Laura Hope Crews
Crews in 1910
Born	(1879-12-12)December 12, 1879 San Francisco,California, U.S.
Died	November 12, 1942(1942-11-12) (aged 62) New York City, U.S.
Resting place	Cypress Lawn Memorial Park
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1884–1942

Laura Hope Crews (December 12, 1879 – November 12, 1942) was an American actress. Although she is best remembered today for her later work as acharacter actress in motion pictures of the 1930s, she also was prolific on stage; among her films roles was the role of Aunt Pittypat inGone with the Wind.^{[1][better source needed]}

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 atWoodward's Gardens.^[2] 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 theearthquake 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.^[2]

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.^[2]

Merely Mary Ann (1903): l to rAda Dwyer,Eleanor Robson, Laura H. Crews

Crews andJohn Drew Jr. inMuch Ado About Nothing (1913)

Erskine Sanford,Dudley Digges and Crews in theTheatre Guild production ofA. A. Milne'sMr. Pim Passes By (1921)

Crews appeared in plays written byA.A. Milne, who was particularly impressed by her work^{[citation needed]} in hisMr. Pim Passes By (1921).^[3] The play was a big success and ran for 232 performances on Broadway. In 1924 she starred inThe Werewolf for a run of 112 Broadway performances.^[4]

Crews also starred as Judith Bliss in the original Broadway production ofNoël Coward'sHay Fever (1925), which she co-directed^[3] with Coward. She also appeared inThe Silver Cord,^[3] written bySidney Howard, which was produced by the New York Theater Guild in 1926 and ran for 212 performances. WhenThe Silver Cord was not being presented, there were matinee performances ofRight You Are If You Think You Are byLuigi Pirandello.

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

George Cukor, who had directed her inCamille (1936), recommended her for the role of Aunt Pittypat inGone with the Wind (1939) afterBillie Burke declined it. Cukor wanted Crews to play the role "in a Billie Burke-ish manner" with "the same zany feeling".^[5]

Her final stage appearance came in 1942, in the original Broadway run ofArsenic 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 onBroadway and in a touring company before she was forced to leave because of illness.

Crews died in theLeRoy Sanitarium in New York City in 1942, following an illness of four months.^[6] Some sources say that the illness in which she suffered from waskidney failure. She was laid to rest atCypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.^{[citation needed]}

Crews has a star at 6251 Hollywood Boulevard on theHollywood Walk of Fame.^[7]

Crews was also the first credited cast member ofGone with the Wind to die.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toLaura Hope Crews.

• Laura Hope Crews photo gallery at NYP Library
• Laura Hope Crews atIMDb
• Laura Hope Crews at theTCM Movie Database
• Laura Hope Crews at theInternet Broadway Database
• Laura Hope Crews as a young stage actress
• Laura Hope Crews page with rare stage photographs
• Laura Hope Crews atFind a Grave
• Laura Hope Crews stills Univ. of Washington Sayre Collection
• Laura Hope Crews and Leo Ditrichstein in "The Phantom Rival" (1915)
• Laura Hope Crews inThe Havoc (1911) (Univ. of Washington Sayre Collection)
• Crews on the cover of The Theatre magazine, August 1913
• Tears: In Which Silent Pictures Actresses Tell Us How They Weep, article on crying in silent movies

• 1879 births
• 1942 deaths
• American film actresses
• American stage actresses
• Deaths from kidney failure in New York (state)
• Actresses from San Francisco
• 20th-century American actresses
• American child actresses
• 19th-century American actresses
• Burials at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park

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