himself bears responsibility for reducing her to crime. He sets out to redeem her and himself in the process.
bee
The Affairs of Cellini
Title: The Affairs of Cellini
Character: Beatrice
Released: August 24, 1934
Type: Movie
The 16th-century sculptor woos the Duchess of Florence despite the duke.
bee
One Night of Love
Title: One Night of Love
Character: Angelina
Released: July 16, 1934
Type: Movie
Mary Barrett is an aspiring opera singer who is taken under the wings of a famous operatic maestro, Guilio Monterverdi. After spending endless working hours together and arguing, their relationship develops into love. But, jealousy and misunderstandings prevent Mary and Guilio from acknowledging their true feelings.
bee
Murder at the Vanities
Title: Murder at the Vanities
Character: Mrs. Helene Smith
Released: May 18, 1934
Type: Movie
Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vanities, someone is attempting to injure the leading lady Ann Ware, who wants to marry leading man Eric Lander. Stage manager Jack Ellery calls in his friend, policeman Bill Murdock, to help him investigate. Bill thinks Jack is offering to let him see the show from an unusual viewpoint after he forgot to get him tickets for the performance, but then they find the corpse of a murdered woman and Bill immediately suspects Eric of the crime.
bee
Coming Out Party
Title: Coming Out Party
Character: Nora
Released: March 9, 1934
Type: Movie
In this romance, a lovely young debutante falls in love with a jazz violinist. Her mother wants her to marry a wealthy young man, but the strong-willed girl initially demurs until the night of her debut. Her social adviser fills the debutante’s dance card with partners, which inflames the violinist.
bee
Nana
Title: Nana
Character: Zoe
Released: February 1, 1934
Type: Movie
Young Parisian Nana wards off of a boozed-up military officer at a local restaurant, and fellow diner Gaston Greiner is so impressed with her pluck that he decides to make her a performer at his musical theater. Soon, Nana is a star, and the girlfriend of Greiner and two other men. But when he learns that she's been getting around, Greiner fires her. As she tries to reclaim her singing job while dodging yet another suitor, her treachery might get the better of her.
bee
Ann Carver's Profession
Title: Ann Carver's Profession
Character: Terry
Released: June 9, 1933
Type: Movie
Newlyweds experience marital problems when the wife's highly successful job as an attorney overshadows her husband's stagnant career.
bee
Cocktail Hour
Title: Cocktail Hour
Character: Princess de Longville
Released: June 5, 1933
Type: Movie
Cynthia Warren, independently wealthy through her ability as an illustrator and poster artist, rebels against the premise that every woman is destined for matrimony and motherhood and decides she has as much right as a man to play around.
bee
Elmer, the Great
Title: Elmer, the Great
Character: Sarah Crosby (uncredited)
Released: April 29, 1933
Type: Movie
Elmer does not want to leave Gentryville, because Nellie is the one that he loves. Even when Mr. Wade of the Chicago Cubs comes to get him, it is only because Nellie spurns him that he goes. As always, Elmer is the king of batters and he wins game after game. When Nellie comes to see Elmer in Chicago, she sees him kissing Evelyn and she wants nothing to do with him anymore. So Healy takes him to a gambling club, where Elmer does not know that the chips are money. He finds that he owes the gamblers $5000 and they make him sign a note for it. Sad at losing Nellie, mad at his teammates and in debt to the gamblers, Elmer disappears as the Cubs are in the deciding game for the Series.
bee
Child of Manhattan
Title: Child of Manhattan
Character: Aunt Minnie
Released: February 11, 1933
Type: Movie
Paul Vanderkill is extraordinarily wealthy because his grandfather happened to buy farmland in what was to become Midtown Manhattan. The Loveland Dance Hall is one of the tenants of the Vanderkill estates. To reassure his aunt Sophie, Vanderkill visits Loveland to determine whether it is as disreputable as Sophie suspects. There he meets a dime-a-dance girl, Madeleine MacGonagal, who charms him with her quaint proletarian accent. They begin a secret affair, which turns into a secret marriage when pregnancy ensues. When the baby fails to survive, Madeleine decides that since he had married her only for the baby's sake, she should make haste to Mexico to secure a divorce. There she meets Panama Canal Kelly, a former suitor who now owns a silver mine. Her plans for divorce and quick remarriage are complicated when Vanderkill arrives to confront her.
bee
The Madonna of the Slums
Title: The Madonna of the Slums
Released: November 5, 1919
Type: Movie
A rich artist has never completed a master painting because he could not find a model for the face, sees the wife of a man in hard luck begging on the street so she can buy milk for her baby, and the artist secures just what he desired.