Cora Witherspoon

• Name — Cora Witherspoon • Born — 5 January 1890 • Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. • Died — 17 November 1957 • Place of death — Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S. • Resting Place — Metairie Cemetery • Occupation — Actress • Years Active — 1905–1954

• Illustration — Cora Witherspoon baby picture Witherspoon was born in New Orleans, to Cora S. Bell and Henry Edgeworth Witherspoon. Her father was an assistant surgeon with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War while her mother was an aunt of the civil rights advocate Judge John Minor Wisdom. Witherspoon was orphaned by age 10 and raised at least in part by her older sister, Maud, who, while still in her teens founded the Maud Witherspoon Rag Doll Manufacturing Company. Witherspoon's ancestors had reportedly once owned Ellington Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.

Witherspoon made her professional stage debut in 1905 with a New Orleans stock company. She first appeared in New York at the Belasco Theatre in the 1910 hit comedy The Concert, which was Leo Ditrichstein's adaptation of the stage play, in which the 20-year-old actress portrayed the 76-year-old Edith Gordon. Witherspoon appeared with Ditrichstein in September 1913 for a four-month run at the Belasco and briefly the Theatre Republic playing Fanny Lamont in The Temperamental Journey, from the comedy Pour Vivre Heureux by André Rivoire and Yves Mirandeis. From September 1914 into the following May at the Gaiety Theatre, she played Sally McBride in Jean Webster's comedy Daddy Long Legs. • Illustration — Cora Witherspoon c. 1910-1920 Witherspoon had a long run between November 1915 and June 1916 at the Longacre Theatre as Mrs. Van Ness in The Great Lover, another play by Ditrichstein, written in collaboration with Fanny and Frederic Hatton. In 1926 Witherspoon was a member of the summer stock cast at Denver's Elitch Theatre, where she performed with Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, and Beulah Bondi. She remained active on stage for another three decades often in long-running Broadway plays, such as: • Miss Risdon in Three Faces East by Anthony Paul Kelly (1918/19) • Gertrude Ainlee in Lilies of the Field by William J. Hurlbut (1921/22) • Josephine Trent in The Awful Truth by Arthur Richman (1922/23) • Marianne Regnault in Grounds for Divorce by Guy Bolton and Ernest Vajda (1924/25) • Martha Culver in The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham (1926/27) • Mrs. Oliver in Philip Goes Forth by George Kelly (1931) • Mrs. Paula La Salle in Forsaking All Others by Edward Roberts and Frank Cavett (1933) • Mrs. Letty Walters in Jig Saw by Dawn Powell (1934) • Isabel Cobb in A Touch of Brimstone by Frank Craven (1935) • Mame Phillips in Ramshackle Inn by George Batson (1944) • Mrs. Grant in The Front Page (revival) by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (1946)

Witherspoon appeared in several episodes of the classic American television series Fireside Theatre, Kraft Theatre and Studio One in Hollywood, and on radio in the NBC Great Plays series.

In his 1975 autobiography, Tennessee Williams: Memoirs, Williams told of his time in 1941 as a night shift elevator operator at the San Jacinto Hotel in Manhattan. Among the hotel's guests at the time was Witherspoon who, according to Williams, employed him or the hotel's telephone operator, a budding poet, to pick up her morphine prescription from an all-night pharmacy.

Witherspoon died in 1957, aged 67, at Las Cruces, New Mexico and interred at the Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans. She was survived by her sister Maud.

Cora Witherspoon is recorded as actress.