Mary Wickes

 Mary Wickes, born Mary Isabella Wickenhauser (June 13, 1910 – October 22, 1995)

She often played supporting roles as prim, professional women, secretaries, nurses, and housekeepers, who made sarcastic quips when the leading characters fell short of her high standards. Wickes's first Broadway appearance was in Marc Connelly's The Farmer Takes a Wife in 1934 with Henry Fonda. She began acting in films in the late 1930s and was a member of the Orson Welles troupe on his radio drama The Mercury Theatre on the Air; she also appeared in Welles's film Too Much Johnson (1938). One of her earlier significant film appearances was in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), reprising her stage role of Nurse Preen. A tall (5'10"), gangling woman with a distinctive voice, Wickes would ultimately prove herself adept as a comedian. She attracted attention in Now, Voyager (1942) as the wisecracking nurse who helped Bette Davis's character during her mother's illness.

A prime example was her deadpan characterization of the harassed housekeeper in the Doris Day vehicles On Moonlight Bay and By the Light of the Silvery Moon, a character type she would repeat in the holiday classic White Christmas (1954), starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. She played similar roles in two later movies with Rosalind Russell in the 1960s: The Trouble with Angels and Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. A longtime friend of Lucille Ball, Wickes played frequent guest roles on I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy. Wickes suffered from numerous ailments in the last years of her life which cumulatively resulted in her death from surgical complications on October 22, 1995 at age 85. She is buried beside her parents at Shiloh Valley Cemetery in Shiloh, Illinois. Unmarried and without children, Wickes left a large estate and made a $2 million bequest in memory of her parents, establishing the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Th