Marion Lorne
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| Marion Lorne | |||||||
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| Born | Marion Lorne MacDougall August 12, 1883 West Pittston, Pennsylvania, USA |
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| Died | May 9, 1968 (aged 84) New York City, New York, USA |
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| Spouse(s) | Walter C. Hackett (d. 1944) | ||||||
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Marion Lorne MacDougall (August 12, 1883 - May 9, 1968) was an American Emmy Award-winning character actress. She was born in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, a small mining town halfway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, of Scottish and English immigrant parents. While her year of birth is listed as 1885 at her final resting place, it was usually listed as 1888 when she was alive and the Social Security Index lists it as 1883.
Lorne studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She debuted on Broadway in 1905; she also acted in London theaters, enjoying a flourishing stage career on both sides of the Atlantic. She married playwright Walter Hackett, who died in 1944.
A latecomer to film, she was quickly typed as a befuddled, nervous, and somewhat aristocratic matron. She made her screen debut in 1951, in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, while her last film was a brief bit as a partygoer in The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, released not long before her death.
In the early 1950s, Lorne was seen as perpetually confused high school English teacher Mrs. Gurney on the pioneering sitcom Mr. Peepers. Her last role, playing Aunt Clara in television's Bewitched, brought Lorne her widest fame. She played a lovable, forgetful witch, obsessed with doorknobs, who is losing her powers because of her old age and whose spells invariably end in disaster. She appeared in 27 episodes and was not replaced after she died of a heart attack in New York City during the fourth season, at age 84.
Bewitched producers reailzed that Lorne's portrayal of the beloved Aunt Clara could not be replicated. Instead, character actress Alice Ghostley was recruited to fill the gap as the newly-created Esmerelda. Interestingly, Lorne and Ghostley appeared side-by-side in The Graduate as partygoers Miss DeWitte and Mrs. Singleman the year before Lorne's death. Bewitched fans have often joked that Lorne was passing her torch on to Ghostley.[1]
Lorne received a posthumus Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work on Bewitched. The statue was accepted by Elizabeth Montgomery.
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