Laura Hope Crews

Crews was the daughter of stage actress Angelena Lockwood and backstage carpenter John Thomas Crews. She had three older siblings. Crews started acting at age four. Her first stage appearance was at Woodward's Gardens.{{cite book |last1=James |first1=Edward T. |last2=James |first2=Janet Wilson |last3=Boyer |first3=Paul S. |title=Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary |year=1971 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-62734-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw02jame_0/page/405 405-406] |url=https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw02jame_0 |url-access=registration |quote=Angelena Lockwood. |access-date=February 23, 2020 |language=en}} She stopped acting to finish school and then returned to acting in 1898. As she was a native San Franciscan, the records pertaining to her early life were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906.

Most of Crews' formal education came in San Jose, as the family had moved there following the remarriage of Crews' mother.

In 1898, Crews performed in San Francisco as an ingenue with the Alcazar Stock Company. Two years later, she and her mother moved to New York City, where Crews began to act with the Henry V. Donnelly Stock Company.

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| image1 = A scene from "Merely Mary Ann" (SAYRE 12334).jpg

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| caption1 = Merely Mary Ann (1903): l to r Ada Dwyer, Eleanor Robson, Laura H. Crews

| image2 = Much ado photo.jpg

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| caption2 = Crews and John Drew Jr. in Much Ado About Nothing (1913)

| image3 =Mr-Pim-Passes-By-1921.jpg

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| caption3 = Erskine Sanford, Dudley Digges and Crews in the Theatre Guild production of A. A. Milne's Mr. Pim Passes By (1921)

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Crews appeared in plays written by A.A. Milne, who was particularly impressed by her work{{Citation needed |date=February 2020}} in his Mr. Pim Passes By (1921).{{cite web |title=Laura Hope Crews |url=https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/laura-hope-crews-14526 |website=Internet Broadway Database |accessdate=February 23, 2020 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200223030105/https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/laura-hope-crews-14526 |archivedate=February 23, 2020}} The play was a big success and ran for 232 performances on Broadway. In 1924 she starred in The Werewolf for a run of 112 Broadway performances.{{cite book |title=Broadway Plays and Musicals: Descriptions and Essential Facts of More Than 14,000 Shows through 2007 |url=https://archive.org/details/broadwayplaysmus0000hisc |url-access=registration |first=Thomas S. |last=Hischak |publisher=McFarland |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-7864-5309-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/broadwayplaysmus0000hisc/page/501 501]}}

Crews also starred as Judith Bliss in the original Broadway production of Noël Coward's Hay Fever (1925), which she co-directed with Coward. She also appeared in The Silver Cord, written by Sidney Howard, which was produced by the New York Theater Guild in 1926 and ran for 212 performances. When The Silver Cord was not being presented, there were matinee performances of Right You Are If You Think You Are by Luigi Pirandello.

The Silver Cord was later made into a 1933 RKO movie with Crews reprising her onstage role of the mother. The film co-starred Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, and Irene Dunne. In the late 1920s, and because of her years as a stage actress, Crews had been hired as a voice coach by Gloria Swanson to help with her transition to talking pictures.

George Cukor, who had directed her in Camille (1936), recommended her for the role of Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind (1939) after Billie Burke declined it. Cukor wanted Crews to play the role "in a Billie Burke-ish manner" with "the same zany feeling".{{cite book |last1=Wilson |first1=Steve |title=The Making of Gone with the Wind |date=September 1, 2014 |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-76126-1 |page=86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lyXNBAAAQBAJ&q=laura+hope |access-date=August 23, 2020}}

Her final stage appearance came in 1942, in the original Broadway run of Arsenic and Old Lace in which she replaced one of the original cast members. She stayed with the production for more than a year and a half on Broadway and in a touring company before she was forced to leave because of illness.

Crews died in the LeRoy Sanitarium in New York City in 1942, following an illness of four months.{{cite news| newspaper=Oakland Tribune| title=Laura H. Crews of Stage Dies| page=D9| date=November 13, 1942}} Some sources say that the illness in which she suffered from was kidney failure. She was laid to rest at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.{{Citation needed |date=September 2021}}

Crews has a star at 6251 Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.{{cite web| title=Laura Hope Crews| website=Walkoffame.com| url=http://www.walkoffame.com/laura-hope-crews| accessdate=August 3, 2017}}

Crews was also the first credited cast member of Gone with the Wind to die. {{clear}}

File:Blackbirds poster.jpg produced by Jesse Lasky]]

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• [https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=laura+hope+crews Laura Hope Crews] photo gallery at NYP Library
• {{IMDb name|0187711}}
• {{TCMDb name | 41090%7C95987 }}
• {{IBDB name}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20100611205949/http://shakespeare.emory.edu/actordisplay.cfm?actorid=135 Laura Hope Crews] as a young stage actress
• [https://broadway.cas.sc.edu/content/laura-hope-crews Laura Hope Crews] page with rare stage photographs
• {{Find a Grave|5304}}
• [http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/search/collection/sayre/searchterm/laura%20hope%20crews/field/all/mode/all/conn/and/cosuppress/ Laura Hope Crews] stills Univ. of Washington Sayre Collection
• [http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWPUCNXP Laura Hope Crews and Leo Ditrichstein in "The Phantom Rival" (1915)]
• [https://archive.today/20130710194402/http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/sayre&CISOPTR=13215&CISOBOX=1&REC=1 Laura Hope Crews in The Havoc (1911)] (Univ. of Washington Sayre Collection)
• [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c6EogN4jmNQ/TiRnAKjp_7I/AAAAAAAAKkQ/qoZKD9cAJTM/s1600/LHC00c.JPG Crews on the cover of The Theatre magazine, August 1913]
• [http://wordsfrom.us/2016/05/tears-screen-stars-tell-weep-camera/ Tears: In Which Silent Pictures Actresses Tell Us How They Weep], article on crying in silent movies

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Category:1879 births

Category:1942 deaths

Category:American film actresses

Category:American stage actresses

Category:Deaths from kidney failure in New York (state)

Category:Actresses from San Francisco

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:American child actresses

Category:19th-century American actresses

Category:Burials at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park