Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney was an American stage, screen, and film actress whose career spanned over 70 years. She rose to prominence in dozens of leading roles in the 1930s. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams in 1973. She later gained attention for her role as Juno, a case worker in the afterlife, in Tim Burton's 1988 film Beetlejuice, for which she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Early life
Sidney was born Sophia Kosow in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of Rebecca, a Romanian Jew, and Victor Kosow, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who worked as a clothing salesman. Her parents divorced by 1915, and she was adopted by her stepfather Sigmund Sidney, a dentist. Her mother became a dressmaker and renamed herself Beatrice Sidney. Now using the surname Sidney, Sylvia became an actress at the age of 15 as a way of overcoming shyness. As a student of the Theater Guild's School for Acting, she was praised by theater critics for her performances. In 1926, she made her first film appearance as an extra in D.W. Griffith's The Sorrows of Satan.Career
Sidney made her Broadway debut at age 16 playing blonde ingenue Anita in Jean Bart's The Squall. The production opened on November 11, 1926, at the 48th Street Theatre; Sidney joined the cast in December 1926, taking over for Dorothy Stickney. Sidney left the production in February 1927 to star in Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymer's Crime, where she was touted in the press as the "youngest leading lady on Broadway."During the Depression, Sidney appeared in a string of films, often playing working-class heroines, or the girlfriend or sister of a gangster. Her role as a wrongly convicted woman in City Streets launched her to stardom in 1931. Other films from this period were An American Tragedy and Street Scene, Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage and Fritz Lang's Fury, You Only Live Once and Dead End, and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, an early three-strip Technicolor film. During this period, she developed a reputation for being difficult to work with.
At the time of making Sabotage with Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney was one of the highest-paid actresses in the industry, earning $10,000 per week—earning a total of $80,000 for Sabotage.
Sidney's career diminished somewhat during the 1940s. In 1949, exhibitors voted her "box-office poison". In 1952, she played the role of Fantine in Les Misérables, and although the film itself did not meet the studio's expectations, Sidney received critical praise for her performance.
Sidney appeared three times on Playhouse 90. On May 16, 1957, she appeared as Lulu Morgan, mother of singer Helen Morgan in "The Helen Morgan Story". Four months later, Sidney rejoined her former co-star Bergen on the premiere of the short-lived The Polly Bergen Show. She also worked in television during the 1960s on such programs as Route 66, The Defenders, and My Three Sons.
In 1973, Sidney received an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. As an elderly woman, Sidney continued to play supporting screen roles, and was identifiable by her husky voice, the result of cigarette smoking. She was the formidable Miss Coral in the film version of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and later was cast as Aidan Quinn's grandmother in the television production of An Early Frost where she spoke the memorable line "AIDS is a disease, not a disgrace!" and for which she won a Golden Globe Award. She played Aunt Marion in Damien: Omen II and had key roles in Beetlejuice, for which she won a Saturn Award, and Used People. Her final role was in Mars Attacks!, another film by Burton, in which she played an elderly woman whose beloved records by Slim Whitman help stop an alien invasion from Mars.
On television, she appeared in the pilot episode of WKRP in Cincinnati as the imperious owner of the radio station, and she appeared in a memorable episode of Thirtysomething as Melissa's tough grandmother, who wanted to leave her granddaughter the family dress business, though Melissa wanted a career as a photographer. Sidney also appeared at the beginning of each episode as the crotchety travel clerk on the short-lived late-1990s revival of Fantasy Island. She also was featured on Starsky & Hutch; The Love Boat; Magnum, P.I.; Diagnosis Murder; and Trapper John, M.D.
Her Broadway career spanned five decades, from her debut performance as a graduate of the Theatre Guild School in June 1926 at age 15, in the three-act fantasy Prunella to the Tennessee Williams play Vieux Carré in 1977. Other stage credits included The Fourposter, Enter Laughing, and Barefoot in the Park. In 1982, Sidney was awarded the George Eastman Award by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
Personal life
Sidney was married three times, first to publisher Bennett Cerf in 1935; they divorced six months later in 1936, on grounds of incompatibility. She married actor and acting teacher Luther Adler in 1938, by whom she had her only child, son Jacob, who died of ALS in 1985. Adler and Sidney divorced in 1946, with Sydney alleging Adler was a "bachelor at heart...My husband said marriage was not for him. He said he was too temperamental to be tied down, and just refused to live with me." Both parents were granted custody of Jacob, with each parent having him for six months of the year. On March 5, 1947, she married radio producer Carlton Alsop; roughly four years later, attorney Melvin Belli assisted Sidney in her divorce suit, brought on grounds of extreme cruelty. Waiving any alimony request and seeking only restoration of her maiden name, Sidney was granted the decree and the divorce was finalized on July 24, 1951.She published two books on the art of needlepoint, and raised and showed pug dogs.