EDNA MAY OLIVER

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19759, 14 December 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

EDNA MAY OLIVER

FUN TO BE FIFTY. HER PLAIN FACE HER FORTUNE. That doughty, lovable old trouper, Edna May Oliver has just been celebrating her 50th birthday. "It’s fun to be fifty,” she told .an interviewer in Hollywood. “I have no regrets about anything or perhaps only one thing. “I am not beautiful. — (No, that s not the regret.)—What would I do without this old face of mine, i might be living in impoverished retirement, a . frail, rather useless woman, instead of being a vigorous, hard-working well-paid, old girl. Edna Alay Oliver, comic heroine ot so many fine films, and creator of the immortal character of Betsy Trotwood in the screen version of ‘ David Copperfield,” intends to settle down now

that she has reached the half hundred mark. Settling down does not imply that she is to give up work. She lias hall'-a-dozen big film parts scheduled for her in the future, and is certain to secure another hundred after that. No, by settling down she means that she is about to appreciate tiic beauties of life and enjoy good friendship, secure in the knowledge that she is an established success, whom the whole' world is ready to laugh at. Edna May Oliver lives in a modest little house on the outskirts of Hollywood; alone except for a Hungarian housekeeper, who cooks her meals in precisely the way she likes them cooked. Her Unfortunate Marriage. s. The one regret in life to which she referred in the interview is her unfortunate marriage seven years ago. Suddenly, to the amazement of her friends, she was swept off her feet by a young man about town many years her junior. Her calm philosophic demeanour was shattered. The young man flattered her and sowed the idea In her mind that perhaps, after all, she was not too old at 43. Alas the marriage proved a melancholy failure. Within a few months she and her husband were separated, and have never met again. But the wound which the marriage left behind has now healedAs Edna May Oliver says, “I am fifty, and it is great fufl.” Ran Away From Home. She can look back on an eventful life, always strongly marked by her own independence. She comes of an old aristrocatic Boston family, where grace before' meals used to last as long as a modern serrpon, and it was considered the height of sin lo let the blinds up on a Sunday. > Her parents, being of such a rigid character, would not, of course, give a 111 (flight to her going on the singe, so she ran away al the age of 14, and ever since 1 hen lias earned her living by the extraordinary faculty she has of inducing laughter in other people-

, Now she is an old trouper on whose face the grease paint lias left its indelible mark, yet the aristocratic strain in her nature has never been eliminated. 'She is a rigid disciplinarian, conservative —unprogressive if you like—but with a firmly moulded will of her own, and a shrewd code of rules which governs her life. Probably she earns about £l5O a week. Which forms a nice sheetanchor when you have reached 50 and you find that the demand for your services Is greater than It has ever been before. •Many happy returns, Edna.