Zeffie Tilbury

Zeffie Tilbury
Tilbury as Grandma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Born	Zeffie Agnes Lydia Tilbury (1863-11-20)20 November 1863 Paddington, Middlesex, England
Died	24 July 1950(1950-07-24) (aged 86) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Years active	1917–1942
Spouse(s)	L. E. Woodthorpe (?–1915) (his death) Arthur Frederick Lewis (1887–?)

Zeffie Agnes Lydia Tilbury (20 November 1863 – 24 July 1950) was an English-American actress.^[1][2]

Early years[]

Born in Paddington, Middlesex, England, Tilbury was the only child of the variety performer Lydia Thompson and John Christian Tilbury, a riding-master, who died in a steeplechasing accident in 1864, when he was rolled on by his horse.^[3]

Personal life[]

Tilbury was married twice. First to Arthur Frederick Lewis in June, 1887, and later to L. E. Woodthorpe, who died on 8 April 1915. She died in Los Angeles, California in 1950 at the age of 86.^[4]

Career[]

Cigarette card from the 1880s

Tilbury was known first on the London stage and on Broadway in New York City.^[5] In 1881, she debuted on stage in Nine Points of the Law at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, England.^[6]

She is today best known for playing wise or evil older characters in films, such as the distinguished lady gambler at dinner with Garbo in The Single Standard, as the pitiful Grandma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and Grandma Lester in Tobacco Road.

She appeared in over 70 films.^[4] Her earliest surviving silent film is the Valentino / Nazimova 1921 production of Camille. Tilbury is probably best remembered as the old lady who is befriended by Spanky and his friends on her birthday and, as a result, is transformed from a lonely, disagreeable recluse to a happy and loving carefree soul in the 1936 Hal Roach Our Gang comedy Second Childhood. In the same year she also portrayed the Gypsy Queen in the Laurel and Hardy film The Bohemian Girl.

Filmography[]

References[]

External links[]

• Zeffie Tilbury at IMDb
• Zeffie Tilbury at the TCM Movie Database
• Zeffie Tilbury at the Internet Broadway Database
• Zeffie Tilbury portrait at NYP Library
• signed photograph(archived)

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