Aline MacMahon

MacMahon was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, the only child of William Marcus MacMahon and Jennie (née Simon) MacMahon. Her father was a telegraph operator, arbitrage broker and writer/editor in the Munsey publishing company, including their flagship title, Munsey's Magazine.{{cite news|title=Former Editor of Munsey's Expires|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6198325/montana_butte_standard|work=Montana Butte Standard|agency=Associated Press|date=September 8, 1931|location=Montana, Butte|page=1|via=Newspapers.com|access-date=August 11, 2016}} {{Open access}}

Aline's parents married on July 14, 1898, in Columbus, Ohio. Her father died on September 6, 1931. Her mother, an avid bell collector, died in 1984, at age 106.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/13/nyregion/aline-l-macmahon-92-actress-over-50-years-and-in-43-movies.html|title=Aline L. MacMahon, 92, Actress Over 50 Years and in 43 Movies|date=October 13, 1991|work=The New York Times}}

MacMahon first appeared on stage as early as 1905. That year the family moved to Brooklyn from McKeesport, and Aline's mother began training her in the art of elocution. Soon, Aline was performing at local churches and festivals where she recited poems and played the violin. By 1908 she was well known enough to attract the attention of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, who reported "a series of songs and dances by Aline MacMahon" to be performed at St. Jude's Church in Brooklyn.{{cite news|title=For St. Jude's Church|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6197849/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle|work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle|date=July 31, 1908|location=New York, Brooklyn|page=8|via=Newspapers.com|access-date=August 11, 2016}} {{Open access}}

Although she had been earning handsome wages for many years on New York's so-called Strawberry Circuit, MacMahon made her true professional debut with a program of readings, recitations and music at New York's McAlpin Hotel in 1914.{{cite news |date=April 25, 1914 |title=Miss Aline MacMahon Makes Her Professional Debut |page=6 |work=Brooklyn Life |location=Brooklyn, NY |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6198016/brooklyn_life |access-date=August 11, 2016 |via=Newspapers.com}} {{Open access}}

MacMahon was raised first in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKeesport, then in Brooklyn, New York. She attended New York's public school 103,{{cite news|title=These Schools Are to Follow|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6197937/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/|work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle|date=May 19, 1912|location=New York, Brooklyn|page=61|via=Newspapers.com|access-date=August 11, 2016}} {{Open access}} then entered Erasmus Hall High School (Brooklyn) in 1912. In 1916 the MacMahon family moved to the upper west side of Manhattan and Aline enrolled in nearby Barnard College. It was there that MacMahon received a more serious education in acting, enrolling in "Wigs and Cues", the theater program run by the woman who became MacMahon's first great mentor, Minor Latham. By graduation she had appeared in nearly every program the school had mounted during those four years, and found multiple suitors for her talents, including offers from the Provincetown Players, producer / actor Walter Hampden, and the Neighborhood Playhouse.{{Citation needed |date=January 2023}}

Aline made her (uncredited) Broadway debut in 1920 as a craps-playing debutante in The Mirage. Her Broadway credits include 24 shows, with many other off-Broadway and regional stage appearances during her career.{{cite web |title=(Aline MacMahon search) |url=http://www.playbill.com/searchpage/search?q=Aline%20MacMahon&shows=on&qasset=00000150-ac7d-d16d-a550-ec7fd0690002& |access-date=August 12, 2016 |website=Playbill Vault}} After traveling to Los Angeles to star in the road company of the Broadway smash Once in a Lifetime, she was noticed by Warner Brothers director Mervyn LeRoy, and made her film debut in the Pre-Code drama Five Star Final (1931). After signing a long-term contract with Warners, Aline spent the rest of her career splitting time between New York and Hollywood in order to be with her husband, the Manhattan-based architect and city planner, Clarence Stein. In the 1930s and 40s she was a critical darling (Walter Winchell called her "the very good actress"{{Cite news |last=Winchell |first=Walter |date=April 14, 1937 |title=On Broadway |pages=10 |work=The Daily Mirror |location=New York City}}), often cast as the acerbic comedienne with a heart of gold, or the long-suffering woman unlucky in love. Her career diminished after her husband's health failed. Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors said that she "moved into character roles with ease as she became plumper and more motherly looking."

In 1922 MacMahon was a member of the Neighborhood Playhouse company in Manhattan, just as Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre visited New York for a legendary tour. Accolades poured in for the MAT's performances, and the executives of the Neighborhood Playhouse made arrangements to charter the first teaching class of the Method in America, which Aline attended with nine others. Aline MacMahon took the tenets of the Method very seriously, and was the only member of that inaugural class to achieve popular success, having debuted the technique on stage in the fall of 1923, and as the first practitioner of it on film in 1931. "I was the first," she said in 1959, "in the first group to be exposed to what has become the Method. Out of that summer [1923] has developed everything that the Method actors are doing." She was a pioneering Method actor in the western world.{{Cite book |last=Stangeland |first=John |title=Aline MacMahon: Hollywood, the Blacklist and the Birth of Method Acting |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=2022 |isbn=978-0-8131-9606-0 |pages=99, 106–7, 229–35, 268–74, 288–9}}

On March 28, 1928, MacMahon and Clarence Stein were married after a long courtship.{{cite news|title=Weds Housing Chairman|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6198179/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/|work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle|date=March 29, 1928|location=New York, Brooklyn|page=3|via=Newspapers.com|access-date=August 11, 2016}} {{Open access}} The pair were devoted to each other, but commuting between coasts was a strain on their marriage.Kaufman, Jerome L. Review of "The Writings of Clarence S. Stein: Architect of the Planned Community" by Kermit Carlyle Parsons (ed.). The Town Planning Review; Liverpool Vol. 71, Iss. 4, (Oct 1, 2000): 90. The couple had no children. MacMahon was chairwoman of the Equity Library Theater in 1950. She organized productions for community theaters and was active in relief charities.[http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/jewwom/jw12.htm University of Wisconsin Library, Women's Studies archives] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060404062239/http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/jewwom/jw12.htm |date=2006-04-04 }}, library.wisc.edu; accessed August 12, 2015. During the late 1940s and 1950s she was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer and appeared on the notorious Communist watchlist pamphlet, Red Channels. The FBI held covert investigations of her and Clarence Stein for decades. The Steins were inveterate travelers, having sailed around the world in 1935–1936.

MacMahon died in 1991, aged 92, of pneumonia in New York City.{{cite news|title=Deaths Elsewhere: Aline MacMahon|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19911015&id=FWRPAAAAIBAJ&pg=5211,3828145|access-date=August 11, 2016|work=Toledo Blade|agency=Associated Press|date=October 15, 1991|page=10}}

The New York Public Library has a collection of MacMahon's papers that document various aspects of her life. They are housed in the library's Billy Rose Theatre Division.{{cite web|title=Aline MacMahon papers 1899-1989|url=http://archives.nypl.org/the/21276|website=The New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts|access-date=August 12, 2016}}

The biography Aline MacMahon: Hollywood, the Blacklist, and the Birth of Method Acting was published in 2022 by University Press of Kentucky.{{cite book |last1=Stangeland |first1=John |title=Aline MacMahon: Hollywood, the Blacklist, and the Birth of Method Acting |date=8 November 2022 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-9607-7 |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Stangeland |first=John |title=Aline MacMahon |url=https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813196060/aline-macmahon/ |website= University Press of Kentucky}}{{cite web |title=Episode 118- Author John Stangeland & His book Aline Macmahon: Hollywood the Blacklist & the Birth of Method Acting |url=https://www.audacy.com/podcast/forgotten-hollywood-05ee0/episodes/episode-118-author-john-stangeland-his-book-aline-macmahon-hollywood-the-blacklist-and-the-birth-of-method-acting-8c5bf |website=audacy.com |access-date=14 May 2023}}{{cite web |author1=Mount Prospect Public Library |title=Aline MacMahon: Hollywood, the Blacklist, and the Birth of Method Acting |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txW4AwW02yA |website=youtube |date=March 20, 2023 |access-date=14 May 2023 |language=en}}{{cite web |last1=Stecher |first1=Raquel |title=Interview with John Stangeland, author of Aline MacMahon: Hollywood, the Blacklist, and the Birth of Method Acting |url=https://www.outofthepastblog.com/2022/11/john-stangeland-aline-macmahon.html |website=outofthepastblog |access-date=14 May 2023}}

Image:Reward-Unlimited-McGuire-MacMahon.jpg (left) and Aline MacMahon in Reward Unlimited (1944)]]

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• Five Star Final (1931) – Miss Taylor
• The Heart of New York (1932) – Bessie, the Neighbor
• The Mouthpiece (1932) – Miss Hickey, Day's Secretary
• Week-End Marriage (1932) – Agnes Davis
• Life Begins (1932) – Miss Bowers
• Once in a Lifetime (1932) – May Daniels
• One Way Passage (1932) – Betty
• Silver Dollar (1932) – Sarah Martin
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) – Trixie Lorraine
• The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933) – Mrs. Moore aka Auntie
• Heroes for Sale (1933) – Mary
• The World Changes (1933) – Anna Nordholm
• Heat Lightning (1934) – Olga (first leading role)
• The Merry Frinks (1934) – Hattie 'Mom' Frink
• Side Streets (1934) – Bertha Krasnoff
• Big Hearted Herbert (1934) – Elizabeth
• Babbitt (1934) – Myra Babbitt
• While the Patient Slept (1935) – Sarah Keate
• Mary Jane's Pa (1935) – Ellen Preston
• I Live My Life (1935) – Betty Collins
• Kind Lady (1935) – Mary Herries
• Ah, Wilderness! (1935) – Aunt Lily
• When You're in Love (1937) – Marianne Woods
• Back Door to Heaven (1939) – Miss Williams
• Out of the Fog (1941) – Florence Goodwin
• The Lady is Willing (1942) – Buddy
• Tish (1942) – Lizzie Wilkins
• Stage Door Canteen (1943) – Aline MacMahon
• Seeds of Freedom (1943) – Odessa Citizen
• Reward Unlimited (1944, short) – Mrs. Scott
• Dragon Seed (1944) – Ling Tan's Wife
• Guest in the House (1944) – Aunt Martha
• The Mighty McGurk (1947) – Mamie Steeple
• The Search (1948) – Mrs. Deborah R. Murray
• Roseanna McCoy (1949) – Sarie McCoy
• The Flame and the Arrow (1950) – Nonna Bartoli
• The Eddie Cantor Story (1953) – Grandma Esther
• The Man from Laramie (1955) – Kate Canaday
• Cimarron (1960) – Mrs. Mavis Pegler
• The Young Doctors (1961) – Dr. Lucy Grainger
• Diamond Head (1963) – Kapiolani Kahana
• I Could Go On Singing (1963) – Ida
• All the Way Home (1963) – Aunt Hannah
• For the Use of the Hall (1975, TV) - Bess

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{{Reflist}}

• The 1910 United States Federal Census for Brooklyn, New York, April 16, 1910, Enumeration District 1409, Sheet 5.
• The 1920 United States Federal Census for Manhattan Assembly District 13, January 25, 1920, Enumeration District 943, Sheet 9A.
• U.S. Passport Applications 1795–1925, Roll 1533-6376-6749, March 19–21, 1921 (Ancestry.com)

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{{Commons category|Aline MacMahon}}

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• [http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/person/2329/aline-macmahon Literature on Aline MacMahon]
• [http://www.nypl.org/archives/4508 Aline MacMahon papers, 1899-1989], held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

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Category:1899 births

Category:1991 deaths

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:American film actresses

Category:American stage actresses

Category:American people of Scotch-Irish descent

Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent

Category:Barnard College alumni

Category:Erasmus Hall High School alumni

Category:Deaths from pneumonia in New York (state)

Category:Actresses from Brooklyn

Category:People from McKeesport, Pennsylvania

Category:Jewish American actresses

Category:New York (state) Democrats

Category:California Democrats

Category:Pennsylvania Democrats

Category:Method actors