Born June 14, 1918 in Omaha, Nebraska, Dorothy McGuire was one of three actresses who came to prominence in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Both she and Teresa Wright had been original star Martha Scott’s understudy, with McGuire eventually replacing Scott when she went to Hollywood. Several Broadway roles later, she was herself brought to Hollywood by David O. Selznick to recreate her starring role as the child bride in 1943’s Claudia. Within two years she was playing her first mother role in Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. That same year she was re-united with her Claudia co-star, Robert Young in the romantic drama, The Enchanted Cottage, and rejoined him for 1946’s Claudia and David, the sequel to their first film together.

Two other 1946 films, The Spiral Staircase, in which she played a mute servant in distress and Till the End of Time, in which she played a war widow, brought her further acclaim, but still no awards recognition.

Finally her portrayal of Gregory Peck’s fiancé in 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement brought her an Oscar nomination. Although it was hardly her most distinguished performance, it was an important film and the nomination helped make up for the slight of the previous few years. Real stardom, though, still eluded her and she returned to the stage for several years. Back in Hollywood in 1950, her film roles were mostly fluff. Even 1954’s Three Coins in the Fountain, a huge box-office success did not bolster her personal popularity. The film was mostly admired for its Oscar winning cinematography and title song.

Her Quaker mother in 1956’s Friendly Persuasion finally provided her with a role for the first time in years that was both critically and commercially lauded. She started out awards season with a bang, winning the National Board of Review’s award for Best Actress, but, alas, Oscar passed her by once again. Hollywood wanted her, but they wanted her only in mother roles now. Disney’s Old Yeller; Swiss Family Robinson and Summer Magic were all big hits and even the kids knew who she was now, but dramatically these roles hardly tapped into her enormous strengths as an actress. Within that period, though, she gave three performances that remain a testament to those strengths.

Playing against type as a bitter, crippled woman, she easily stole 1959’s This Earth Is Mine from Rock Hudson and Jean Simmons and playing a woman trapped in a marriage to a cruel alcoholic, she added class and distinction to the seminal late 1950s tearjerker, A Summer Place. Starring opposite Robert Preston, she had her last great screen role as the wife and mother in 1960’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

One would think that at least one of these last three roles would have gotten her a long overdue second Oscar nomination, but it wasn’t to be.

She played the mother all mother roles, the Virgin Mary, in George Stevens’ generally dismissed 1965 epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told. Twelve years later she received an Emmy nomination playing Nick Nolte and Peter Strauss’s mother in Rich Man, Poor Man. The year after that she was Marmee in a well received TV version of Little Women. In occasional TV roles for a little over a decade after that, she played her last in 1990.

She died in 2001 at the age of 85. The failure of the Academy to include her in the In Memoriam segment at the 2002 Oscars caused a major uproar. Claiming they only had room for so many recently deceased Academy members in the segment, the Academy made no apology and admitted no error. The segment has been looked upon with scorn ever since.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945), directed by John Cromwell

Few actresses since the silent days could portray innocence and goodness with the ease with which McGuire brought such characters to life. Here, even more than in her star making turn in Claudia, she does just that. She plays a repressed, homely woman who takes a job as a maid in the only still standing wing, or cottage, of an old New England mansion. Robert Young is equally fine as the once handsome, athletic flyer badly maimed and disfigured in World War II who rents a room at the cottage. The two enter into a marriage of convenience which turns to love on their wedding night and they are transformed into beautiful people. Will the beauty last? Herbert Marshall as a blind composer who can see more with his inner sight than most people can see with their eyes wide open and Mildred Natwick as the cottage’s protective owner provide strong support. Natwick’s climactic speech is a knockout.

TILL THE END OF TIME (1946), directed by Edward Dymtryk

Released three months before The Best Years of Our Lives, this tale of three homecoming marines, would suffer in comparison to its better known counterpart, but in its way is just as moving and affecting. The film is from a novel by Niven Busch, who was married to one of the stars of the rival film, Teresa Wright, who like McGuire, got her start as understudy to Martha Scott in the original Broadway production of Our Town. The film follows three traumatized veterans, played by Guy Madison, Robert Mitchum and Bill Williams. McGuire plays an older woman, a war widow Madison easily picks up in a bar. Part girlfriend, part surrogate mother, she helps him through his readjustment to civilian life in one of her most acclaimed performances.

INVITATION (1952), directed by Gottfried Rheinhardt

In the nine year period between Gentleman’s Agreement and Friendly Persuasion, McGuire’s talents were mostly wasted on film, but not here. Though she is second billed to Van Johnson, she is very much the centerpiece of this romantic drama in which she plays the plain but pampered daughter of wealthy Louis Calhern who pays Johnson to marry her and along with Johnson and her doctor, Ray Collins, conspires to keep from her the secret that she is slowly dying. The actors, especially McGuire, keep this unusual film from dissolving into a tearjerker. McGuire is heart wrenching in the denouement and unforgettable in the film’s closing moments.

THIS EARTH IS MINE (1959), directed by Henry King

A beautifully photographed film set in California’s Napa Valley that predates the TV series Falcon Crest by more than two decades, this soap opera stars Rock Hudson as the illegitimate grandson of wealthy wine grower Claude Rains. Jean Simmons, the daughter of one of Rains’ sons, is brought over from England and is attracted to Hudson who could have been a kissing cousin except that his mother, Anna Lee, the wife of Rains’ other son, conceived him with Rains’ daughter’s husband, Kent Smith. All this is common knowledge and especially infuriating to Rains’ bitter, wheelchair bound daughter, played by McGuire in one of her most unusual roles. Even when playing a mean character, she could still break your heart with a look or turn of phrase as she does here.

THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960), directed by Delbert Mann

Robert Preston, still in Harold Hill mode from playing The Music Man on stage, is a bit too bombastic as the traveling salesman with a wandering eye, but he does grow on you. No need for the rest of the cast to grow on you. They’re all great from the get-go, especially McGuire as his long-suffering wife, Eve Arden as McGuire’s bigoted sister, Angela Lansbury as Preston’s sometimes mistress, Shirley Knight as Preston’s daughter, Lee Kinsolving as her first beau and Richard Eyer as Preston’s son who fears the dark at the top of the stairs. The title, of course, has another meaning, the lack of sex between Preston and McGuire, which it is rather frank about in a way quite unusual for the Production Code era.

DOROTHY McGUIRE AND OSCAR

• Gentleman’s Agreement (Best Actress nominee) – 1947