Norma Varden

Americans really think of English people—and here I specifically mean English—in two modes. Either we think of aristocrats or we think of cheeky urchins and other lower-class types. Urban, specifically; we aren’t really thinking much of farmers. We don’t even realize the rural roots of “talking like a pirate.” If you have the right look and accent, you can quietly make a living playing Lady Someone-Or-Other. If you can shift your accent very slightly, you can play Old Money Americans, who are supposed to sound slightly British anyway. It’s probably harder now, but for decades, it was nice work if you could get it.

Norma Varden was not, from what I can tell, either an aristocrat nor Old Money. Certainly she was not an American. She was the daughter of a retired sea captain, and she was a piano prodigy. Exactly how and why she made the switch to acting, I’m not sure, though apparently her first stage role was in Peter Pan as Mrs. Darling, in which she was younger than the people playing her children. She took to the stage and spent many years at the Aldwych Theatre. She was apparently something of their resident Margaret Dumont, letting the farce happen around her. She began appearing in movies with the coming of sound.

Her move to the US was, it seems, for her mother’s health, the climate of LA being better for an ailing woman than that of London. Generally, the environment of LA in the early ‘40s would have been better in a lot of ways, given World War II. Indeed, Varden was one of the many Europeans to appear in Casablanca; she’s the woman whose husband’s pocket is picked. She apparently disliked that roles were cast as much by budget as anything else—if her salary was at the right budget level, she would be cast, and if it was higher or lower, they’d cast someone else.

Still, she kept going in Hollywood for a very long time. She spent some thirty years in Hollywood, playing Lady So-and-So or Mrs. Upper Class or similar most of the time. She’s dripping with jewels in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She’s nearly murdered in Strangers on a Train. She actually was murdered in Witness for the Prosecution.On the radio, she was the housekeeper for Sherlock Holmes. She was frequently a wealthy neighbour on TV. She was the housekeeper in The Sound of Music.

Varden lived for twenty years after retiring from the screen. She apparently stayed active in the Screen Actors Guild, working for better health care for actors. Now, I strongly believe everyone should have proper health care and shouldn’t be at the whims of insurance companies. It certainly shouldn’t rely on employment. But Varden spent her final years trying to make sure that older performers didn’t have to struggle for theirs. Fellow British actress Angela Lansbury was at the time using Murder, She Wrote to give people just one more role; it would’ve been interesting to see Varden on it.