Violet Kemble Cooper

Violet Kemble Cooper was an English-American actress who worked on the stage before moving into Hollywood talkies. Born in London into the theatrical Kemble family, she gave her first stage performance in 1905 in England, in Charley's Aunt. Within a few years she had crossed to America, where she toured and took stock roles alongside Blanche Bates and Laurette Taylor. In 1921 she appeared on Broadway in Claire de Lune, alongside John and Ethel Barrymore. She avoided silent films entirely, starting her screen career in sound pictures with Our Betters (1933). Her later work included the Dickens adaptation David Copperfield (1935), playing the spiteful Miss Murdstone, The Invisible Ray (1936), as the mother of Boris Karloff's character, and her final film, Romeo and Juliet (1936), in which she was Lady Capulet. She died in 1961.