Miriam Hopkins

Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia to Homer Hopkins and Ellen Cutler[2] and raised in Bainbridge, near the Alabama border. She had an older sister, Ruby (1900-1990).[3] Her maternal great-grandfather, the fourth mayor of Bainbridge, had helped establish St. John's Episcopal Church in the city.[4] Hopkins sang in the choir as a girl.[5]

In 1909, she briefly lived in Mexico with her family. After her parents separated, Hopkins moved as a teen with her mother to Syracuse, New York to be near her paternal uncle, Thomas Cramer Hopkins, head of the geology department at Syracuse University.[6]

Hopkins attended Goddard Seminary in Barre, Vermont (it later became Goddard College, relocated to Plainfield, Vermont) and Syracuse University in New York.[6] After becoming estranged from her father, when she applied for a passport in 1922 to undertake a theatrical tour of South America, she listed his address as "unknown."[7]

Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in a publicity photo for Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Miriam Hopkins in the Broadway production of Jezebel (1933), an Owen Davis play. It was later adapted for a 1938 film but Hopkins lost the lead role to Bette Davis.

At age 20, Hopkins became a chorus girl in New York City; she also acted regularly on the stage throughout the 1920s, including in the 1926 stage adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. In 1930 she starred on Broadway in the play Ritzy by Sidney Toler. She starred on Broadway in the lead of Jezebel, a 1933 play by Owen Davis. When it was adapted as a 1938 film of the same name, Hopkins was bitterly disappointed that Bette Davis was chosen for the role she had played on stage. This began a feud between them publicized by the studios.

The same year, Hopkins signed with Paramount Pictures and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose. Her first great success was in the 1931 horror drama film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where she portrayed Ivy Pearson, a prostitute who becomes entangled with Jekyll and Hyde. She received rave reviews, including one from Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times, saying she portrayed Ivy "splendidly." [8]

Her career ascended swiftly thereafter. In 1932 she made her breakthrough in Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, where she proved her charm and wit as a beautiful and jealous pickpocket. During the pre-code Hollywood of the early 1930s, she appeared in The Smiling Lieutenant, The Story of Temple Drake, and Design for Living, all of which were box-office successes and critically acclaimed.[9] Design for Living ranked as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933.

Hopkins' films were considered sexually risqué at the time; created in the years before Hollywood developed a code of behavior, they featured issues later prohibited. For instance, The Story of Temple Drake depicted a rape scene and Design for Living featured a ménage à trois with Fredric March and Gary Cooper. Her successes continued during the remainder of the decade with the romantic comedy The Richest Girl in the World (1934); the historical drama Becky Sharp (1935), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress; Barbary Coast (1935); These Three (1936) (the first of four films with director William Wyler); and The Old Maid (1939).

Hopkins was one of the first actresses approached to play the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934). She rejected the part, and Claudette Colbert was cast instead.[10] Hopkins auditioned for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, and was the only candidate to be a native Georgian; but the part went to British actress Vivien Leigh. Both Colbert and Leigh won Oscars for their performances.

Hopkins had well-publicized fights with her arch-enemy Bette Davis. Hopkins and Davis co-starred in two films, The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). In this period of time, she believed that Davis was having an affair with her husband, Anatole Litvak.[11] Davis resented her jealousy and said that she had enjoyed shaking Hopkins in a scene in Old Acquaintance, after Hopkins's character makes unfounded allegations against Davis's. Press photos featured the two divas in a boxing ring, gloves up, with director Vincent Sherman between them like a referee. In later interviews, Davis described Hopkins as a "terribly good actress", but also "terribly jealous."

After Old Acquaintance, Hopkins did not work in films again until The Heiress (1949), where she played the lead character's aunt. In Mitchell Leisen's 1951 comedy The Mating Season, she gave a comic performance as the mother of Gene Tierney's character. She also acted in The Children's Hour (1961), a remake of her film These Three (1936). In the remake, she played the aunt to Shirley MacLaine, who took Hopkins' original role.

Hopkins was a television pioneer. She performed in teleplays from the late 1940s through the late 1960s, in such programs as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (1949), Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (1951), Lux Video Theatre (1951-1955), The Outer Limits (1964), and even an episode of The Flying Nun ("Bertrille and the Silent Flicks") in 1969.

She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for film at 1709 Vine Street and one for television at 1716 Vine Street.[12]

Hopkins married four times. Her first marriage was to actor Brandon Peters, second to aviator and screenwriter Austin Parker, third to the director Anatole Litvak, and fourth to war correspondent Raymond B. Brock. In 1932, she adopted a son, Michael T. Hopkins (March 29, 1932 - October 5, 2010), who had a career in the U.S. Air Force.[13]

She was known for hosting elegant parties. John O'Hara, a frequent guest, noted that

most of her guests were chosen from the world of the intellect...Miriam knew them all, had read their work, had listened to their music, had bought their paintings. They were not there because a secretary had given her a list of highbrows.[14]

She was a staunch Democrat who strongly supported the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.[15]

Hopkins died in New York City from a heart attack nine days before her 70th birthday. She is buried in Oak City Cemetery in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Short Subjects:

• "The Home Girl" (1928)
• "Hollywood on Parade No. B-1" (1933)

• Miriam Hopkins: Life and Films of a Hollywood Rebel

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Miriam Hopkins.

• Miriam Hopkins on IMDb
• Miriam Hopkins at the Internet Broadway Database
• Miriam Hopkins at Find a Grave
• Photographs of Miriam Hopkins
• Miriam Hopkins Interview with Biographer Allan Ellenberger