Constance Cummings played opposite Harold Lloyd in Hollywood, traded barbs with a ghost for David Lean and won a Tony for playing an aviator struggling to recover her speech. The same precision that made her comedy work gave her later stage performances their force.
Constance Halverstadt · Born 15 May 1910, Seattle, Washington · Died 23 November 2005, Oxfordshire, England. IBDB
Watch at The Little Picture House · Chronological filmography · Television and disputed credits · Sources
From the chorus to Columbia
Cummings began acting in stock theatre as a teenager. Accounts agree on an early appearance in Seventh Heaven but differ on the location. The Independent places it with a San Diego stock company. IBDB records her in the ensemble of the Gershwins’ Treasure Girl, which opened on Broadway in November 1928. The Independent · IBDB
Her first confirmed released feature was Howard Hawks’s The Criminal Code (1931), in which she played Mary Brady, the prison warden’s daughter. At Columbia she also played a bank secretary in Frank Capra’s American Madness. In Movie Crazy, she brings a knowing edge to the romance with Harold Lloyd’s would-be actor, whose inability to read a situation is the engine of the comedy. AFI Catalog
A career on both sides of the Atlantic
She married British playwright Benn W. Levy in 1933. They had a son and a daughter, and the marriage lasted until Levy’s death in 1973. Britain became her home, and she continued to return to Broadway. Her stage work included Young Madame Conti, written by Levy, and the title role in Madame Bovary. The Guardian · IBDB
Her British films paired her with Edmund Lowe in the railway mystery Seven Sinners and Robert Montgomery in Busman’s Honeymoon, adapted from Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey story. In David Lean’s Blithe Spirit, she plays Ruth Condomine, a wife whose husband can see and hear his first wife’s ghost. Cummings gives Ruth’s impatience a practical logic, which makes the supernatural predicament funnier. In The Battle of the Sexes, her American efficiency expert Angela Barrows meets a very different opponent in Peter Sellers’s quietly determined Edinburgh clerk. British Entertainment History Project interview · AFI Catalog
Mary Tyrone and Wings
The National Theatre cast Cummings as Mary Tyrone opposite Laurence Olivier in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. The London production opened in December 1971. A television version followed in 1973, preserving her performance as Mary withdraws into memories that her family can neither share nor interrupt. She was appointed CBE in 1974. National Theatre archive · British Entertainment History Project interview
Arthur Kopit’s Wings brought her back to Broadway as Emily Stilson, a former aviator finding her way through the effects of a stroke. The play lets us hear the fragments of language Emily is trying to make sense of. Cummings won the 1979 Tony for Best Actress in a Play. The Independent identifies her appearance as Vanya’s mother at Chichester in 1996 as her final stage performance. She died in 2005, aged 95. IBDB · The Independent
Watch at The Little Picture House
Watch The Battle of the Sexes · Constance Cummings as Angela Barrows.
Chronological filmography
Theatrical features are listed by release year, with alternate titles and different national release years noted where documented. AFI Catalog
| Year | Title | Role and release notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1931 | The Criminal Code | Mary Brady |
| 1931 | The Last Parade | Molly Pearson |
| 1931 | Lover Come Back | Connie Lee |
| 1931 | Traveling Husbands | Ellen Wilson |
| 1931 | The Guilty Generation | Maria Palmero |
| 1932 | Behind the Mask | Julie Arnold |
| 1932 | The Big Timer | Honey Baldwin |
| 1932 | Attorney for the Defense | Ruth Barry |
| 1932 | American Madness | Helen |
| 1932 | Movie Crazy | Mary Sears |
| 1932 | The Last Man | Marian Wingate |
| 1932 | Washington Merry-Go-Round | Alice Wylie |
| 1932 | Night After Night | Jerry Healy |
| 1933 | The Billion Dollar Scandal | Doris Masterson |
| 1933 | The Mind Reader | Sylvia Roberts |
| 1933 | Heads We Go | Betty Smith / Dorothy Kay. US title The Charming Deceiver |
| 1933 | Channel Crossing | Marion Slade. UK opening in 1933, US release in 1934 |
| 1933 | Broadway Thru a Keyhole | Joan Whelan. Also listed as Broadway Through a Keyhole |
| 1934 | Looking for Trouble | Ethel Greenwood |
| 1934 | Glamour | Linda Fayne |
| 1934 | This Man Is Mine | Francesca “Fran” Harper |
| 1935 | Remember Last Night? | Carlotta Milburn |
| 1936 | Seven Sinners | Caryl Fenton. US title Doomed Cargo |
| 1936 | Strangers on a Honeymoon | October. Also listed without “a”. AFI records a January 1937 US opening |
| 1940 | Busman’s Honeymoon | Harriet Vane. US title Haunted Honeymoon |
| 1941 | This England | Ann |
| 1942 | The Foreman Went to France | Anne Stafford. US title Somewhere in France |
| 1945 | Blithe Spirit | Ruth Condomine |
| 1950 | Into the Blue | Kate Fergusson. Also catalogued as 1951 |
| 1955 | John and Julie | Mrs. Davidson |
| 1956 | The Intimate Stranger | Kay Wallace. US title Finger of Guilt |
| 1959/1960 | The Battle of the Sexes | Angela Barrows. The Little Picture House lists it under 1959 |
| 1963 | Sammy Going South | Gloria van Imhoff. US title A Boy Ten Feet Tall |
| 1963 | In the Cool of the Day | Nina Gellert |
Television, archive footage and disputed credits
Selected television plays and films
| Year | Title | Role and release notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1938 | Cyrano de Bergerac | Roxane |
| 1953 | Trial and Error | Andrea |
| 1957 | The Trial of Mary Dugan | Mary Dugan, also known as Mona Tree |
| 1957 | Craig’s Wife | Harriet Craig |
| 1973 | Long Day’s Journey into Night | Mary Tyrone. Television adaptation of the National Theatre staging |
| 1985 | Love Song | Dame Philippa Hatchard |
| 1986 | Dead Man’s Folly | Amy Folliat |
| 1986 | The Understanding | Acton |
Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (1962) uses earlier Lloyd footage, including material from Movie Crazy. It is a compilation appearance.
Trade reports cited by AFI record that Cummings was hired for The Devil to Pay! (1930) and replaced by Loretta Young early in filming. AFI also records a report that she was originally cast as Drue in Red Salute (1935), a role played in the released film by Barbara Stanwyck. The AFI person index also has production-history references for It’s Great to Be Alive and The Bitter Tea of General Yen; those references do not establish released performances. AFI, The Devil to Pay · AFI, Red Salute · AFI Catalog
Sources
AFI Catalog · Film credits and production histories.
IBDB · Broadway appearances and awards.
National Theatre archive · The 1971 stage production and cast.
British Entertainment History Project interview · Cummings’s 1997 oral history.
The Guardian · The Independent · Contemporary obituaries and accounts of her stage career.