Josephine Hull
Josephine Hull (January 3, 1886 - March 12, 1957) was an Academy Award-winning American actress. She had a successful 50-year career on Broadway before taking some of her best roles to film. Hull was born Josephine Sherwood in Newtonville, Massachusetts. She attended Radcliffe College and The New England Conservatory of Music.
Career
Hull made her stage debut in stock in 1905, and spent five years as a chorus girl and touring stock before she married Shelley Hull in 1910. Her husband died in 1919, and, in 1923, Josephine returned to show business under the name Josephine Hull.
Hull was a stage success in Craig's Wife (1926), and in Daisy Mayme (1926), a role which was written especially for her. Through the 1920s she continued working in the theater, and in the 1930s had three Broadway hits in You Can't Take It With You (1936), Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), and Harvey (1944).
Her last Broadway play was one of her greatest successes, starring in Solid Gold Cadillac (1954-55) which was later made into a film with the much younger Judy Holliday.
Hull made a total of five films. She brought her two best stage roles to film in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) playing a homicidal aunt, and in Harvey (1950) as the batty sister of a man whose friend is an invisible rabbit, for which she won the 1950 Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared on a number of television dramas in the early 1950's.
Hull made one more film, The Lady from Texas (1951), and appeared in a TV version of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1949, before retiring. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1957, at the age of 71.
External links
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