Marion Lorne MacDougall (August 12, 1883 - May 9, 1968) was an American Emmy Award-winning character actress.

Biography

She was born in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, a small mining town halfway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, of Scottish and English immigrant parents. While her year of birth is listed as 1885 on her tombstone, it was usually listed as 1888 when she was alive and the Social Security Death Index lists it as 1883. Lorne studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She married playwright Walter Hackett, who died in 1944.

Career

Lorne debuted on Broadway in 1905; she also acted in London theaters, enjoying a flourishing stage career on both sides of the Atlantic. A latecomer to films, she was quickly typed as a befuddled, nervous, and somewhat aristocratic matron. She made her screen debut in 1951, in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.

In the early 1950s, Lorne was seen as perpetually confused high school English teacher Mrs. Gurney on the pioneering sitcom Mr. Peepers. Her last role, playing Aunt Clara in television's Bewitched, brought Lorne her widest fame. She played a lovable, forgetful witch, obsessed with doorknobs, who is losing her powers because of her old age and whose spells invariably end in disaster. She appeared in 27 episodes and was not replaced after she died of a heart attack in New York City during the fourth season, at age 84.

Bewitched producers realized that Lorne's portrayal of the beloved Aunt Clara could not be replicated. Instead, character actress Alice Ghostley was recruited to fill the gap as the newly-created Esmerelda. Lorne and Ghostley appeared side-by-side in The Graduate as partygoers Miss DeWitte and Mrs. Singleman the year before Lorne's death.

Lorne received a posthumous Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work on Bewitched. The statue was accepted by Elizabeth Montgomery.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
1951	Strangers on a Train	Mrs. Anthony
1952-1953	Mr. Peepers	Mrs. Gurney	TV, 17 episodes
1955	The Girl Rush	Aunt Clara
1957	Sally	Myrtle Banford	TV, 2 episodes
1958	Suspicion	Mrs. Foster	TV, 1 episode
	The DuPont Show of the Month	Veta Louise Simmons	TV, 1 episode
1964-1968	Bewitched	Aunt Clara	TV, 27 episodes
1967	The Graduate	Miss DeWitte

Awards and nominations

Year	Result	Award	Category	Series
1954	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Series Supporting Actress	Mr. Peepers
1955	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Supporting Actress in a Regular Series	Mr. Peepers
1958	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Continuing Supporting Performance by an Actress in a Dramatic or Comedy Series	Sally
1967	Nominated	Emmy Award	Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Comedy	Bewitched
1968	Won	Emmy Award	Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Comedy	Bewitched

References

External links