LEST WE FORGET MILDRED DUNNOCK
(January 25, 1901 - July 5, 1991)


The character actress, best known for her creation of the stage roles of Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Big Mama in Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, was a native of Baltimore.  She began her education in Baltimore's public schools and credits her interest in the stage to a Western High School English teacher who forced her to overcome her shyness to play the part of Gwendolyn Fairfax in Oscar Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest.

Her father overrode her theatrical aspirations and she began teaching which was considered the "only career besides marriage for a Southern girl."  While teaching she acted in her spare time with the Vagabond Players and the Johns Hopkins University troupe, where she played opposite John Van Druten in his The Return Half.  While pursuing a master's degree at Columbia University she became involved with Columbia's Morningside Players "just for fun," but in 1932 their production of Life Begins moved to Broadway.

She created the role of Miss Ronberry in Emlyn Williams's
The Corn is Green, which starred Ethel Barrymore (November 26, 1940); the role of the shrinking Lavinia Hubbard in
Another Part of the Forest which was directed by Lillian Hellman; Madame Tsai in Lute Song with Mary Martin (1945); Rose in
Foolish Notion with Talullah Bankhead; and Etta Hallam in The Hallams (1948).  She reprised her role in the film version of The Corn is Green (1945).

She won the coveted role of Linda Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman after Lillian Hellman suggested her to the producer in spite of the fact that the producer didn't think the diminutive Dunnock was right for it. She auditioned anyway in full padding to match the playwright's description but played the role without the padding when the burly Lee J. Cobb was cast in the leading role.  Brooks Atkinson praised her performance. "Mildred Dunnock gives the performance of her career as the wife and mother--plain of speech but indomitable in spirit (New York Times,  1949).
          She reprised the role in the film and Bosley Crowther titled her Linda simply superb, as she was on the stage. She herself called Linda Loman "one of her finest experiences."

She followed Salesman with In the Summer House, directed by
Jose Quintero and starring Judith Anderson. In 1955 she returned to the
Morosco Theatre for the premiere of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  She was thrilled to exchange her image as a fluttering, timorous woman for the character of Big Mama. Critic Walter Kerr noted she was as "startlingly fine in an unfamiliar sort of role: the brash, gravel-voice outspoken matron": and Brooks Atkinson added  "an actress of modesty and great purity of spirit, Miss Dunnock has thus spoken the minds of the two leading dramatists of the forties."

Other characters included Vera in Williams's
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Mary Tyrone in
Long Day's Journey Into Nightand in May 1970 she played Sido to Zoe Caldwell's Collette at
Ellen Stewart's La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, New York.  She also appeared in
Ring Round the Moon at the Circle in the Square Theatre (NY) followed the next year by Madame Pernelle in the Circle's Tartuffe.

Film and television roles were substantial.   When asked which medium she preferred, she laughed and said, "I love to work!" However she added that on stage "the actor controls the medium much more than other forms...and it can only happen at that moment." (Cue Magazine, 1970).

She became a member of the Actors' Studio in 1949.  Because of her friendship with Lillian Hellman, Elia Kazan, and Arthur Miller she was briefly blacklisted in the 1950s.  Until the 1960s she taught at various schools including Barnard College and the Yale University School of Drama.

She believed that her acting and teaching careers were made possible "by an undemanding, encouraging husband...and my own energy and need.  It has given me many lives to live."
Reviewers often commented on her modesty, suggesting that the characters she played are always better known than the actress. To this observation she replied,"I like to play parts that are not like myself. I'm not in the least bit exciting. I'm an ordinary person in an ordinary life, but in my imagination there's no stopping me." (New York Times, September, 1976)

She received two Academy Award nominations: Death of a Salesman in 1951 and for her memorable performance in the film version of Williams's Baby Doll in 1956.

In 1976  New York Times writer Warren Hoge called her "an institution among first-nighters, the creator of several major characters in American dramatic literature, a performer studied and revered by younger actors and actresses."

Resource:  Notable Women in the American Theatre.  Stacy A. Rozek